VENDOR: fotoflot.com

beacazil

Just wanted to let you know that we just released a new version of the fotoflot.com web presence. Here a few highlights:

• We rewrote how the login scheme works. Image information is now retrieved from SmugMug only on demand, so that customers with large portfolios have a much faster and more stable experience.
• The album tree has been fixed so that horizontal and/or vertical scroll bars appear and content is no longer simply clipped.
• We fixed the issue where certain SmugMug albums did not appear on fotoflot.com if they were part of a category and a sub category.
• A “tour mode” has been added so that customers do not have to provide their SmugMug credentials if they just want to try out the site.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

claudermilk

tommca wrote:

Chris, sorry for the late reply - I somehow missed your posting. We do provide the threshold PPI for each product size/aspect ratio. Look in "Learn About Our Products", under "Get Great Results." The short version:

• 10"x12.5" and smaller: 125 ppi
• 10"x30" and larger: 90 ppi
• Everything in between: 100 ppi

Don't know if you noticed, but if you mouse over the red/green indicators in the crop tool, it tells you the crop size in pixels. If the crop is below the minimum size, it also tells you the minimum size in pixels.

Tom

No worries, I'm not in a hurry. Thanks for the information. I hadn't noticed the indicator changes, so I went & looked again--very cool you can see the sizes flip to unavailable as you crop too small. It's subtle & takes looking for it the first time around.

I also see the updates Jurgen mentioned, all seems to be working correctly now. Probably one of the best utilizations of a flash site I've seen.

beacazil

claudermilk wrote:

I also see the updates Jurgen mentioned, all seems to be working correctly now. Probably one of the best utilizations of a flash site I've seen.

Chris,

Thank you for your kind words, Chris. fotoflot.com is intended to give you “application like speed” while browsing your images and preparing fotoflōts for checkout. We will, over time, make improvements to the user interface and add more and more useful tools.

We know that the cropping dialog can be enhanced and I'd like to solicit your input. You were interested in seeing the resulting PPI values and I can add them to each product row in the options section of the display. We had thought about something like that before.

I don't want to make the cropping dialog into a 747 cockpit, but there may be other information about the image that would help during the cropping process. What about information like:

• Folder name
• Original file name
• Original file dimension (width and height in pixels)
• Cropping rectangle dimension (width and height in pixel)
• Cropping rectangle upper left corner coordinates
• others

We currently do not pull the EXIF information for an image, but is there something in there of interest (camera, exposure, ...) while making cropping decisions?

Also, information can be transient. For example, we may not want to dedicate any real-estate to EXIF data, but a little EXIF button may be of interest. A tooltoip like popup could show the information when the mouse hovers over it.

Anyway. Your feedback and input are greatly appreciated.

Mike Lane

Not to pile on with a feature request dog pile here, but geeze it'd be nice if your scroll bars responded to my mouse wheel (actually 2 finger track pad scrolling on my mac book pro).

Can't wait for the APO shipping to take effect

claudermilk

Jurgen: As fas as I'm concerned, all the pertinent information that's needed is already on the screen there. Once you're made the initial discovery that size options turn off as you crop too small it works great. It's just that until you notice them toggling it's a little subtle.

Scott_Quier

Tom,

I have my galleries arranged in categories and sub-cats 'cause I get so confused by all the galleries I have. As a suggestion, it would be more helpful if you could build the tree structure of galleries accordingly. I can muddle through with what you have, but it sure would make life easier for many.

Additionally, I have many "galleries" that do not contain any photos. Might be nice to exclude these from the list as just so much clutter.

Or ... list the galleries in alphabetical order? Anything to make it easier to find stuff.

Any thoughts on this?

beacazil

Scott,
we have added support for categories/subcategories to the list of features we are working on. It's not a huge thing but it is not trivial either. We'll try to get that out with the next maintenance release.

I like your other suggestions, too (alphabetical and exclude empties) and I am wondering if we should have a simple option selector for how the customer wants to see the albums: alphabetically versus categories and with or without empties. Thoughts?

Jürgen

Scott_Quier

beacazil wrote:

Scott,
we have added support for categories/subcategories to the list of features we are working on. It's not a huge thing but it is not trivial either. We'll try to get that out with the next maintenance release.

I like your other suggestions, too (alphabetical and exclude empties) and I am wondering if we should have a simple option selector for how the customer wants to see the albums: alphabetically versus categories and with or without empties. Thoughts?

Jürgen

If you already have the cat/sub-cat in the pipeline, then I have to ask the question, "Are you going to implement it in the tree structure, with each cat and sub-cat collapsible?"

I think the user options would be a wonderful functionality. I had thought of that, but didn't want to push the "additional features that would be nice to have" button too many times or too hard.

For the cat/sub-cat option - to my mind, it would seem to make sense to populate the cat/sub-cat tree with the cats appearing in alphabetical order and the sub-cats appearing in each category, also in alpha order. I would bet that, if you were to include a behind-the-scenes counter incrementing on each selection, that this would get the highest hit count.

beacazil

Mike Lane wrote:

... it appears you don't ship to APO addresses. :cry ...

Mike,

we just updated the checkout engine to accept APO/FPO addresses. They will be treated as domestic shipment ... so shipping is free.

Give it a try and let us know if this works for you.

Jürgen

aburack

Where or Where is has my order gone....
Well, its been about 2 weeks since I placed my order and Istill have nto recieved it nor any confirmation. Can you please check on it? the ID used was magicmomentsstudios and was to be shipped to Staten Island NY. AllenB

tommca

aburack wrote:

Well, its been about 2 weeks since I placed my order and Istill have nto recieved it nor any confirmation.

Allen, your fotoflōt should be shipped tomorrow and you'll receive it on Monday, which will be two weeks from your order on November 5th. We're currently producing once per week and for an order that arrives just after our cutoff date it can take two weeks from order to receipt of product. We'll move to producing twice per week as soon as we can.

Tom

aburack

tommca wrote:

Allen, your fotoflōt should be shipped tomorrow and you'll receive it on Monday, which will be two weeks from your order on November 5th. We're currently producing once per week and for an order that arrives just after our cutoff date it can take two weeks from order to receipt of product. We'll move to producing twice per week as soon as we can.

Tom

thanks., looking forward to getting it and showing to people. I would suggest some sort of confirmation e-mail that you have gotten and acknowledge the order.

tommca

aburack wrote:

thanks., looking forward to getting it and showing to people. I would suggest some sort of confirmation e-mail that you have gotten and acknowledge the order.

Allen, you should have gotten an automatic confirmation email shortly after you placed the order. We received a copy, so it did go out. It's possible that the email was filtered by spam software or by gmail. Just to make sure we can get through via email, Jürgen just sent you a test message. Please reply if you get it; otherwise let us know via this channel. Thanks, Tom

aburack

It came!

tommca wrote:

Allen, you should have gotten an automatic confirmation email shortly after you placed the order. We received a copy, so it did go out. It's possible that the email was filtered by spam software or by gmail. Just to make sure we can get through via email, Jürgen just sent you a test message. Please reply if you get it; otherwise let us know via this channel. Thanks, Tom

Tom, Thanks for the great customer service. I received the package and couldn’t wait to get home to open it.

My opinions:
1) Great print job
2) Fantastic mounting, nice crisp clean edges.
3) Wall mounting is a breeze and it looks great

However:
My only issue is that when you bend the tabs to move the "frame" off the wall for that floating look, the picture doesn’t stick as well. The magnetic pull is weaker and prone to falling. The limit on other tabs is about 45degrees. Anything more then that I found that the slightest shake (I am a big guy) the image slips.

You might want to consider either stronger magnets or repositioning the magnets.


Otherwise I a very happy and cant wait to show it off, order more for myself, and add it to my offerings.

Well Done!

Allen

tommca

aburack wrote:

My only issue is that when you bend the tabs to move the "frame" off the wall for that floating look, the picture doesn’t stick as well. The magnetic pull is weaker and prone to falling. The limit on other tabs is about 45degrees. Anything more then that I found that the slightest shake (I am a big guy) the image slips.

Allen, it's possible that the tabs are bent in toward the picture rather than out toward the wall. If that's the case, try bending them out toward the wall. When you bend them out, it will hold the backplane off the wall a little, but the screws provided in the package should still be long enough to engage with the plastic anchor and hold the bracket firmly in place. Let me know if that fixes the problem.

I re-read our instructions and they're not clear on this point. I apologize for that and we'll revise the instructions accordingly.

Tom

Mike Lane

Well I've got a package waiting for me at our base post office but for some stupid reason they weren't open today Grrrr. I'll let you know if it's my fotoflot

Andy

Here are my fotoflōt thoughts, after recently getting a bunch of them done

The ordering experience is quite easy, and the improvements that they've made on the SmugMug integration are really nice. Impressive. So, you order, and then, they review it, and print. A few days after print, you'll get a nice package. Shipped securely, and packaged very, very well.



Inside the big box, lots of padding, partitions, and safe, secure packaging. Well done.


Each print was securely packaged in an additional cardboard box.


After you open up the cardboard package for each print, you see that it's even more protected inside a thick plastic sleeve:



And then, mounted on the wall of my studio office:


With fotoflōt you are dealing with some really passionate, smart, dedicated craftspeople, they are completely devoted to quality and customer service. The finished product is so gorgeous to look at, really gorgeous. Get some prints made up, you'll be glad you did

Ric Grupe

Looks great! (the product and your studio):D

I've always disliked framing photos...this looks like just the ticket.

Ann McRae

I agree - I don't like frames much, or paying for framing and matting. Fotofloat is a beautiful, affordable alternative.

I picked my fotofloats up today - they are amazingly well packed, and they are beautiful.

I actually think I will put all three on display in my office rather than bring some home...guess I'll just have to order more!

ann

Andy

tommca wrote:

Hi everyone,

I'm co-founder of sentiam, a company that has developed fotoflōt,

We liked you guys so much we put you right into our shopping cart

Yup - when you are logged in, you can go to your photo, click "buy this photo" and from the add to cart, you can click "fotoflōt" and you'll be magically transported to fotoflōt, and your photo info will be there, too.

claudermilk

aktpics

Hi,

I am interested in trying out a couple of prints, they look really great.

I have formatted my photos to print on SmugMug with True Color. How close will they match on Fotoflot?

Also, I am having some diffeculty seeing my pictures on your site. I have gotten some errors and in some cases it just hangs saying downloading...

Thanks!

Alex (aktpics)

timnosenzo

Andy wrote:

We liked you guys so much we put you right into our shopping cart

Yup - when you are logged in, you can go to your photo, click "buy this photo" and from the add to cart, you can click "fotoflōt" and you'll be magically transported to fotoflōt, and your photo info will be there, too.

This is very cool! I assume that the final prints will not be watermarked (the watermarks show up on fotoflot).

tommca

timnosenzo wrote:

This is very cool! I assume that the final prints will not be watermarked (the watermarks show up on fotoflot).

You are correct. We pull one of the reduced size images from SmugMug to display on fotoflōt, and they are watermarked. However, the print is made from your original file, which is not watermarked.

Tom

BradT0517

Does the 10% discount apply to Prints off of Sentiam as well? If so, how?

tommca

BradT0517 wrote:

Does the 10% discount apply to Prints off of Sentiam as well??

Brad, the 10% discount only applies to purchases made on fotoflot.com.

sentiam.com is our legacy web site and will be phased out in a few weeks. It doesn't have all the capabilities of fotoflot.com, but we're leaving it up so that people without a SmugMug account can order fotoflōts. Once we have added the ability to upload directly to fotoflot.com, sentiam.com will be retired.

Processing orders we receive on sentiam.com takes significantly more effort than those that come through fotoflot.com, so we're not able to offer the discount.

Tom

gluwater

Great product. I ordered three of them and they they are really nice. I'm looking forward to ordering more in the future. A special thanks for the great customer service of Jürgen.

Nick

Wacrer

Archival Quality?
Very informative thread. I did not see anything here on the Archival Quality of these prints. Direct sun, no sun, being they are not behind glass does this effect them adversely? Have you done any accelerated testing on them yet? I would like to offer these as an option for my sales but if the print is going to have faded in 20 years from exposure.....

BeemerChef

Love the idea and wish "galleries" would adopt your system... of course the photographers would need to also! Any thoughts about displaying in a Gallery for a Show on a temporary bases? (without drilling their walls!). Desk mount will not work as there is not enough flat space.
Great website also...
Thank you and be well...
Ara

tommca

Wacrer wrote:

I did not see anything here on the Archival Quality of these prints. Direct sun, no sun, being they are not behind glass does this effect them adversely? Have you done any accelerated testing on them yet? I would like to offer these as an option for my sales but if the print is going to have faded in 20 years from exposure.....

Scott, sorry for the delayed response - I didn't get an email alert for some reason.

We use Fuji Crystal Archive paper. As you may be aware, it's been around for many years, and is generally regarded as the most durable photo paper available. Wilhelm Research accelerated life testing confirms that it can be displayed in normal viewing conditions for decades without perceptible fading. Let me know if you have any other questions.