Saving space

leebase · November 29, 2005

I just received my "aren't you glad your prices aren't going up" email. Yes, I am glad. And yes, I'm one who's really taking advantage of your unlimited storage option.

I thought of something that would save a lot of disk space. There is a timeframe in which people are going to order prints, if they are going to order. It would be nice to be able to "remove originals" from a gallery so that I still have them as web photos, but as print sales are unlikely, there's no reason for the full rez files.

Saves space for you, keeps the web images up for me.

Lee

Andy · November 29, 2005

leebase wrote:

I just received my "aren't you glad your prices aren't going up" email. Yes, I am glad. And yes, I'm one who's really taking advantage of your unlimited storage option.

I thought of something that would save a lot of disk space. There is a timeframe in which people are going to order prints, if they are going to order. It would be nice to be able to "remove originals" from a gallery so that I still have them as web photos, but as print sales are unlikely, there's no reason for the full rez files.

Saves space for you, keeps the web images up for me.

Lee

Thanks for thinking of us, Lee! We love suggestions like this.

Nikolai · November 30, 2005

If you decided to do this

Andy wrote:

Thanks for thinking of us, Lee! We love suggestions like this.

*Puh-lease*

make it optional.
I like to keep a spare copy of my originals online.

Thanks!

rainforest1155 · November 30, 2005

Nikolai wrote:

*Puh-lease* make it optional.
I like to keep a spare copy of my originals online.
Thanks!

Same here for me - while having options is good most of the times.

Sebastian

leebase · November 30, 2005

Nikolai wrote:

*Puh-lease* make it optional.
I like to keep a spare copy of my originals online.
Thanks!

Of course. However, to be fair, I think it unreasonable to expect unlimited storage for $100/yr....particularly when print sales from such photos become unlikely.

Things that are "too good to be true", never turn out to be true. If I desire good service from a vendor, I can't expect unlimited service for a small fixed price.

Right now I have over 7,000 photos on my site. I don't even allow "show originals" on 99% of the photos I have online...so the only purpose in keeping the original files is for print orders. Most all of my photos have a very limited time where someone would care to order a print.

To keep the originals online in this scenario means that I'm using the service as an "off site archive". I just don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to host tens of thousands of photos for $100/yr. The more of us (yes, I'm talking about me) who do this, the sooner smugmug will have to either raise prices or cut services.

I'm just willing to be fair with this excellent vendor by abusing their service.

Lee

JamesJWeg · November 30, 2005

Stoadge space is cheap, I would rather pay a little more than loose the unlimited space.

James.

Harveylevine · November 30, 2005

leebase wrote:

Of course. However, to be fair, I think it unreasonable to expect unlimited storage for $100/yr....particularly when print sales from such photos become unlikely.
Lee

Lee:
Many of us are not interested in using Smugmug for sales. Besides using Smugmug for photo sharing, we use it to back up originals and to send prints, sometime in the future, to friends and relatives who don't have internet connection (such as my 82 year old Aunt). Or maybe I'll want to order a gift item for someone for thier birthday and need the full size image available on Smugmug.

I dropped out of MPIX, even though I liked their print quality, because they have the nasty habit of deleting images if you haven't ordered prints for a few months.

If timed expiration of originals is implements, please make it optional. If the cost of storage ever becomes an issue for the viability of Smugmug, I would rather pay a higher annual feee than have the originals deleted.

Thanks,

Harvey

JimM · November 30, 2005

I am also a huge fan of unlimited storage. I just figure it is my duty to get more orders so SM gets more revenue so everyone wins!

leebase · November 30, 2005

JimM wrote:

I am also a huge fan of unlimited storage. I just figure it is my duty to get more orders so SM gets more revenue so everyone wins!

Is unlimited storage realistic? This past year I shot 100gig of photos. That's just for the year. I didn't load them all to smugmug, of course, but I do have 7,000+ photos (8mp camera sized photos).

Over time it begins to add up to something our money simply does not pay for. If it's only a few who grossly abuse the "unlimited" space offer, that's one thing. Obviously, though, $100/yr does not pay for a terabyte of storage per person.

I understand people _want_ unlimited storage -- I understand that smugmug sold unlimited storage. I just don't think it's a reasonable expectation, and the more people actually take advantage of smugmug for their "off site storage" solution, their business model will simply fail.

That's not good for any of us.

Lee

Andy · November 30, 2005

Harveylevine wrote:

I dropped out of MPIX, even though I liked their print quality, because they have the nasty habit of deleting images if you haven't ordered prints for a few months.

If timed expiration of originals is implements, please make it optional. If the cost of storage ever becomes an issue for the viability of Smugmug, I would rather pay a higher annual feee than have the originals deleted.

It's one of our basic mantras: We don't delete your photos. I can't tell you how many very very sad stories we get by email from folks on other services, telling us about how such-and-such company deleted their photos. The stories are gut-wrenching sometimes. Not everyone is savvy enough to keep copies locally - sure it's the obvious and smart thing to us, but not always to Grandma, or a non-techno person. As long as you keep your service with SmugMug, we'll keep your originals.

Harveylevine · November 30, 2005

Andy wrote:

It's one of our basic mantras: We don't delete your photos. I can't tell you how many very very sad stories we get by email from folks on other services, telling us about how such-and-such company deleted their photos. The stories are gut-wrenching sometimes. Not everyone is savvy enough to keep copies locally - sure it's the obvious and smart thing to us, but not always to Grandma, or a non-techno person. As long as you keep your service with SmugMug, we'll keep your originals.

Andy:
Great

. I'm sure that is one reason why you have such loyal users.

I would hope that the time and effort to upload huge numbers of pictures would keep people from abusing the unlimited storage feature. I find it hard to see why uploading anything beyond the pictures you really like is worthwhile. Also, too many pictures in too many galleries would confuse and turn off visitors to a photographer's site. Fifty years ago, I got some of the best photographic advise I ever received. Shoot as many pictures as you possibly can and show the world only the few very best ones. What is the point in showing people those pictures that are almost as good as the ones you have already shown them?

Looking at your fantastic pictures, especially the wonderful street photography, makes me think that you too follow this rule. I suspect that is also true of the world-class wildlife photographers that post their pictures on DGRIN.

Harvey

Harvey

Baldy · November 30, 2005

leebase wrote:

Is unlimited storage realistic? This past year I shot 100gig of photos. That's just for the year. I didn't load them all to smugmug, of course, but I do have 7,000+ photos (8mp camera sized photos).

Over time it begins to add up to something our money simply does not pay for. If it's only a few who grossly abuse the "unlimited" space offer, that's one thing. Obviously, though, $100/yr does not pay for a terabyte of storage per person.

I understand people _want_ unlimited storage -- I understand that smugmug sold unlimited storage. I just don't think it's a reasonable expectation, and the more people actually take advantage of smugmug for their "off site storage" solution, their business model will simply fail.

That's not good for any of us.

Lee

This is always on my mind because it isn't just the storage cost, it's the power spinning media consume, the expensive floor space in industrial datacenters they take up, and the crazy way tax law works which makes us claim 80% of the cost of disk arrays as taxable profit in the year we buy them.

When people say disk space is cheap, I think it's certainly true that it's getting cheaper and it's true that consumer disk drives are cheap. But industrial RAID arrays housed in redundant industrial datacenters with IT professionals managing them aren't cheap.

Honestly, there are 3 drivers of high disk consumption that really cost, and two of them come down to the same issue: viewing SmugMug as an archival storage service:

1. Event shooters who have no choice but to upload high-res originals for all shots because we don't offer the ability to upload proofs and replace them with high-res, touched-up shots when an order is taken. It's a big inconvenience for them and a big cost for us, so everyone will be happy when that feature is in place.

2. The tendency by pros and serious amateurs to upload images stored as JPEG 12. They are 3x the size of JPEG 10 images and also slower for us to rotate, scale, etc., and for our customers to upload, but there is no visible difference in quality that anyone has ever been able to tell. The top printers like WHCC all ask for images at 10, not 12.

If we were to say, "we're not an archival service so we'll save your images at 10" we'd save a ton of space with 0.0000% loss in display or print quality.

3. I dunno what to say about this, but programs that promote using SmugMug as an archival service break the model. So far there's only one that I'm aware of that has much traction but if it or programs like it catch on before disk storage gets much cheaper than it is now, it could become an issue. If we took action on #2, above, it could probably do enough to make this a non-issue.

Your thoughts.

Chris

rainforest1155 · November 30, 2005

Chris,

thanks for giving us an inside view on this and writing down your concerns. I have to admit that I put my originals in separate backup galleries - I've had enough failed hard drive in my family and DVDs also tend to have their issues. Therefore I feel better having my precious work also on smugmug over in the US. I don't save my jpgs at 12, because you made your point a long time ago on this topic.
As I don't use the printing service yet I've no need to upload full size pictures to my public galleries and therefore just upload to 800x600 resized pictures.

Sebastian

rutt · November 30, 2005

I'm curious. What is the total amount of space for smugmug? Just for wows? If it's not a secrect.

The processed images as well as the originals? Just the originals?

Mr. Numbers Freak

Andy · November 30, 2005

rutt wrote:

I'm curious. What is the total amount of space for smugmug? Just for wows? If it's not a secrect.

The processed images as well as the originals? Just the originals?

Mr. Numbers Freak

Gobs and gobs of Terabytes. We're at image number 47,000,000 so you could probably make a guess about it.

rainforest1155 · November 30, 2005

Andy wrote:

Gobs and gobs of Terabytes. We're at image number 47,000,000 so you could probably make a guess about it.

Oh my, imagening this amount at a size of just 1mb per picture which is probably too low thinking of that pros can upload 16mb pictures...:yikes
And that's just smugmug...then comes the Internet Archive crawling through the net and saving all it can find!:oogle :eek1

Sebastian

Baldy · November 30, 2005

Well, we actually consume a lot of bytes/image because each RAID array has redundant disks for safety and we store each photo on two different RAID arrays.

We're currently installing 4 of these a month:

http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/

Yes, Apple loves us.

leebase · November 30, 2005

Baldy wrote:

y disk space is cheap, I think it's certainly true that it's getting cheaper and it's true that consumer disk drives are cheap. But industrial RAID arrays housed in redundant industrial datacenters with IT professionals managing them aren't cheap.

Exactly what I thought when I read that....I work as a database developer and I can tell you that what it costs to have 300gig added to our datacenter is nothing like what it costs to go to BestBuy and pick up a 300gig hard drive for my PC.

Baldy wrote:

Honestly, there are 3 drivers of high disk consumption that really cost, and two of them come down to the same issue: viewing SmugMug as an archival storage service

There you go. Has anyone priced what sites charge that bill themselves as an offline archival storage service? I can tell you it's nowhere near $100/yr for infinite storage.

Really, I feel like I'm abusing you guys to keep adding photo after photo, turning into year after year. "Good deals" that are not good deals for the vendor are not sustainable.

I, for one, am willing for a compromise. I know with my pbase account I have the option to delete originals....and I do for most of my photos.

Baldy wrote:

1. Event shooters who have no choice but to upload high-res originals for all shots because we don't offer the ability to upload proofs and replace them with high-res, touched-up shots when an order is taken.

That describes me. I'd love to not have to upload the full rez files. I really don't sell that many of my online photos. I do take 1 to 2 thousand photos a month because I shoot events, whether it's weddings, sports, or church events.

It'd be wonderful to be able to upload websized photos, and then automagically upload full-rez files when a print is ordered.

Baldy wrote:

2. The tendency by pros and serious amateurs to upload images stored as JPEG 12.

I'd be happy if you guys instituted an "we automatically shrink jpgs" policy. Still, for me, if you impliment solution 1, it won't be that much of an issue anyway.

Baldy wrote:

3. I dunno what to say about this, but programs that promote using SmugMug as an archival service break the model.

People do that? You folks have every right to exclude such usage of your service. If you don't, we'll all lose out.

Lee

Saving space

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