As many of you know, one of my lifelong passions is photography. Primarily using “still” cameras, though I do like to wade in the tepid waters of digital video. I was a very early adopter of one of the first photo-sharing social network-ish sites, Flickr. Then I played with Shutterfly,the original Ofoto (now owned by Kodak for Kodak Gallery), Google’s Picasa, Photo Bucket and a handful of others.
Looking out over the Namib Desert in Namibia, Africa.
While I’m sure I have orphaned accounts at many of these online photo-sharing/archiving resources, I’ve finally committed my mind, resources and soon many more images to SmugMug. Why? It’s simply the most clean, user friendly and singularly-focused photo sharing/photo-hosting service available. Unlike most of the others, it’s not free. And this is a perfect adage of you get what you pay for. Beyond the simple fact that pages aren’t cluttered with Google or AdSense or other advertising, the site provides loads of flexibility. For those pushing toward the professional side of their photography hobby, or are photo professionals, SmugMug gives you an easy way to sell your images.
This brief post isn’t meant to be a comprehensive review of SmugMug versus the other major photo-sharing services. Rather it’s simply a day of enlightenment for me with regard to a feature I just discovered. You see SmugMug let’s you post full-size, full-resolution and even RAW images on its site. And there’s not limit to your disk space. You get unlimited storage with even the basic entry-level subscription. That’s all good, but what happens when you need to restore images that you might have lost or accidentally destroyed? Sure, all of these services will let you download an image at a time. And some may offer a free app that might allow batch downloading. There’s even a freeware utility for Windows that allows access to SmugMug images for batch download and uploading. But there’s a batter way.
SmugMug galleries, like photo albums, and the coordinate membership account are fully accessible through SmugMug’s WebDAV server. For those less technically minded or with no interest in wandering down the complicated path of computer/internet techno-jargon, a WebDAV server simply means that the directory or location where a subscriber’s images are stored can be mounted like a disk on the desktop of your computer — PC or Macintosh. This has been the underlying enabling technology behind Apple’s Dot Mac (.Mac), now branded as MobileMe — for the Mac readers here: think iDisk. Even better, these WebDAV directories are accessible using WebDAV compatible FTP clients like Transmit.
So when a friend asked if I could simply put on disk a collection of photographs that I had posted on SmugMug, I struggled to find the actual final selections on my desktop computer. I use Apple’s Aperture for photo management, but I couldn’t find an “album” of the 69 photos I had selected from an initial universe of 741. I panicked. Short of time and yet committed to fulfilling my promise to ship the CD of those 69 photos today, I searched for methods to download the entire 69 images. At first it seemed I would have to individually right-click and download each image. That’d take too long. That’s when I uncovered the WebDAV info in SmugMug’s Wiki Support Page.
Voila. I mounted a “virtual disk” on my desktop computer, navigated to the images I needed to burn on disk for my friend, and dragged them into a folder on my desktop. A few minutes later I was done. I browsed through the SmugMug directory mounted as a disk on my computer and was relieved. All of my photos were easily available. No hassles. Some of these services would rather you simply take advantage of ordering photos on disk, prints, books or otherwise hold you hostage to your own images. Or require you to use some poorly executed software program or widget. Not SmugMug. It’s simple, easy and effective. I guess just not very well documented.
Hey if you do ever decide to move to SmugMug – here’s a $5 discount code just enter nCr22MTXQEXrA on this form under “coupon/e-mail”. Yes! I will get a kickback. But you still save. Or, Get Unlimited photo storage- Take A FREE Trial of Smugmug.
dude. sounds pretty good. I’ll be unemployed soon and have plenty of time to check it out. Thanks for the headsup. does this mean as far as photo sharing i should blow off mobileme which i have but haven’t got around to signing up for?
Yeah. this is a great service. sorry to hear about the unemployment! No this won’t replace your MobileMe which you should set up anyway. It’s just a solid service providing unlimited storage and great advanced features for viewing and sharing. MobileMe offers so much more.
BTW -That is one sweet shot above. Actually, Macworld talks about SmugMug in the new issue. It’s an article on doing pretty much everything Mobileme does (which should have been named iMobile ) minus a couple I don’t care about at this juncture, better and for free. I know MobileMe just upped the space. I’ll have to get out the Thomas Guide. I bought it and have till May or June to activate.
That was shot in Namibia not far from Sussevlei. No SmugMug does maybe 10% of what MobileMe does. You don’t get email with SmugMug, nor do you get sync with email, contacts, addresses and calendar items over the internet over multiple macs, iPHones, iPod touches. You can’t share files, host websites nor utilize advanced multi-platform applications such as OmniFocus. It’s simply a photo sharing tool that provides some enhanced features and flexible templates. But in no way it’s a substitute for MobileMe. Afterall, you can’t have Qman@me.com with smugmug… get your email now. and Let’s get off this aol bugaboo!
Nice!
I revert back to my original question…”as far as photo sharing”…anyway the @me thing doesn’t mean much to me. The Mail program brings together all my email accounts to one place for now. Plus changing it to @me would take forever and be a real pain. I see a lot of web hosters advertise in Mac mags that give more for less but I’m not deciding till I get out the Thomas Guide.
you don’t have to go @me and do the whole change. you’re find to keep the @mac.com … as I noted before, .Mac or MobileMe – whatever you want to call it — is NOT a hosting plan. This is how to manage, synchronize, normalize and organize the digital aspects of your life and more… it’s my opinion that you should activate that MobileMe and get with the program… you can still host any website you might consider – qmanjohnson.com??? have your registered the domain qmanworldtour.com?
hey you’ve got a lot of material and your fans are waiting!