Taking a look at Smugmug

A recent comment by a reader here referred to smugmug, a new photo sharing service.

I decided to give it a closer look, mainly because I am looking for a way to share video clips as well as photos. Like many DDads out there I have varying levels of technology sophistication in my family and it looks like smugmug enables the easy slideshow format as well as enabling more sophisticated users to download the original hi-res photos so they can run their own prints on their own printer.

Another major difference between smugmug and other services, like Ofoto and Shutterfly, is that smugmug costs money. The other services make their money off of prints (and ads I suppose). Smugmug is ad free.

Base subscription is $30 a year. That gives you unlimited photo storage and 30,000 views per month (that seems like a HUGE number). However, if you want to share video that kicks it up to $50/year. Hmm...getting a bit pricey.

It also appears that although the number of video clips is unlimited, each video clip can't be more than 8 Mb. I understand that there needs to be some cap here, but 8 Mb seems a bit short. Why not 20Mb? I recently received a great photo slideshow from my brother that was 15Mb.

Net net, I like smugmug, but I'd like to see the 8Mb video limit lifted or adjusted, I'd like to see some vid clip sharing capabilities with all accounts, not just the $50/year option,and I'd like to see a link from Adobe Photoshop Album to the smugmug service.

Comments

[Carrick]

I've used smugmug for more than a year. It's great for dumping great gobs of pics onto the web. The UI is easy to navigate, even for grandma on dial-up. It's main drawback for me, now that I have hundreds of photos up there, is it's organization. A photo can only belong in one "gallery" at a time, and if you move a photo from one gallery to another, the link to the photo changes.

I've recently been trying out something new, Flickr [http://www.flickr.com] for photo sharing because of it's very flexible categorization tags and organizational tools. They also provide RSS & Atom feeds for your photo collections. Very cool stuff happening there.

[Scott]

I know that this is almost a year old post, but I'd like to say that Smugmug must have been updated because you can now make additional copies of photos and have them in more that one gallery. Organization is the main reason why I like Smugmug slightly better than Flickr, actually. (Though they are both great for different things).

I wrote a review here: Smugmug vs. Flickr

[scott]

The site did not show up for whatever reason. The link is http://www.illiteratewithdrawal.com/2005/05/smugmug-vs-flickr/

Scott

[Rebecca]

Looks like you got hit by comment spam. There are ways to combat that, although I don't know what they are offhand.

Anyway, I'm a digital mom. I'm using Flickr now, and plan to move to Smugmug so I can share video.

Also, I think Flickr's usuability for grandma is very poor. I reviewed Smugmug's usability and it looks better.

We'll see if that 8MB limit drives me nuts.

[B. Photo]

I just read the article of Scott, and once again thanks, as I understand a little better how these photos sharing service work, I am more and more concerned about the privacy of my photos. I made a lot of researches and free trials to find the photo sharing service Joomeo (https://www.joomeo.com)that I am using almost every day!

[B. Photo]

I just read the article of Scott, and once again thanks, as I understand a little better how these photos sharing service work, I am more and more concerned about the privacy of my photos. I made a lot of researches and free trials to find the photo sharing service Joomeo (https://www.joomeo.com)that I am using almost every day!