PayPerView Posted March 6, 2010 Share #21 Posted March 6, 2010 Advertisement (gone after registration) I am sure this is not the best place to make this thread but maybe it will be moved. I currently have some of my work on livebooks.com and I like much about it but I am going to be showing different kind of work and need another site as well to us for customers and friends. I am looking at Smug Mug and Zenfolio..I want to be able to offer prints for sale. Any thoughts on these sites or other (better) alternatives? Thanks for reading. Mark Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted March 6, 2010 Posted March 6, 2010 Hi PayPerView, Take a look here Web Hosting Sites?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
barcoder Posted March 6, 2010 Share #22 Posted March 6, 2010 I do not recommend making your own web portfolio. It is difficult to do and most photographer web sites are poorly thought out and implemented. Zenfolio, Flickr, and MobileMe at least have a common metaphor for browsing and have taken the time and effort to think out the best way to provide web based picture galleries. Like most things, if you hire a kid off the street to do any work for you, you should expect an amateur job. Web is not just some simple tinker toy that someone can just play with and get right. If you have no clue about this hire a pro to do it for you or let the big boys make the decisions (MobileMe, Zenfolio, etc). There is no reason to have a web gallery using Adobe Flash. Web standards are pretty powerful these days and there is little need or use for Flash in this use case. You site generally will suck less, consume less resources and will be displayable on more devices if you just stick to standard web controls. Please do not come up with your own custom gallery browsing metaphor. Nothing is worse than going to a photographer who thinks they need to have a different set of gallery browsing metaphors than everyone else. For instance: Some galleries require clicking a + button to go forward and a - to go back. Others include clicking the right 50% of an image to go forward and the left 50% of the image to go back. Where a simple left and right arrow can suffice. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
giordano Posted March 6, 2010 Share #23 Posted March 6, 2010 Look at the Web hosting sites thread that is currently running in this forum. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted March 6, 2010 Share #24 Posted March 6, 2010 Like most things, if you hire a kid off the street to do any work for you, you should expect an amateur job. Web is not just some simple tinker toy that someone can just play with and get right. If you have no clue about this hire a pro to do it for you or let the big boys make the decisions (MobileMe, Zenfolio, etc). Uh-uh My kid is a qualified webmaster and his sister a professional designer. Nothing amateur there - but they are still very young Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanhulsenbeek Posted March 6, 2010 Share #25 Posted March 6, 2010 I'm zenfolio user and I'm quite happy with everything except the colour rendering. I think that it is a bit too saturated....... Miguel, you have a point there. A matter of taste though, and I think that to the general public the Zenfolio rendering looks great. That is the feedback I get. To my own eye, they sport a sort of Velvia look, which may indeed be too much if one were a Kodachrome user Gib, I really advise you to have a good look at Zenfolio. Is is really easy and fast to work with, and the basic option is cheap. If you P(rivate) M(essage) me - see on top of this page on the right - I could even help you there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gib_robinson Posted March 6, 2010 Author Share #26 Posted March 6, 2010 I got an 18-year old to do my website for me. He was happy to earn a few Euros and he did a really good job. I'm sure you have a kid like that in your neighbourhood, just watch for baseball caps worn the wrong way around. Good idea. And your site is very elegant. The only thing I would change is access to the images. I like to be able to click through a sequence of photos at my own speed in the larger format. At your site I didn't find a way to do that. I had to click "back" in order to get to the next photo. --Gib Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fotomiguel Posted March 7, 2010 Share #27 Posted March 7, 2010 Advertisement (gone after registration) Miguel, you have a point there. A matter of taste though, and I think that to the general public the Zenfolio rendering looks great. That is the feedback I get. To my own eye, they sport a sort of Velvia look, which may indeed be too much if one were a Kodachrome user Gib, I really advise you to have a good look at Zenfolio. Is is really easy and fast to work with, and the basic option is cheap. If you P(rivate) M(essage) me - see on top of this page on the right - I could even help you there. They should reproduce the file as it is. If I like a velvia look, I can do it by myself. Sometimes reds and blues look like a cartoon. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanhulsenbeek Posted March 7, 2010 Share #28 Posted March 7, 2010 They should reproduce the file as it is. If I like a velvia look, I can do it by myself. Sometimes reds and blues look like a cartoon. Had a good look at your Camino Photo's. What a great set! And on my screen they do not look garish at all. I see nothing of the exagerated blue and reds. In fact, I would call the colors very chique! The B&W's are great too. Congratulations! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fotomiguel Posted March 7, 2010 Share #29 Posted March 7, 2010 Had a good look at your Camino Photo's. What a great set! And on my screen they do not look garish at all. I see nothing of the exagerated blue and reds. In fact, I would call the colors very chique! The B&W's are great too. Congratulations! Thank you very much! Some of the pictures I had to reduce the saturation and upload again. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mc_k Posted March 8, 2010 Share #30 Posted March 8, 2010 for me, Zenfolio color output has been as expected. When I first started using Flickr, I fell in the trap of not using the sRGB color space, and the image quality was really poor on my browser. You might try another browser to see if that makes any difference. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stuny Posted March 8, 2010 Share #31 Posted March 8, 2010 If you elect to build your own site (or have someone build it for you) you might want to host it on -photo.com. I've used them for years and they've been reliable, responsive and inexpensive. When I mentioned their service here some months ago John Mead (leicamann) changed to using them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fotomiguel Posted March 8, 2010 Share #32 Posted March 8, 2010 Just to show my problem. Here you have the picture as I want to show it and if you follow the link you will see how Zenfolio convert it in a different one. The picture showed here has the same color and saturation as I've got it from my post-processing and this forum do not change my picture. I've just uploaded this picture to zenfolio and becomes this:Zenfolio | Slideshow | Miguel Massanet Amer [ATTACH]191838[/ATTACH] I don't know why the picture doesn't appear. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fotomiguel Posted March 8, 2010 Share #33 Posted March 8, 2010 you may see the picture in the leica travel photo forum and compare both links http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/landscape-travel/118398-paisaje-del-camino.html#post1256901 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanhulsenbeek Posted March 8, 2010 Share #34 Posted March 8, 2010 Miguel, On my calibrated (Windows) monitor I do not see that much difference, except that the Zenfolio Sky is a little darker and a tad too green. Do you render you pictures - from DNG is suppose - to sRGB?. And is your working space in CS4 sRGP as well? If not, and you may not like the idea, that is the best way to produce pictures for the web. And if you render with Lightroom perhaps, you are sure there is not some preset active? I know Zenfolio adds some saturation, but it should not be that much. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted March 8, 2010 Share #35 Posted March 8, 2010 Well, on my (calibrated) aRGB compatible monitor I see a huge difference. Zenfolio has clearly been boosting the colors. Is there a colorspace problem? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ho_co Posted March 8, 2010 Share #36 Posted March 8, 2010 Uncalibrated monitor, Mac, both images screen-captured via Safari--no visible difference here. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
comapedrosa Posted March 9, 2010 Share #37 Posted March 9, 2010 I might be late to the party, but thought this might be useful as i recently went through a similar process when i finally decided to leave pbase.com There are several good comparisons of smugmug, zenfolio and many other solutions online. This one was particularly thorough: Ronald R. Martinsen's Photography Blog: Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: Intro (Part 1 of 6) Ronald R. Martinsen's Photography Blog: Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: Conclusion (6 of 6) I decided to go with smugmug. As many here, i found that zenfolio was great too, but in the end i found their user interface cluttered and hard to customize (smugmug can be customized ad nauseam but also works well without any changes). The differences are in the details - e.g. what printer each service uses, how the shopping cart is handled, etc. Also the forum/support community for smugmug (dgrin.com) is known for being very strong. One feature that was very important for me was how security is handled for private galleries. Unfortunately both Zenfolio's and SumgMug's gallery-based solutions are pretty rudimentary, yet they are better than flickr where security is user-based (suprisingly pbase is still better in its simplicity and flexibility re: security). What i dislike the most about SmugMug is that it does not allow to create galleries that include both photos and galleries, or galleries and categories without customization (as a pbase does). It strictly enforces categories>galleries>photos hierarchies. I'd say that there are different categories of solutions. I would choose based on 1) how professional you are; 2) how tech savvy you (or your kids) are; and 3) how much time you want to spend on your gallery/how important it is for you. 1) consumer fun (generally free, with limited customization, unappealing presentation) picassa, flickr etc 2) nice and easy enthusiast to pro smugmug, zenfolio (in the past pbase, shutterfly etc) 3) pro (generally much nicer, small online portfolios, more expensive) livebooks, foliosnap, sitewelder (from what i have seen, livebooks is used by losts of pros) 4) super-pro diy Here's my site powered by smugmug: www.35f2.com - as always, the biggest challenge lies in the content Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rob_x2004 Posted March 9, 2010 Share #38 Posted March 9, 2010 ...you will see how Zenfolio convert it in a different one. You have shown us the slideshow image which is stretched. You need to go back into the group, edit, slideshow, slideshow, uncheck 'scale images'. That will unfuzz your slideshow for starters. Your thumbnail in the gallery is sharp and looks fine, but since you have toggled off the exif, file details, and sharing the rest is speculation. Presumably when you upload humungus files to Zenfoloio this wont be as much of a problem, because they will be shrunk to slideshow. Your image at Lanscape is 196k 960 wide, dont know if it is the same as the Zenfolios. ...... Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/114312-web-hosting-sites/?do=findComment&comment=1253242'>More sharing options...
Fotomiguel Posted March 9, 2010 Share #39 Posted March 9, 2010 Well, on my (calibrated) aRGB compatible monitor I see a huge difference. Zenfolio has clearly been boosting the colors. Is there a colorspace problem? Thanks Jaap. I was starting to think I'm crazy. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanhulsenbeek Posted March 9, 2010 Share #40 Posted March 9, 2010 Thanks Jaap.I was starting to think I'm crazy. But we still do not know, Miguel, if perhaps you have a colorspace problem! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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