Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Preferred website for photo hosting and printing?

C

cali shot doc

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 11, 2011
72
14
I was wondering what website you guys prefer for hosting your photos and for ordering products like coffee mugs, canvas prints, photo books, etc.

Photobucket has some nice sales going on but i'm wondering how good their products are. If anyone could chime in i'd greatly appreciate it:rolleyes:
 
cali shot doc said:
I was wondering what website you guys prefer for hosting your photos and for ordering products like coffee mugs, canvas prints, photo books, etc.

Photobucket has some nice sales going on but i'm wondering how good their products are. If anyone could chime in i'd greatly appreciate it:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I use smugmug. I just signed up a few weeks ago and have had a few orders completed by them. So far so good. They do exactly what you are looking for.
 
Photobucket is a weak and unreliable site. People here who still post from them often include a thumbnail on the MacRumors server just in case the PB image gets lost in transit or something silly like that. I don't even use them for the photos I post to my model building forums anymore.

Dale
 
I have used Zenfolio and Smugmug, currently using Smugmug for personal and client projects, both are excellent, good customer support, several levels of options up to unlimited storage with good selling tools, easy to set up galleries, folders, client access and both have customisable sales lists and a choice of several print labs, Out of the two I found Smugmug to have the better customer support having experienced both, there are also several other good services out there but you have to look at what they offer, they go from huge storage with bad sales tools, to excellent sales tool and limited storage and very high prices, both Zen and Smug are affordable and very popular so they are doing something right, my reason for switching from zen to smug was simply that Smugmug now has a fresh newer look and clients like that , Zen is a bit dated but still very customisable, both offer free trials so it wont cost you anything to check them out, dont just take someones word for it.


good luck ;)
 
I use SmugMug and find it fast, easy and reliable but I don't use the buy/sell/print option.

Only $60.00 per year.

~ Peter
 
I've been looking too, but only for sharing online. I love the Phtotobucket app, mainly because I can easily choose a sharing option, mainly
 
jjk454ss said:
I've been looking too, but only for sharing online. I love the Phtotobucket app, mainly because I can easily choose a sharing option, mainly code with one click turn post it online. But the ipad app is horrible, and I'm looking for something new. Does Smugmug or Zenfolio have similar sharing onions from an app, iPhone or ipad. Or preferably both?[/QUOTE]

Not sure about sharing onions ;) but Zenfolio has several options to share right from the page the image is on. Works well. All the images I post here are shared using a direct link provided by Zenfolio. You can also email links directly from Zenfolio and it auto creates a pretty nice email for you.

There is a Zenfolio iphone and ipad app and it has gotten a good bit better with recent upgrades. You can finally view videos on the app and the presentation is pretty nice. You can get sharing links or embedded code directly from app as well and share online. I've done that on this forum a few times and it works fine.

I'm not on Smugmug so I can't answer for that.
Click to expand...
 
JDDavis said:
Not sure about sharing onions ;) but Zenfolio has several options to share right from the page the image is on. Works well. All the images I post here are shared using a direct link provided by Zenfolio. You can also email links directly from Zenfolio and it auto creates a pretty nice email for you.

There is a Zenfolio iphone and ipad app and it has gotten a good bit better with recent upgrades. You can finally view videos on the app and the presentation is pretty nice. You can get sharing links or embedded code directly from app as well and share online. I've done that on this forum a few times and it works fine.

I'm not on Smugmug so I can't answer for that.
Click to expand...

Thanks, playing around right now with Zenfolio. It is looking nice, I like it so far, including the ipad app. They have 25% off ending today, so maybe I'll try it for a year.
 
Tried Zenfolio and Smugmug today. I like Smugmug, but the app has no sharing options. I really like the Smugmug site, but on an ipad it's a pain to copy the links when the "copy" button doesn't do anything because of the touch screen(I'm guessing).

The Zenfolio website is more difficult to use, the editing pages look terrible(to me). The app has sharing options, I can get a link but not an IMG code.

It's kind of a toss up, but I think since Zenfolio is offering 25% off through tonight I might give them a shot.
 
What about Flickr? I use to use Zenfolio for a few years, and while it had extensive customization, it was difficult to customize well. It was also expensive, geared towards professionals, and offered poor mobile device support. I recently switched to Flickr and it's awesome... it has extensive sharing options (including copy and paste code to put into forums like this), a nice presentation, and excellent mobile support, and most other people I know are using it.
 
VirtualRain said:
What about Flickr? I use to use Zenfolio for a few years, and while it had extensive customization, it was difficult to customize well. It was also expensive, geared towards professionals, and offered poor mobile device support. I recently switched to Flickr and it's awesome... it has extensive sharing options (including copy and paste code to put into forums like this), a nice presentation, and excellent mobile support, and most other people I know are using it.
Click to expand...

I tried Flickr, works well, I'm looking for an app with sharing option built in. Didn't see that with Flickr

So I decided I should check out Flickr again. The website is the only one of all the options that easily lets me copy the links from my ipad. All the other ones have the "copy" button meant to a computer and it's always a pain to copy the link.
 
I use Flickr for hosting and it's been 99.9% good. Once in a blue moon a photo does not load when posted on another website (forum or blog), but a refresh later it's back there. I do not use them for printing because I prefer a local shop for that. It may not be an option depending where you live, but I like being able to view the shop's sample work, and it's less of a hassle to get things redone if they are not perfect the first time.

Depends on your needs, too. Perhaps makes less of a difference with a coffee mug, but for large prints there are so many choices (different kinds of canvases, metal prints, pleximounts, pearlescent, matte, you name it), that it really helps to choose when you can see how each looks like, otherwise it's hard to visualize how a particular image will work with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back