Review: Smugmug.com
Photo Sharing Site
One of the big advantages of having a digital
camera is the ability to share your photos with family and
friends. If you are really into photo sharing, we recommend
a dedicated photo sharing site.
Smugmug, PC Magazine's Editor's
Choice for online photo sharing sites, is our top pick. We
love Smugmug. Finally, there is a place on the web where you
can upload, arrange and share your photos with all your family
and friends in style. Just over three years old, Smugmug already
has over 70,000 paying customers and over 22 million uploaded
photos.
Smugmug is easy to use and offers lots
of options for you as well as the people you are sharing your
photos with. There is a variety of elegant templates for displaying
your pictures and photo-editing capabilities. You'll also
find a selection of presentation styles including thumbnail,
thumbnails plus images, slide shows, and journals where you
can include text. If you are technically inclined, Smugmug
even supports html, CSS and Javascript so you can customize
your album pages. There is a low yearly fee, but for all the
features you get, it is well worth it to get unlimited
photo storage and sharing. Sign
up for a FREE Trial of Smugmug.
SmugMug
and Adobe have partnered on photo-sharing! Adobe's
Photoshop Elements 6.0 software now allows
you to upload your photos directly into SmugMug galleries.
What does this mean for you? When you are finished editing
your photos in Photoshop Elements instead of first downloading
your files onto your computer and then uploading the photos
into SmugMug, you skip that step completely and can upload
directly to SmugMug from the share menu inside of Elements.
Get Get
Adobe Photoshop Elements here. 
Reasons We Love Smugmug
Smugmug is very different from traditional
digital photo developing sites and online photo storage companies.
Here are some key differences:
- SmugMug has pledged to never surround
their clients' photos with ads or pop-ups. Smugmug contains
absolutely no ads or pop-ups. In fact, when you share your
photos, your visitors don't have to register their information
and get spammed at a later date.
- SmugMug has three
different service levels to meet every type of photographer,
from the casual snapshot taker to fine art photographer.
- SmugMug has excellent,
prompt customer service. Email requests for help are typically
answered in minutes.
- Customers have
the ability to store an unlimited number of photos and download
them in original size. Digital cameras make it so
easy to snap thousands of photos. With unlimited storage
you no longer have to decide which photos to store and share.
- SmugMug also provides webhosting
services with your own vanity URL so you can build a website
around your digital portfolio with lots of flexibility.
You can customize your site to a holiday or special event,
create categories and subcategories for deep organization,
move around batches of photos and share them with friends
and family with a single click.
- Security: SmugMug saves 4 copies
of your high-res photos in 3 different states.
Uploading Images
Smugmug's upload tool is great. There is
a simple drag-and-drop feature and you can view the upload
progress of individual files.
Ediging Tools
For editing photos, Smugmug features
tools for cropping, rotating and resizing images, auto-correcting
color balance and adding color effects such as sepia tones.
Sharing Photos
Sharing photos is easy. You get a custom
URL (such as yourname . smugmug.com) that you can email to
family and friends. All they need to do is click on the URL
and they are sent to your photo albums. You can download and
print photos at home or order prints for delivery. Smugmug
offers your viewers the ability to buy prints of your photos
and have them shipped to them, download full resolution images
to their computer to print them at home, or burn them to a
CD to print at a local retail store.
Photo Security
Smugmug keeps two exact copies of the photos
you upload in a secure datacenter. You can order CD and DVD
backups any time, or you can download your originals back
to your computer. You set the options for how your photos
are displayed, who gets access, captions,
There is also a Pro version of Smugmug for
professional photographers who want a low cost means of selling
their images online without the hassles having their own web
site.
Here is a summary of Smugmug features:
- Unlimited photo storage
- Upload 100s of photos with one click
- Organize quickly
- Spam-free and ad-free
- 1-click sharing, and your friends don't
have to register in order to see your photos
- View large screen images of your photos
(much larger than free sharing services)
- Buy prints and choose from 26 sizes in
matte, gloss or lustre
- Get back-up CDs & DVDs
- Download original, high-res photos
- Post photos in blogs, forums and online
auctions like eBay
- Upload from camera phones
- Create your own vanity URL (such as yourname.smugmug.com)
- Edit images
- Password-protect photo albums
- Create private ShareGroups
- Organize with keyword tags
- View by timeline
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