Photography

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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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communick@viewfinder.pro

Has anyone moved from smugmug to another platform? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by coni_gitar@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

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I loved smugmug for many years with custom features, css, unlimited space, reasonable pricing for purchase options and great gallery features that I can set up for each client easily, but lately I feel they are lagging behind, especially with no AI features and having to tag everything manually is getting tiring. So I wanted to know if anyone moved from Smugmug to another platform and if so what are you using? I am not going to be selling through the site anymore either so I am looking for something that has transfer option from Smugmug and smarter features, and especially video storage since sm had no space limit so I have a lot of 4k videos.

Thanks in advance!

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[–] Padugan@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hard to find a platform that is truly all in one the way SmugMug is. The only options besides SM is Zenfolio and photoshelter. Everything else is lacking something, either handling payments, printing, backup, storage space, video storage etc.

The video issue for you is going to be tough. most only store video by hours with caps at like 5 hours of video. others have size limits and to get anything worthwhile as an add on is crazy expensive.

Make two lists, 1 what you absolutely need / non negotiable and 2 what would be a nice to have, but not a deal braker. Then go though the sites and see who hits what you need the most.

I can tell you right away. 95% of the options out there are not set up for storage for video or stills. Those that provide storage do not have any good way to catalog or organize, etc.

I haven't seen any using AI the way you are asking, that really should be done on your end prior to uploading. what ever site you choose, you will switch one day, or they will go out of business, get sold, etc. and all that tagging and AI stuff will either be lost or not readable by your next host / provider. Keep that stuff with the image.

In the last 20 years I've used: Zenfolio, format, squarespace, pixpa, smugmug, wordpress (3 different times), & photoshelter. Currently with Smugmug. It's okay. non of these are more than a 7 out of 10 in my opinion. What we need is the style and usablilty of squarespace and format with the backend of smugmug, photoshelter, ZF. Why no one has done this I have no idea. My guess is that it's not possible to co this and make it affordable.

[–] coni_gitar@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks, I agree. I no longer need to sell through website, so commerce aspect is not going to be needed. For last few months almost this whole year, it's just been basically photo storage, mainly videos. I have shared wedding videos through there with option to share with others or download to keep.

What's taking most of my time has been renaming/tagging/grouping pictures. If I decide to do that locally, which software do you recommend. Has anyone here ever tried this: https://www.digikam.org/download/