SmugBlog: Pro Corner

We’ve written about Prophoto RGB and sRGB vs aRGB on many occasions. This is not a debate about one color space or another – but for display on SmugMug and printing at our lab, your photos must be in sRGB color space. For most of you, this is not an issue, you are aware and either you shoot and process in sRGB or your final step is a conversion to sRGB. Cool. But for some folks, unaware, they’d upload Adobe RGB or Prophoto RGB files and the prints would be the YUCK!. No worries, though, becuase The SmugMug Guarantee covers you and your customer for reprints. And convert color space, color correct, and reprint I did

Well, no more! Now, if we see Adobe RGB or Prophoto RGB files on upload, we automatically convert them on our end to sRGB. You need to know this, because this is one only times when we’ll actually change your original uploaded file. But your prints, and your customers, will thank you.

Not long ago, we had a customer write into the help desk asking for HELP! with his customization. For lots of reasons, he was unable to do any of it himself, despite our best efforts to guide him along the way. Our pro was about to give up when I asked him if he’d mind if I hooked him up with some basic customizations. Now mind you, we can’t possibly set up all of our customers like this one-at-a-time, but the experience was a good one for me, and for the customer. Still, the photographer has to provide the inputs and ideas on colors, fonts, designs, layout, flow, navigation, and more. So it’s a cooperative venture. Our customer is Velographie Photo and our pro’s name is Dick Louderman. Dick’s a super guy, and was a pleasure to work with. Here’s what he had to say:

“this has been a terrifically positive experience for me in many ways. I have been moved by your generosity in helping. I have been very impressed by the knowledge that you and the other pros have shared with me (and others) and also the enthusiasm. AND the sense of community among the smugmug pros. this makes a BIG difference and it is a super important aspect to participation. it is a big reason why I came to smugmug in the first place and a good reason to stay connected. this is what it is all about.I love it! I am hoping that, even with some of my limitations, I can give back in some way to the others. I mean that.”

I got plenty of help from the good folks on our customization forum over at Digital Grin. You can even see that we’re doing it again, for another customer, ellepixels – stop by, learn a bit, and see that you can do it, too!

PhotoRank is a brand new feature at SmugMug. You may have noticed those green and red thumbs. So, what are they, and why’d we do it? The idea is to answer two questions we’ve been hearing for a very long time:

1. How do I find the most popular photos of (Rome, hot-air ballons, bike racing, equestrian jumping…etc)?

2. I want my great photos to float to the top somehow and get noticed. How do I do that?

We get loads of traffic, millions and millions of visitors, every day to SmugMug – and much of that traffic uses our Browse page. Our old browse page was erem, not as good as it is now… so check it out, and see! Already, pros are writing me saying that they’ve been “found” by new customers via this cool new feature. And being “found” means new clients, new gigs, and more business!

Some of you would like to know how to turn it OFF. No problem, we have an easy way to do that! Check out the help page above, or visit Digital Grin and find out how.

Now, before you go and say “ewwwwww gross – I don’t want to ruin my pristine photos with those thumbs,” think about this: you’re online already – you depend on “being found!” Why not do everything and anything possible to increas that chance? Smart, huh? So before you nuke the thumbs for your entire site, and miss out on a bazillion eyeballs each day, consider this: enable PhotoRank on some of your galleries – your portfolio samples, etc. Oh and don’t forget to keyword the heck out of them, too, so that you will be found via SmugMug search and the traditional search engines as well.

I’m available to help – you know where to find me!

Hi Everyone,

Many of you get these links from me in email replies when you write the help desk. I thought I’d make it easier on all of us and keep them linked here in my blog.

UPDATE: My NEW FAST START for SmugMug Pros!
I like to remind you pros about our forum, Digital Grin, a community of dedicated photographers and SmugMug customers who have “been there and done that.” It’s free and easy to join, and of course we’ll never spam you! At Dgrin, you’ll find:

A support forum just for you! SmugMug Pro Support is where you’ll find answers and get help with anything to do with your pro account: pricing, watermarking, digital downloads, custom domain names, image protection, and more.

The Pro Forum it’s called “Mind Your Own Business” and it’s where you can get SmugMug Pro Tips on how to grow your business from me and many SmugMug pros. Also ask your questions, and find great advice and tips from fellow pros on the business of pro photography.
Many of you want to customize your sites, and so you’ll want to see the Customization Forum where we have a Customization FAQ and our series Customizing for Dummies. You can peruse some Really Well Done SmugMug Sites, too.

One other place I want to encourage you to look at and become familiar with: SmugMug Help where you can also find my SmugMug Pro FAQ. And don’t forget, the search box on our help pages will search the help pages only, not photographs – a very useful tool!

As always, if you have any questions on anything, you can always holler for me at the SmugMug Help Desk.

A customer of one of our pros wrote in to our help desk with a complaint about a photo that was “much darker” and “less contrasty” than what she saw on her monitor when she bought the photo.

The sad, but undeniable truth that we pros in the online world have to deal with is that our customers will be viewing our photos on uncalibrated, very bright monitors. So, it’s highly likely that the buyer thought the above photo would print up just fine. Of course, when they received the print of their child swimming, they were most upset. Not good. No worries, though: The SmugMug Guarantee to the rescue! I caught the email, and in about 3 minutes was able to accomplish this correction, and order up a new large print at no charge for our pro or his customer:

The steps I took are pretty simple, and any Pro who wants to deliver quality work should know them: In Photoshop: a 15% shadow highlight adjustment, for the shadows only. Next, 2/3s stop positive exposure adjustment: (Image>Adjustments>Exposure. Then, I saw the image needed some “Pop.” So, I grabbed the black and white points in a siimple curves adjustment to give it some much needed contrast. Last, a minor skin tone correction.There are tons of resources available to you, our Pros, to help you deliver your best work. If you’ve got technique questions for shooting, or Photoshop questions for post-processing and workflow, come and find a ton of assistance on our forum, Digital Grin.

Do you have a large base of potential clients that don’t speak your native language? How about a bi-lingual site? Here’s a fine example by Sebastian Hosche. And, how to do it? Of course, you’ll fine the answer in this tutorial on Digital Grin.

Congratulations, Sebastion, on a fine job, and thank you for making the tutorial!

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I bristle when I hear “all SmugMug sites look the same…” Man, that really frosts me! Onethumb and JT have built a system such that the customization possibilities are nearly limitless! Along the lines of TV’s Pimp Your Ride, I’ve made a little collection of things you can do to your SmugMug site.

How about a homepage slide show, to feature your best stuff?

Here’s an idea: force a 1-minute slideshow”, perfect for sending “selects” to clients along with proofs.

Add a little Bling-Bling to your info-type pages.

Attention fine art pros! Give your buyers a look at the fine details of your work.

Oh and you don’t have to settle for the same boring fonts and layouts all the time!

You can even showcase panoramas and larger shots with a little CSS trickery!

So, how do you do it? Well, if I can do these things, anybody can. I am not a programmer or webdesigner. Truthfully, I’m really good at copy, paste, modify to taste. I learn my tricks from the Dgrin Customization Forum, and the really fine guys that help out there. Come on over, and introduce yourself, and ask your questions. We’ll help you Pimp Your Ride!.

I hear tell on forums and from mail that many pros think that one SmugMug site looks like the next. Bah!

Flash This!.

I’m constantly amazed at what can be done with our SmugMug customization. This idea came about from a discussion thread on Digital Grin. I first made my New York Minute gallery.. and then thought, “hmmm this could make a nice homepage mini-show!”

This is a great tool – not only to spruce up your homepage – but for increasing sales and a higher quality presentation to your clients. How about, a 30-shot slide show of “selects” from that wedding, and it heads up the gallery that has the wedding proofs in it? Nice. How about, a short show featuring your portfolio or samples? By the way, these slide shows are served up from standard SmugMug galleries – yeah you’ll need to have some special customization on your site (Javascript), but the little bit of effort is well worth it.

Oh and guess what? You can even use it for a personal site, too!

What’s that? You wan’t some of that? See you at Digital Grin!

Are you confused as to where to start? Don’t worry, we can help. Our Customizing FAQ is a great place to start out. From there, take a look at Customizing for Dummies, a five-part series. Some real basics, like just a header? SmugMug Help to the rescue. A little more advanced stuff – like custom colors, a background image, maybe changing fonts and such? More SmugMug Help.

And so, here is the story of our SmugMug Pro, a fine photographer but no programmer, not a geek, HTML and CSS were just more alphabet soup for him, before he came to Dgrin! Over just a few days, this pro asked his questions, got quick answers with actual code to use, and plenty of free consulting from both SmugMug (me) and the volunteers that freely give of their time at Dgrin. These are folks that “have been there and have done that!” We’re very fortunate to have them as part of the community. The result? You can see it here, at Brandolino Imaging.

Of course, if you’re still puzzled, or prefer direct contact, just email me, the House Pro and I’ll be glad to help, and also guide you to all of SmugMug’s resources.

Would you like to be able go from this

to this

There are a million ways to go about it. You can take the time, read some books, you can get some photoshop actions or filters, or you can learn the basics in ten or fifteen minutes. My recommendation is to do the latter, and experiment, create. Learn the basic components of good B&W. Then, either create your own recipe, or use an action.

You can find my Black and White Conversion Tutorial over on Dgrin’s SmugMug site.