SmugMug Overall Rating:

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SmugMug Quick Review:

SmugMug is a great photo sharing site, especially if you’re an avid photographer and want to share your interest with others. There are hundreds of photo communities on SmugMug. Though not free, SmugMug is definitely worth trying. You can sign up for a 14 day trial without a credit card.

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SmugMug Full Review:

Signing up for the free trial at SmugMug is easy. You don’t even need to provide a credit card to get started. All you need to provide is your name, email address, password, select an account type and check the Terms of Service box. That’s it. You’re off and running.

You’re immediately taken to a gallery selection screen so be ready to get started immediately. There are quite a number of available gallery themes from which to choose. Type in your gallery title; select a gallery type like photography, weddings or sports, select a theme like It’s a Girl!; Blue Lagoon or Carbonite, select the thumbnail format; and finally, make it public or private.

Next you need to upload some photos. SmugMug provides a number of ways to upload. Options include Simple, Photoshop, Send to SmugMug (advanced), Picasa, Lightroom, SmugShot, Eye-Fi, and Olde faithful. I chose the simple option which requires the installation of an Active X applet. The simple option allows you to drag and drop or open a search box for selecting photos. Uploading was at the normal speed.

Your SmugMug home page allows you to add additional photos to an existing album or create a new one. The control panel has five tabs – News, Stats, Settings, Customize & Home. The News tab provides SmugMug news. The Stats tab provides information about the number of photos you’ve uploaded, disk space you’re using, invitations sent out, etc. The Settings tab allows you to change your profile. Customize is used by power users to customize their layouts. The Home tab allows you to add featured galleries, most popular photos, join communities, add keywords, etc. You can order a backup CD of your images from the homepage. You can change your theme as well. Last but not least you can see what a visitor will see when visiting your homepage.

The gallery view displays a group of photo with thumbnails on the left and one large photo on the left. You can add photos to this album or another, change your theme or view a slideshow. At the bottom right are tools, arrange mode and hide photo. The tools include options to add photos, sign up for SmugMug Vault, customize your gallery (settings), make it a featured gallery, delete the gallery or order a CD

The arrange mode is a nice feature. When checked it allows you to drag and drop your photos in the order you desire. The hide photo check box allows you to hide a photo so it doesn’t show for your visitors.

Under the photo tools drop down are quite a few options. These include moving, sorting and arranging your photos. The editing (alter) options include crop, delete, color effects, rotate and crop/adjust thumbnail. The crop tool is nice as it allows you to drag one edge or the other. There are default crops for standard sizes as well. The color effects option provides tone adjustment to black & white, sepia, negative and there’s an auto correct option. Each option shows a large adjusted photo. The rotate option allows you to flip left, right, 180 degrees or flip the image from right to left. You’ll want to edit your photos before uploading them to SmugMug as the tools provided are a bit limited.

Visitors to your page can purchase prints if you allow them to do so. They can buy prints or have the photo printed on magnets, t-shirts, mugs, etc. Pretty cool!

Of course there’s a SmugMug store for you. You can have your photos printed on playing cards, magnets, tote bags, puzzles, sweatshirts, tags, aprons and ceramic tiles just to name a few. Be creative with your gifts. Your family will love it.

SmugMug is about the communities. There are hundreds of communities from airplanes to zoo animals. If you enjoy photography and want to share your interest with other like-minded photogs, SmugMug is a great place to hang your hat.

Click on the image below to view a large image.

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