Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Smugmug Adds Huge Photo Sizes
Posted by Jason Dunn in "SITES & RESOURCES" @ 12:06 PM
Smugmug, still the best photo sharing site around for my needs, has done a major update that many of us have been waiting for: they've dramatically increased the sizes of photos that people can view images at. Previous, the biggest sized option was "Large" which was 800 pixels wide, or you could turn on originals and the person could download the full-sized image. Not a great choice in our era of giant, high-resolution monitors. The new sizes? XL is 1024 pixels wide, X2 is 1280 pixels wide, and X3 is 1600 pixels wide. The most impressive of all, however, is the new AUTO option: it will deliver you the best possible image size based on the size of your browser window. Here's finally a good reason for someone with a big monitor to browse in full-screen mode. It gets even cooler if you press F11 and make the browser take up as much space as possible. Here's a screen shot of my looking at a photo on a 24" widescreen monitor running at 1920 x 1200 resolution:
[Click the image above to be taken to a gallery where I've turned on the new sizes. You may need to click to the next picture to see the Auto function work, it doesn't seem to be able to pick up the browser size without a refresh.]
There's a bit of controversy though over how this feature was implemented - it seems that if you're a Pro user ($149 USD/year) you can set the maximum size you want your gallery to have. So if you only want to offer the 1024 pixel-wide XL size, you can do that. Standard ($39) and Power User ($59) accounts don't have this option - they can turn off originals, but they can't stop Smugmug from serving up a 1600 pixel-wide version of their photo.
The Dgrin forum thread on the subject is fascinating because the Smugmug crew is surprised that people who aren't professionals are objecting to having their photos offered at the new "SmugMungous" sizes. I can see why they'd think that - hey, if you're not charging for your images, why not show 'em big? On the other hand, I've never enabled originals on my public galleries, because you never know how someone will decide to use one of your photos (there are some evil people out there), so clearly there's some rationale for wanting to restrict sizes offered.
Regardless of this glitch, I say well done Smugmug! I'm thrilled to be able to have big, glorious images on my photo site...
[Click the image above to be taken to a gallery where I've turned on the new sizes. You may need to click to the next picture to see the Auto function work, it doesn't seem to be able to pick up the browser size without a refresh.]
There's a bit of controversy though over how this feature was implemented - it seems that if you're a Pro user ($149 USD/year) you can set the maximum size you want your gallery to have. So if you only want to offer the 1024 pixel-wide XL size, you can do that. Standard ($39) and Power User ($59) accounts don't have this option - they can turn off originals, but they can't stop Smugmug from serving up a 1600 pixel-wide version of their photo.
The Dgrin forum thread on the subject is fascinating because the Smugmug crew is surprised that people who aren't professionals are objecting to having their photos offered at the new "SmugMungous" sizes. I can see why they'd think that - hey, if you're not charging for your images, why not show 'em big? On the other hand, I've never enabled originals on my public galleries, because you never know how someone will decide to use one of your photos (there are some evil people out there), so clearly there's some rationale for wanting to restrict sizes offered.
Regardless of this glitch, I say well done Smugmug! I'm thrilled to be able to have big, glorious images on my photo site...
