| My Media Creation Tools and Services Picks | |
| I put up my first Web site in 1997 to prove that I could, using a research paper I wrote to graduate, Notepad, early Photoshop at a friends house for the buttons and a Learn HTML in 24 Hours book. Since then, my photography has followed the shift from film to digital to the Web, we rarely hear, "h t t p colon forward slash forward slash w w w dot [anything]", and I've stockpiled enough good and bad experiences that I want to pass some of them on to you to keep you from stepping in some of the same holes. Here are some of the things I've learned about getting images onto the Web to show and sell. | |
| The usual disclaimers include that this list is nowhere near exhaustive - or even a cross-section; your mileage will vary; I will likely have left off your favorite tool or service provider and the other usual suspects, and you may violently disagree with some of my opinions. | |
| That said, the list below was prompted by my offer to discuss with my camera club, the Gaithersburg Camera Club of central MD, what I've experienced en route to exhibiting and selling images on the Web, and creating a few sites. These things work for me, and I hope you find a tidbit or two to make your trek up the hill a little easier and more productive. Enjoy! | |
| Product or Service | Provider | Comments |
| Domain Name (URL) Registration | Network Solutions, Inc. | The
original domain name registrar with a great reputation. I’ve used
exclusively since 1997. Free or cheap domain names as a promo for a
hosting contract sound too good to be without
strings. Will you be able to point your
soon-to-be-famous-and-profitable Web identify to another host if you
change hosting companies? I've done it several times with NSI -
they're first class all the way.
Before you commit to a host and register your quite-literally-one-in-the-world domain name, search for any horror stories out there about people being locked into substandard hosting providers in order to preserve their domain names. I can't give you any war stories; only the old adage about things that look too good to be true... You can find a lot of hosting providers in the $8-10 a month range, and you can register your Web identity with NSI for $20 a year if you do it for five years at the time. |
| Web Hosting Providers | IX
Web Hosting Gate Network Solutions, Inc. |
I know from personal experience that both IX Web Hosting and Gate are first rate. I switched from Gate to IX because Gate didn't support an image sales application I used briefly. I still host a client's site on Gate. NSI also offers a similarly-priced hosting package. Go kick the tires, read the reviews and discussions, and make your choice. |
| Commercial Gallery Providers | photo.net PBase BetterPhoto.com |
Similar in many respects. Personal taste will dictate your choice. |
| Custom Gallery Templates | EOS
Template by Peter Berger |
Flexible and powerful. Configurable as both gallery-only and with a shopping cart for sales. Be willing to learn to modify HTML and Javascript. Have a look at my favorite gallery of our adventures in China. |
| Free
BreezeBrowser Templates by Peter Berger |
Film Strip template is free and unique. Uses pop-up windows for full-size views. | |
| AllWebCo | Tremendous
selection for most conceivable purposes. Many have a shopping cart that
can be used or hidden. Require some HTML and Javascript modification.
See KollinsLandscaping.com for a sample.
Updating gallery images is very cumbersome, though, so I retooled Kollins' galleries to use EOS Template with the AllWebCo template providing the look of the home, informational and contact pages. This lets me use BreezeBroswer Pro to process the images and automatically generate an EOS Template image gallery of Kollins' work. It sounds complicated, but is pretty straightforward after you learn the workflow and script editing. |
|
| Commercial Print Sales Online Storefront Provider | PhotoReflect | Used
them for several seasons of summer sports photo sales. They pay timely. Their
service fee is a 15% commission on your retail prices + 3% credit card
processing, but no monthly fees. Try All American Photo, one of their
Labtricity affiliates, to do your printing if you go with PhotoReflect.
The good news is that they do most of the work of getting your images into your customers' hands and the revenue into your pocket. The service, as you'd expect, isn't free, but may be well worth the price if you want to sell your work without becoming a HTML-and-Javascript-editing-Web-geek. Both Action Photos, which I've had the privilege to shoot for on a number of occasions, and my friend Andy of ProImagesOnline, whom I got to know at those events, use PhotoReflect. Action Photos is bringing a new custom-written sports photography environment online, but don't try this at home. I recently had the privilege of meeting - and buying some photographs from - Joe and Stacey Champion of Champion Images. Champion specializes in athletic event coverage but adds Stacey's artistic eye to produce some of the most striking sports images I've seen. They use PhotoReflect for sales, nestled behind a custom front end. Stop by their booth if you're at a major USA Gymnastics meet or any other event where you see their remarkable creations on display. In the meantime, visit them here. ProImagesOnline covers the southern Maryland sporting world and Action Photos focuses on major tournaments in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. |
| Print Sales Software | EOS Template | A
wonderful dual purpose app for exhibit-only AND sales galleries. One
gallery can even be either, depending on the way your hyperlink to it is
set up. Lots of navigation and sales options, and produces razor sharp
galleries very quickly when used with BreezeBrowser Pro. The shopping
cart works with PayPal. Peter provides incredible support
by answering countless questions in his Yahoo group, and even offers regular
e-mail updates containing all of the latest questions, answers and
suggestions for improvement.
And yes - he listens - and adds features regularly. Bravo, Peter. |
| Image Viewing, Workflow and Gallery Generation Application | BreezeBrowser Pro | Can’t say enough good about it. Good opening speed for viewing of 10MB D2X RAW files, plus JPEGs and TIFFs. Not the greatest RAW converter (try DxO), but great viewer. Excels at Web gallery generation, and is worth the $79 for that, alone. Big feature is that is allows separate sharpening settings for thumbnails and full-size images, and all on one pass! Batch renaming, too. |
| Downloader Pro | Revolutionizes the way you drag from your card reader onto your HDD. Renames on the way over to put an event name, camera model number or anything else in the file name. Canon shooters will love the way it moves all of the images from all of your 100-image folders in a single click. Try it even if you don’t get BreezeBrowser; it’s a standalone application. | |
| RAW Conversion | DxO | Okay
– it’s pricey, slow and as intuitive as Mandarin, but makes images
pop. Opens up shadows in a way that PSCS can’t with even
Shadow/Highlight, and that takes a lot of tweaking in Lightroom to even
come close. Nice perspective correction for wide lenses, but make
sure your lens is on their list. (The beautiful Tokina AT-X 124 is
missing from the Nikon D80, D100 & D2X lists, but download and try
the Nikkor 12-24 profile. It works well for me, and the software thinks
the Nikkor was used even though the Tokina did the work.)
Caveat: These guys are completely unresponsive to requests for new lenses - or anything else. The only support is in discussions with users like you and me. Download version 5 and try it out, but old PCs may choke; the app is a processor HOG. Multi-core machines, even early ones, process many times faster. Version 4 was painfully tolerable on my five year old Athlon with 1GB, but v5 flies on a Core 2 Quad with 4GB. Not a replacement for either Photoshop or Lightroom, but offers some distortion correction unavailable anywhere else that I've found, strong noise reduction and overall high quality RAW conversion. |
| High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imagery | Photomatix Pro | Highlights and shadows in the same scene too far apart for your camera's sensor? Combine the best of several different exposures into striking images using HDR imaging. I use it on a regular basis for about anything that will be still long enough for five images. This is tripod territory, and auto-bracketing of 2/3 to 1 stop with a 5- or 7-frame motor burst works very well. I've put a few images here to give you an idea. |
| Panoramas and Virtual Reality (VR) | Nodal
Ninja 5 panorama head PTgui panorama stitcher PTViewer panorama viewer |
You
want to show your audience more than your camera will take in in a
single image, so what do you do?
Easy - you take two or more photos and combine them so that they look like one very wide, or very tall photo. Software to do this is plentiful; search on panorama software reviews to read the latest reviews. The Nodal Ninja site has 1,400+ links to panorama-related information. Go to the bottom for forum, discussion group and blog links. The two basic ways to present your expanded view of your subject are with either a wide or tall print or rectangular Web image, or through a Virtual Reality (VR) viewer that lets your Web audience look around the image - up to 360 degrees around, from straight up to straight down. Good VR is fascinating, challenging and very rewarding with even your earliest efforts. Have a look at my first attempt after unpacking my Nodal Ninja 5 panorama head. |
| Photofinishers | White
House Custom Color Mpix Bay Photo Lab All American Photo |
I've
had good success with all four labs. Always use the
"pro" side of the house. They have different tools to
edit and upload, including my favorite - ftp. Chose between doing
your own color correction and formatting, or paying the lab to do
it. I use All American through PhotoReflect, and go directly to
the other three. Set up a PhotoReflect account and select All
American from their LabTricity labs to give them a try. I'm
looking at a stack of test prints and see only subtle differences
between them, and they're all work I'm proud to deliver to
customers. Technology has had a big positive impact on the
photofinishing business, too.
Be careful of your monitor calibration! Use a hardware colorimeter, and send for test prints before you do any customer work or order a large number of prints for yourself. Calibrators from Pantone or Xrite are relatively inexpensive, and save a lot of work. |
| Slide Show and Video Creation | ProShow Gold | Never
thought I'd use "slide show software". The nudge to try it was
my agreeing to produce the slide show for the annual swim team
banquet. I detest mediocrity and set out to put together an
above-average show with lots of images, quick transitions, Ken Burns
panning and even some miniDV footage. This way outside of
PowerPoint's league, and I had heard someone at Gaithersburg Camera Club
praise ProShow Gold - so gave it a try. 700+ images and 100+ hours
later, we had a high-energy 30-minute show complete with soundtrack; all
on a DVD.
It has a steep learning curve for its slicker features like layers and motion, but turns out a decent end product. The shows took a long time to render on a 1-processor Athlon 2500 with 1GB (part of the final step in burning them to DVD), but are pretty quick on an Intel quad-core with 4GB. I have no knowledge of any competitive product like Adobe Premier or the Apple's iDVD, but plan to have with this one for my occasional need. Its output looks great projected by a big Christie projector onto a 14-ft screen at church, too. Their latest release is touted to burn to Blu-ray disks. Hint for higher picture quality: Chose the "Desaturate to 80% (or so - it's variable)" option for a DVD show for your TV or PC, but leave saturation at 100% for projection to give yourself much more vibrant on-screen images. |