On-line portfolio survey circa January ‘09

[Martin_Doudoroff]

I just spent a good chunk of my weekend surveying on-line portfolio options and I figured I should share my findings with you. I tried to be fairly exhaustive, but I’m sure some notable options slipped through my fingers, and I’d appreciate it if you’d share any additions and experiences you can.

There are a lot of considerations and certainly no single solution will work for everyone. Some of my concerns:

Flash
The bulk of “pro” portfolios are implemented in Flash. There are some defensible reasons for this fact, although I am strongly prejudiced against Flash for various reasons, at least some of which are also defensible. I am trying to keep an open mind. More on this overarching issue, below.

image scaling
Image scaling is a huge problem for portfolios. One of the reasons Flash is so popular is that it does a pretty decent job of accommodating different screen sizes. If you really want folks to see your images as large as possible for their given display device, Flash remains the main option. I resent this fact. A couple Flash-based solutions stood out for me in this regard (namely, APhotoFolio and ViewBook).

color management
Many years ago, a colleague and I started an early hosted portfolio service called FolioSpace. We abandoned it a few years ago, but FolioSpace was notable for its gamma correction feature. With the rise of LCD screens, our old approach is obsolete, but to-date, the only web browser that correctly handles ICC profiles is Safari (Mac and Windows). FireFox is getting there. I have read that the Flash plug-in will render color-managed imagery in any browser, but I don’t have authoritative confirmation on that assertion. If so, then it’s a nice feather in Flash’s cap.

content management
Content management (CMS) is another bugaboo for portfolios, and every option out there has its own approach. Some are low-level (you edit text files), many have web-based GUIs, some plug into other tools such as Lightroom, and some use standalone software for CMS. Unfortunately, your choice of portfolio solution typically involves a substantial lock-in to a particular content management strategy, so this is not a choice to be undertaken lightly.

iPhone & other mobile device experiences
Most on-line portfolio solutions do not gracefully scale to mobile devices. There are a couple exceptions. Mobile platforms are becoming so important that I expect more solution providers to step up ASAP. Flash does not work on the iPhone—which is color managed, by the way—so if you want your Flash portfolio to work on an iPhone, your solution has to offer a derivative HTML gallery option.

search engine optimization
This is a can of worms. It means too many different things to people. Some solution providers try to address this issue, others ignore it. YMMV.

e-commerce
Another can of worms. Some solution providers offer on-line sales options for stock photographers and such. I’m not a commercial photographer, but I’m interested in selling fine art prints, which complicates matters significantly for me. YMMV.

integration with the Internet (use in other web sites & contexts)
Most on-line portfolios are islands. Meanwhile, the “Web 2.0” Internet is about community and recontextualization. A few portfolio solutions are dipping their toes in this stream (such as Slide Show Pro and ViewBook)

integration with blogs and other content servers
Most portfolio solutions are more-or-less black boxes and it can be surprisingly difficult to integrate them (or even get them to simply co-exist) with one’s other publishing, such as your blog. Depending on what you’re trying to do, this issue can significantly influence your decisions.

First, a few exemplary portfolios. Note: I didn’t select these based on the photographic work—although much of the work is outstanding—but on the portfolio solution used. For me, these all demonstrate numerous laudable qualities (although none are “perfect”):

• Nick Cobbing Photography (custom, Flash)
• Shannon Jensen: Photography (Slide Show Pro, Flash)
• KEENPRESS Photography (APhotoFolio, Flash)
• ELIZABETH WEINBERG PHOTOGRAPHY (DIY, custom HTML)
• Graeme Mitchell: Photographer (DIY, HTML)
• Fazal Sheikh (custom HTML)
• Andy Clark’s portfolio (utilitarian HTML w/comments)

Next, here are a couple of blog posts that were invaluable in helping me on this project:

• Photographer template websites compared | RobertBenson.com (one photographer's encapsulated research)
• A Photo Editor - Portfolio Website Design (note the great discussion in the comments)

Finally, here’s my directory of solutions:

Flash-based, hosted services

liveBooks (the de facto standard)
Hosted, Flash-based, value-added service, premium

A Photo Folio
Hosted, Flash-based, with derivative HTML/Mobile, premium

iCreations
Hosted, Flash-based, premium

FolioLink
Hosted, Flash-based, with derivative HTML/Mobile, various account levels

BIG Folio
Hosted, Flash-based, custom design services, some extras, various account levels

BluDomain
Hosted (or not), Flash-based, various account levels

clickbooq
Hosted, Flash-based, mid-level/premium

Viewbook
Hosted, Flash-based service, entry-level

OtherPeoplesPixels
Hosted, Flash-based, entry-level

Qufoto.
Hosted, Flash-based, entry-level

Picaholic
Hosted, Flash-based service, entry-level

Hosted, HTML-based services

Sitewelder
Hosted, HTML (some Flash-based features), mid-level

SiteDesignWorks
Hosted, HTML-based service, custom design services, mid-level

Parade
Hosted, HTML-based service, entry-level

Creative Motion Design
Hosted, HTML-based service, various levels

Flash-based, self-hosted options:

Evrium (“Fluid Galleries”)
Self-hosted, Flash-based, mid-level

FlashPalette
Self-hosted, Flash-oriented with CMS, entry-level (DIY)

PhotoIdentities
Self-hosted, Flash-based templates for self-hosting, entry-level (DIY)

Into the Darkroom
Self-hosted product, Flash-based, entry-level (DIY)

Premium custom design services of note:

Neon Sky Creative Media, Inc. | Interactive Design and Professional Online Portfolios
Premium custom design services

iHouse Design
Premium custom design services

DIY options:

WebTemplateBiz
Templates for self-hosting, design services, entry-level (DIY)

SlideShowPro
Flash-oriented plug-ins and CMS tools for DIY, entry-level

AIRTIGHT - Viewers
Flash-based gallery components, free (premium custom design services available)

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Hope you find this helpful!
—Martin

[DougAxford]

Thanks for the informative summary. I went through some of these a year ago and chose Show it Web ShowitFast, Inc. - Home

I started at $99. and within 2 days paid the extra $99. for the pro version.

I can have a gallery ready to upload within a minute and it looks as good as I need. We did combine Show-it with Breeze for our portrait sales galleries and I was very happy with the results in sales. Breeze easily and cheaply provided the back-end ordering system with Paypal. The advantage of either software is that I have unlimited use of both quantity of images per gallery and quantity of galleries on my site for a very low price. For many of my sports leagues, I'll provide the league with a link to their images for their site and I host the gallery on my site. Works well because I have control of all the images and they have so little work to add a link on their site.

Another one I've been looking at is JAlbum. Jalbum - Photo album your way - Free Jalbum web album software - Share albums with friends It's got a lot of possibilities.

Martin, you mentioned a dislike for Flash. I agreed with that until I got 'Show it'. I am sick to death of being forced to download somebody's software plug-in so I can see their site. Show it is Flash based but my customers don't need Flash on their computers to view the galleries. I'd be interested in your other problems with Flash. I understand your concerns on calibration but that's no different than customers that think a white dress looks just fine if it's green. The vast majority have no perception of good or bad color.

Doug

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Originally Posted by DougAxford

Martin, you mentioned a dislike for Flash. I agreed with that until I got 'Show it'. I am sick to death of being forced to download somebody's software plug-in so I can see their site. Show it is Flash based but my customers don't need Flash on their computers to view the galleries. I'd be interested in your other problems with Flash.

I’ve been thinking about how to respond to your question without getting into a long-winded and dubious diatribe. Observe while I fail miserably:

Flash is a proprietary technology that has evolved and thrived in interesting ways, capitalizing on short-comings of the HTML model (which has plenty of shortcomings, believe me). HTML and the Web browser were originally designed to one thing, and one thing only: render highly structured technical papers for the edification of academics. For better or worse, the potential of the Web beyond the university laboratory became precipitously self-evident and over the subsequent decade, the original HTML concept was stretched and distorted into the Frankenstein’s monster that it is today. It was an ugly mess, and it still is, and it will remain so until they rip it up and start over, which they'll never do. (Successfully replacing HTML at this point would require a visionary and divine providence.) All this has been great for Flash.

Flash began life as something like an alternative picture format, albeit one that required a plug-in to work, and it came along at the right time and place to become ubiquitous. (In fact, it is the only plug-in that could truly be declared ubiquitous—at least until the iPhone came along.) Macromedia (now Adobe) has leveraged that ubiquity to carve out a significant domain of the Internet marketplace under their direct control, by extending Flash into video distribution (again, capitalizing on shortcomings of existing video standards) and most recently, by promoting Flash as an independent application platform—a tenuously coupled alternative to the web. Is there really anything wrong with all this? Maybe, maybe not.

While I may harbor ideological prejudices against Flash, what I most object to is the quantity of egregious bad taste Flash has visited upon me over the years. There has always been something about Flash that has encouraged prodigious, gratuitous behavior on the part of “designers”; it encourages a kind of masturbatory bingeing on goopy, tacky animation and—most offensive to me—audio. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is. And I found plenty of examples of this in the on-line portfolio solutions I catalogued above. And yeah, some people like that stuff. Lucky for them, I’m not Dictator!

Undeniably, Flash still does a variety of fundamental technological things well that make it an obvious option for some purposes, and there are certainly a lot of folks who have built careers around creating “Flash content.” Good for them. Once, Flash was pretty much the only way to do those things; today, there are more and more alternatives. While these alternatives have their own problems, I suppose I’m just predisposed to favor them.

Originally Posted by DougAxford

I understand your concerns on calibration but that's no different than customers that think a white dress looks just fine if it's green. The vast majority have no perception of good or bad color.

I would agree that few people have much conscious perception of good or bad color: the color-correction capabilities of their brains obviate that. However, if someone was able to show me that—side by side—Flash routinely delivers a subjectively better-looking image in the wild, then they’d certainly have my attention. (Hasn’t happened yet.) To draw an analogy, most art books look okay, but some you open up and your eyes bug out because the reproductions are either execrable or they’re outstandingly good. You don’t have to be conscious of why in order to be more likely to buy the outstandingly good-looking book.

[DougAxford]

Thanks for that Martin.

I agree with you on what you said about Flash. For me, I lump all of the offerings by Adobe into the same bucket. You can't live without them but every day I wish someone could clean up their software so that I could work faster and more efficiently. But then, I'm on a PC platform and that tops all for inefficiency. I remember reading somewhere that Adobe was starting to release code for something - that may be a glimmer of hope. We all benefit by better programs - especially ones that aren't pigs on memory.

When I was at the chiropractors a few months ago he had a new coffee table book on canoeing in the Great Lakes. I had to look because I've read everything else many times. Very nice stuff but what struck me was the colour cast on many of the photos. Obviously,the photographer thought they were fine and I doubt anyone other than me saw the colour casts. Just an example of what we all see in everyday life. It doesn't have to be on the internet to be off colour.

DougA

[Kevin_M_Cox]

This survey data just released by PhotoShelter seems relevant:

Photography Websites: How to design a website that image buyers will love
Photography Websites: How to design a website that image buyers will love - A Picture's Worth
Have it emailed to you here:
Photo Buyer Website Survey 2009 | PhotoShelter

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[DougAxford]

Thanks for the links, it was a good read. I'd be interested in seeing a similar survey for wedding and portrait customers instead of stock photos. It is a different clientele entirely.

I was not surprised at the results at all. Lengthy Flash intros are a huge turn-off for me too. I was also not surprised that they wanted watermarks to be either minimal or non-existent. Yup, so many of them can steal the image IMHO!!!! If everyone in our industry set a standard for watermarks, it would solve the problem - fat chance of photographers agreeing on much of anything.

[Martin_Doudoroff]

There's an emerging new style of choreographed presentation built around old animation stand techniques: zoom, rotation and pan. I'm not sure there's a name for it, but here are a couple examples:

• Prezi
• pptPlex for PowerPoint

This approach seems to hold some potential for photo essays and such.