SmugMug

Bottom Line

SmugMug is not for the point-and-shoot crowd. It fills a niche for serious hobbyists or professionals who want a slick gallery to showcase and market their portfolios, but don't want to go to the trouble and expense of commissioning a custom website. SmugMug has wonderful features like powerful editing software and full customization, but you'll get only what you pay for, with several different levels of membership and no free accounts (the cheapest is $40 per year).

Interface

Not for newbies. Uploading pictures to SmugMug is simple; editing images is a bit more complicated. SmugMug has a simple drag-and-drop interface, and the ability to detect duplicates as you add images. You can also add directly from iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture and Picasa, or upload while on the go with mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android. Photos are easy to move around and organize. SmugMug's in-depth photo-editing program, Picnik, is remarkable, but you'll have to know what you're doing to maximize its potential. If you don't have experience digitally adjusting exposure and colors or using effects, it may take a while for you to get the hang of certain tasks.

The website and galleries are visually stunning, and SmugMug's tagline, Your Photos Look Better Here, certainly rings true: the brilliant color, full resolution and crisp lines will knock your socks off. You won't see any ads cluttering up your photos either (remember, you're paying for the site, not advertising). Sharing images via email, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr is simple; you can also share entire galleries or use Flash plug-ins to embed into blogs and websites.

SmugMug is the most flexible of all sites for video hosting; it allows you to upload videos of up to 20 minutes in length. By comparison, Flickr allows only up to 90 seconds, but has the highest quality HD video.

Print Quality

Plenty to brag about. TopTenReviews.com submitted the same set of digital images to SmugMug and nine other digital printing services. SmugMug ranked second for print quality, with a decent gap between the other services. SmugMug produced high-quality prints, though there were some dark shadows on models in a sunset picture, a common issue with most photo services. Reviewers are impressed with the sharp foreground in an aerial shot, but feel that too much area was cropped from the bottom of two of the images. So overall SmugMug is quite competent, but not without its quirks.

Features

Put your best face forward. Almost everything on SmugMug can be customized with
70-plus themes, colors and headers, but it can be rather daunting. Savvier users can use HTML, CSS and JavaScript. PCMag.com's Michael Muchmore says SmugMug's approach "seems more of MySpace style … while Flickr and Picasa offer a more Facebook-like approach."

SmugMug has great respect for artist's rights, and they go to great lengths to protect your copyrighted work. You can enable and disable downloads as you see fit, disable right-click options or watermark your images. Storage on SmugMug is unlimited, including storage of high-resolution, original images. If you're looking for a safe and secure way to protect your work, SmugMug is great for off-site backup.

SmugMug is ideal for viewing the work of other photographers and showing off your own images. You'll find a category for everything under the sun, or, as PCMag puts it, "over 60 choices, from Airplanes to Zoos, with Births and Funerals in between." You can set up your own bio, find communities, keyword and geotag your images, create a tag cloud or check out the most popular photos on the site.

At 19 cents per 4-by-6-inch print, SmugMug is definitely more expensive, but worth it for a serious photographer. If you are a higher-level member, you can opt to send prints to professional photo labs like White House Custom Color, Bay Photo and Loxley Colour, where you'll achieve even greater print quality than SmugMug's standard EZPrints service.

Customer Care

Heroic customer service. SmugMug provides video tutorials and support forums, and their customer service reps, nicknamed "heroes," are renowned for their friendly, fast and helpful responses. The downside: There's no live chat or phone support, so you won't get instant gratification, but customers say service is "quick and helpful."