ACDSee Pro 3 Beta - General Discussion

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Online Mode/What's next?

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  • simontipler
    ACD Online Product Manager

    Which of the following capabilities best suits your online needs?

    1. Archiving and printing your photos
    2. Generating sales of your photos
    3. Interacting with friends or groups of people with similar interests
    Posted On May 4, 2009 - 10:36 PM (6 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • StefanH
    Focus Group

    At the moment I am a very infrequent user of online storage in a local Swedish web site. I have been thinking about going into Smugmug or Flickr, but not decided yet. ACDSee Online mode looks interesting. The order of importance for me would be

    3. This is what I have been doing so far. The site I am using is a bit awkward in its upload mechanisms, therefore I have not done as much as would like.

    1. Maybe, but how many GB's will be available? Today I have a crude geographical mirroring system for my images. If I were to archive in an offsite storage I would probably keep one copy at home.

    2. At the moment I have no interest in selling my photos, but the future may be different.

    Posted On May 5, 2009 - 04:19 PM (6 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • tibu
    Focus Group

    I use my online service (Zenfolio) for all those reasons.

    1. Archiving and printing your photos
    2. Generating sales of your photos
    3. Interacting with friends or groups of people with similar interests

    If order of use, I wouls say 1, 3, then 2

    Many online services have taken a long time to reach maturity and there is a lot of varying opinions as to what should be part of a service. From visting photography forums it seems like Zenfolio and Smug Mug are the kings as far as options, functionality, etc.

    I store 20,000+ on my Zenfolio site so I use it for backup as well as sharing images. It has a variety of ways to secure or hare your images (public, user name, password, "hidden folders" where you need the URL and cant' stumble uppon it).

    The bottom line IMO is I would look at Zenfolio or Smug Mug to see what folks will be expecting.

    Presentation and ease of use (not just for me, but my audience) are pretty important. Going from one image to the next should require no re-arranging of the scroll bar and be easy and intuitive. Zenfolio has a neat feature that adjusts the diplay image based on your resolution and the size of your browser, it dynamically re-sizes the image for displaying. It's awesome!

    The online feature sounds pretty neat, and if it meats expectatinos of the Zenfolio or Smug Mug crowds could be a hit.

    Will I switch? I would consider it if the feature set met Zenfolio with promise to grow in the future as Zenfolio (and Smug Mug) do, they are constantly eveolving with several updates a year. A visit to their forums might help understand what people want too.

    One thing that would keep me from personally switching (assuming all the toher things that would attract me were met) is having to re-upload all my several Gigs of files. If there were a service (with a fee of course) tha allowed me to send DVDs or a hard drive to mass load images to my account i might want to do that.

    I realize ACDSee online might not be for everyone (especially those heavily invested in something else arleady, not to mention loyalty I already have toward Zenfolio).  I do think it's a great concept and look forward to seeing what becomes of it.

    Posted On May 5, 2009 - 05:27 PM (6 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Tankred
    Moderator

    simontipler said:

    Which of the following capabilities best suits your online needs?

    1. Archiving and printing your photos
    2. Generating sales of your photos
    3. Interacting with friends or groups of people with similar interests

    For me, number 3 is the most important capability. I don't print or sell my photos and for archiving purposes I do have my computer and a solid backup solution. But it's utterly important for me to share photos with family, friends and colleagues. However, due to upload bandwidth limitations here in Germany, I share only few selected pictures with other people.

     

    Posted On May 5, 2009 - 07:24 PM (6 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • wotan_odyn
    Moderator

    What is meant under 'archiving and printing your photos'? If that's uploading to different existing online services (flickr, picassa, ...) as it's been done with plugins until now then yes, please. If it's yet another site to upload the photos to then I guess #3 is my choice.

    Posted On May 6, 2009 - 09:16 AM (6 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • xlr8tt
    Member

    I would like to see support for additional existing online file sharing sites like is currently done with Smugmug and Flickr.

    I personally would like to see some automation of uploading to Fotki.

    Posted On May 19, 2009 - 12:36 AM (6 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • hamaer
    Member

    The most important capability for me is to generate sales for my photography.  I'm in photography since the 'olden days' of analog shooting and for a while now in the process to digitalize my archive of roughly 30 years travel photography.  As a freelance photographer, I do depend on the capability of tagging, searching, and a stable database that can handle a huge number of pictures.  The more as the needed change to digital photography brings a different workflow and handling of shots taken at an event.

    The times where you come back from a week's trip and throw 20 rolls of 35mm film in a lab for development are gone.  That amount of shots is taken nowadays on a single day event thanks to digital shooting.  

    An efficient workflow and reliable database is vital to business.  Pro 2.5 was (still is) very buggy.  I can't wait to see and test the behavior of Pro v3.

    Posted On May 26, 2009 - 06:22 AM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • ClaytonCurtis
    Member

    tibu said: much of what I'd say, and I'm going to repurpose sections of that posting. (Apologies in advance: Too hard to properly attribute sections!!)

    I use my online services (Kodak Gallery and Flickr) for #1 and #3.

    1. Archiving and printing photos
    2. Generating sales of your photos
    3. Interacting with friends or groups of people with similar interests

    If order of use, I wouls say 3, then 1.  I note that I have taken advantage of the ability to generate custom products (e.g., mugs, calendars, photo books) on more than one occasion, so more than "printing" per se is desirable.

    No-one in their right minds is going to depend solely on someone's online service to archive their photos.

    "Many online services have taken a long time to reach maturity and there is a lot of varying opinions as to what should be part of a service. From visting photography forums it seems like Zenfolio and Smug Mug are the kings as far as options, functionality, etc." -- I agree. It's pretty clear that ACDSee would do well to provide transparent linkage to a user's preferred sites, but starting up an entirely new online storage site is bound to be risky. (I suspect the fact that Photoshop is going that way has something to do with it. <smile>)

    A "variety of ways to secure or share your images (public, user name, password, "hidden folders" where you need the URL and cant' stumble uppon it)" is important. I continue to use Kodak even though it's not all that polished because of the convenience of the address book / sharing mechanism, which is far more usable (for me) than FLickr.

    "Presentation and ease of use (not just for me, but my audience) are pretty important. Going from one image to the next should require no re-arranging of the scroll bar and be easy and intuitive. " - Absolutely agree, and would way "very" rather than "pretty".

    Would I switch? I would consider it if the feature set was very good, with promise to grow in the future with scheduled updates each year. I agree that forums for leading sites might help understand what people want.

    Posted On May 27, 2009 - 11:36 AM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Melanie Wood
    Community Manager

    Hello all,

    Thank you for all the wonderful feedback. This topic has helped us get a clearer picture of you and your needs. Your candor has been appreciated.

    -Melanie

    Posted On May 27, 2009 - 06:09 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

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