SmugMug, a household name when it comes to online image hosting, has developed a new service called Source. Already known for their incredible functions in online display and sales of images, SmugMug is taking the next leap towards providing photographers with new, never-seen-before cloud storage and management service for next to nothing.
Although cloud storage is relatively new, many photographers already use it as backup or as easy access to their library of images. There are, of course, a few shortcomings that most popular cloud storage platforms have: very few are designed with the photographers in mind. None are designed to such a degree as SmugMug Source.
The reason I am so excited to preview SmugMug Source is that it is a new product that has a multitude of applications for every workflow and photographer while being very affordable and easy to integrate with what most people currently have. Let’s break down some exciting features SmugMug Source brings and how they can be applied in a potential professional photography workflow.
1. Supports Virtually Any Image File Type
SmugMug Source supports: .RAF, .RW2, .CR2, .NRW, .ARW, .NEF, .DNG, .SRF, .RAW, .DCR, .ORF, .CRW, .SRW, .CR3, .RWL, .X3F, .MRW, .IIQ, .PEF, .tif, .tiff
Everything from huge Phase One (.iiq) files to the simple .tiff can be processed by Source making this product relevant to any photographer shooting on a digital camera. While other cloud storage platforms can store these files, few can process them as well as SmugMug Source does.
2. Processing
One unique feature of Source is that it can process photos on the fly. Process, as in edit? No, not quite. What it can do is upon import of raw files create a .jpeg for clients to preview. As an event photographer, I remember spending hours on end showing the files from my image-processing program to the client. This time now can be saved by uploading photos into SmugMug’s cloud storage. Upon upload, it will create a visual .jpg that can be immediately shown to the clients using SmugMug’s incredible photo-sharing possibilities such as client galleries. I know for a fact that when I was selling image by image to my clients, they often wanted to see the photos, but before that could be done, I was asked to select the best ones. Now, the whole gallery can be shown at once, which is both saving time on the photographer's side as well as giving clients the full story. Moreover, this sharing feature allows for photographers to deliver photos at speeds unparalleled by anything else. Often, at large events, photographers must deliver images every few hours for social media and other online usage. In the past, this would mean dumping photos to two separate hard drives as well as a cloud storage service and exporting .jpgs at the end. Now, much of it can be saved.
3. Backup
Every photographer is scared of the day when the next drive will fail. Often, this is very unpredictable and annoying. But organizing a robust backup system that’s automated can be quite time-consuming. SmugMug Source eliminates the problem of forgetting to back up. The software will make a backup automatically when the hard drive is plugged in. It will “watch” your catalog of raw assets and upon any changes, update the backup on the SmugMug Source end. Additionally, this eliminates forgetting to upload. As a fashion photographer, I travel a lot, and there isn’t always great internet at every place I open the laptop. However, I rely on online galleries for my clients to be able to select the images they want. Furthermore, with Zoom entering the studio, I can now tether to my computer and automatically upload the files to the cloud of anyone on the team (editors, art directors, retouchers) to access.
4. Less Drives Required
As I said, I travel a lot. Most photographers have to travel at some point for assignments. Some of my friends spend less time in what they consider “home” than they do abroad. Traveling and shooting entail bringing loads of drives to store and back up photos on. However, there is never enough storage if you ask me. Going away for a few shoot days can take up loads of drive space, and if it’s a long project, that space becomes scarce very fast — too fast. SmugMug Source eliminates that problem for photographers by allowing them to store photos in the cloud. The only thing you need is an internet connection, and you’re good to go. When you arrive back at the office, you can simply download them back to your physical storage and edit them.
5. Neat Needs-Based Pricing
Speaking of storage, the huge benefit of Source is that it is priced by need. Depending on the size of your project, you can pick to use up to 512 GB, up to 1 TB, and above. This is priced as so:
- Starts at $3 per month for up to 512 GB of space.
- Between 512 GB and 1TB will cost $5 per month.
- Each additional TB above 1 TB will cost $5 per month.
6. Lightroom Integration
The final benefit that many photographers will appreciate is Lightroom integration. Being one of the most popular image-processing programs, Lightroom can be used in conjunction with SmugMug Source. Their original plugin has been used and loved by thousands of photographers, with Source taking it to the next level. Storing your raw files in the cloud doesn’t mean you can’t edit upload and sync your entire archive through Lightroom. Not only you can edit from the cloud, but also have the ability to keep your catalog nice and tidy by managing your raw files alongside the finished photographs.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, SmugMug Source is a fantastic cloud storage platform that does much more than just store files in the cloud. It integrates with Lightroom, makes hard drives redundant on trips, backs up in the background, supports most types of raw files, and ultimately allows for easy previews. This new service has certainly captured my interest. I will be exploring how I can integrate it into my professional fashion photography workflow, as it brings a lot of useful features that will make a lot of photographer’s lives easier. The possibilities are amplified when you take a look at SmugMug’s other services, which, among other things, allow you to beautifully share and sell photos online.
No link to this?
I have looked at quite a few options and felt like Dropbox is one of the best options especially if you are using it for business. There is no limit on storage ($720/year). There is no limitation on the type of files. If you start storing your videos and large RAW files you will fill up space in no time especially if the space is limited. I have been storing RAW files for only the last 2 years and JPEGs from the last 16 years and I am already over 60 TB.
Agreed. I did some research and one photographer I talked to made it even cheaper by splitting the cost with two other photographers because you get 3 unique users. Each user has their own login and you can't access each others images so it works out well. He also did something else I never thought about which I may do: he had a RAID set as his Dropbox destination. His RAID was only 10tb but he had an extra 50tb selectively synched in Dropbox. So when he knew he was done working on a job he would smart sync it as online only. If he needed to work on that file or the whole job he would smart sync it to back to local. I thought it was pretty genius.
Backblaze also charges $5/TB, so its about the same price as what Backblaze B2 would cost.
Bad overall value. Furthermore, many of the claimed benefits are easily replicated on a user's home network. If you are traveling with your laptop, and are regularly taking photos, then a NAS at home will allow you to to remote backups. I personally VPN into the home network (provides security for unsecure public WiFi in hotels and other places, and allows my backup software to automatically copy data over to the NAS at home.
With the cloud storage, you have less control, but with a mapped drive over VPN, you can access your NAS and use it almost as if it were a local drive on your PC. You can even point lightroom the mapped NAS and the automated versioning in the NAS will effectively store each change ligthtroom makes on files directly on the NAS. While that is not a primary use, the capability is there as there are almost no limits to the control. Best of all, in terms of total cost of ownership, your personal NAS will be cheaper in the long run. As after your upfront cost, you no will not have large reoccurring costs.
For example their $3 per month plan is the same cost as buying 2 500GB hard drives each year, you can literally create a new RAID 1 500GB array each year for that price.
Their 1TB plan costs about $10 more than the cost of a 1TB hard drive. You can literally buy 1 new 1TB hard drive, but since hard drives become cheaper each year, (as storage density technology improves, the cost per GB goes down), the cost of expanding your storage becomes cheaper, while many cloud services tend to become more expensive over time.
at the 2TB mark, the service becomes unreasonable overpriced. As you are now at the price of a 6TB hard drive being purchased each year at current HDD pricing.
Then if you need 3TB of cloud storage, that puts you above the price range for an 8TB hard drive by about $20. At that point you can buy a new 8TB hard drive + a PCIe SATA adapter each year to interface with all of the extra hard drives after you use up the 8 SATA ports on your motherboard.
Agreed on high cost. For backup purposes only, idrive is $70/y for 5Tb and multiple machines. It backs up all folders you specify to be backed up to the cloud automatically in the background when connected to the internet. There may be others in that price range as well. Doesn't have the other features, but does provide important file redundancy security.
Yes! But it requires some knowledge to set up. But once set up, it beats any cloud solution when it comes to convenience. I use wireguard as my VPN, which has less overhead than OpenVPN or similar and works very well. For my workflow, it doesn't matter if I work locally or remotely.
Combine that with your own Nextcloud server, and you have a perfect solution for sharing files with others.
The main reason I do it this way is because I do not trust "the cloud".
But what about backup? The advantage of a cloud solution is offsite backup. I am fortunate enough to have two sites (home and office). I mirror files from one to the other and vice versa and my office has a 1GB/s up/down fiberglass network connection.
I do process the files locally for speed reasons and once the work is done I transfer them to my storage pool. I don't mind the extra time needed to transfer some few files over a network, but if it is about thousands of files I like the fast transfer speed of an NVMe-SSD or at least a 6GB/s SATA-SSD connection.
But that all is relatively easy to achieve when you are an IT-professional as I am or an experienced user. If you're not, I advice to go for solutions as SmugMug or similar.
Offsite does get tricky. I personally use a separate NAS allocation, basically sharing an 8TB pool, where a storage pool is replicated to a remote location (in my case, my brother's house). Then those are mirrored between the 2 locations over a VPN. While it is a smaller pool and thus will not back up everything, it is useful for the most important files. In the long run is saves a lot of money if you have other family or a really close friend that you both can set up a NAS system and be each other's offsite backup, while still retaining all of the benefits and performance of the local backup copies.
Basically a NAS in each location, 1 person has the primary NAS, and another person has a secondary NAS. Both have a main storage pool that can be accessed easily locally,and the primary will have a separate pool that will use rsync to send data the secondary NAS.
Snapshots can still be taken of the storage pools thus there is some redundancy and security in case anything happens at either location.
Each NAS build has heavily restricted WAN access thus all meaningful remote functions need the VPN, beyond that they only get access to DNS and time servers to sync the clocks. With a secondary rule set that can be switched to to allow enough access to check for updates.
There are more simplified solutions but they require being price gouged a little, e.g., going with a Synology NAS (really pricey compared to building a PC or converting an old PC build to use as a NAS) where the NAS syncing function is a really simple GUI wizard that explains everything.
Way way too expensive. There are loads of options at that price point, both physical and cloud, however for the majority of us (I require 5TB at present and likely that'll be 7TB by the end of this year) there are much cheaper options that function exactly the same : Nutstore, Backblaze and iDrive are very good examples worth exploring.
@brianCarlson I believe you are talking about Hybrid Mount and I do this for Dropbox on Qnap NAS. It's awesome and yes, I have close to 50TB on Dropbox using 4.86TB of cached space on the NAS. You can designate certain folders to be available all the time while other-less important files-can be only cached and accessible when you need them. This is all available through a wide variety of protocols such as SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, among others. If you use a cloud service as backup, I recommend this method. A word of caution about Google Drive though. Remember that you are limited to 750GB of bandwidth per user-per day. After that bandwidth is used up, you won't even be able to upload a small word document to the cloud until the 24 hours is reset. We made this mistake and had to go back to Dropbox. Message me if you want more info. facebook.com/jamieharringtonri