I use Zenfolio for my photo gallery and have been pleased with their service and offerings. Recently new features were implemented which I’ve found to be value added.
Perhaps SmugMug or other similar services already offer these features–this isn’t a comparison, just news about Zenfolio.
With Zenfolio you may now export photos directly from Zenfolio to either Flickr or Facebook and you can do this with a single photo or a batch of photos.
I don’t use Facebook so I haven’t tried this option but the export to Flickr works well. You can export to your Flickr Photostream only, or an existing photoset, or create a new photoset. You may export in two sizes, medium (500px) or large (1000px) and mark them as public or private, designating viewing privileges for no one, friends, and/or family. You may also automatically apply a watermark to all exported photos.
The speed of this export from Zenfolio to Flickr is much faster then uploading the photos to Flickr from home.
The other option is the ability to download the original files individually or by batch. Zenfolio can’t view RAW Photo files but it will allow you to upload and store them online, as a “backup”–an unlimited storage and bandwidth feature* makes this feasible. This along with the download feature makes Zenfolio a good option for backing up original photos offline. The only draw back is a 24mb per individual file size limit* but RAW files directly from my cameras normally don’t exceed that.
I’ve used Jeffrey Friedl’s Zenfolio Export Plugin for Lightroom, which makes exports/uploads to Zenfolio a simple matter. I usually start a batch before I go to bed and let it run during the night. You might want to check out Jeffrey’s other plugins as well.
*There are no monthly bandwidth limit with any Zenfolio package but the unlimited storage only come with the Unlimited and Premium packages. File size limits also scale according to the package.
An interesting service. I’ll check out the home page. Thanks.