A place for you to learn, get inspired, and keep up to date with all things SmugMug and photography
The SmugMug Pro plan offers an "Assistant" feature which can be a game-changer for busy photographers. Let’s learn more about this feature and the value it provides.
By using the "Assistant" feature, you can delegate time-consuming tasks like uploading and organizing photos to your trusted associates. This means less time spent on administrative duties and more time focused on what you do best—capturing stunning images.
Utilizing an “Assistant” password enables you to work seamlessly with your assistants, ensuring a smooth workflow and organized photo management. This can lead to enhanced productivity and better outcomes for their photography projects.
Delegating tasks to your assistant does not mean relinquishing control or sharing sensitive account information. You define a separate password for your assistant to use. When logged in, assistants will only have access to important workflow features (like uploading, organizing, keywording, etc). They will not be able to take any destructive actions like deleting content or changing prices on your photos.
The "Assistant" feature can directly contribute to the growth of your photography business. By delegating tasks, you can take on more clients and projects, expand your portfolio, and increase your overall business capacity.
Utilizing an assistant gives you the potential for a better work–life balance. With the help of an assistant, you can free up more of your personal time, reducing burnout and stress.
Assistants often have specific strengths. For example, if an assistant has expertise in photo editing or culling, they can handle those aspects while you focus on shooting.
By streamlining your workflow with an assistant, you might discover hidden opportunities for innovation and growth within your business. Freed from routine tasks, you can explore new creative avenues or expand into areas you previously didn't have time for.
The "Assistant" feature is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive. Your assistants have access to the key parts of your same SmugMug account and can quickly learn how to navigate the system and contribute effectively to your workflow.
The "Assistant" feature on SmugMug isn't just a time-saver; it's a strategic tool that empowers you to leverage your strengths, grow your businesses, and achieve a healthier work-life balance. By utilizing this feature, you can shift your focus from administrative tasks to your true passion – capturing breathtaking moments through your lens. Learn more about this feature today!
Available only for SmugMug Pro subscribers. Not on the Pro plan? Learn more about how the Pro plan can help you elevate your photography business.
Attention, Lightroom lovers! Today we have a post by our friend, Matt Kloskowski, founder and CEO at Matt Kloskowski Photography and Education, former education director for Kelby Media Group, and a Tampa-based photographer. Kloskowski is the author of several best-selling Photoshop books and teaches Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography seminars around the world. He hand-picked a few favorite ways for Lightroom users like you to get your photos finished faster. He's currently promoting a new "Goodbye, Lightroom" course to help users transition from Lightroom Classic (the desktop-only version) to Lightroom (the cloud version).
We've all heard the phrase "time is money." Well, if you're shooting weddings or events, you need to get through your photos and get them organized quickly and efficiently. Then you can get on to the good stuff: editing and getting out there to shoot more photos. So to help out, I've compiled my favorite tips to kickstart your workflow and keep you moving through Lightroom as quickly as possible.
A big part of speeding up your workflow is identifying your favorite photos. If you look under the Photo menu, you'll see Lightroom has two ways of picking your favorites: Set Flag and Set Rating.
Ratings are difficult to work with. Most people are familiar with the 1- to 5-star rating system, but the main drawback is it has too many choices. Five stars is a keeper, right? Four stars probably means the photo is pretty good. Three means it's decent. Two would be bad. And one star would be a reject that you throw away. But what happens if you go through your photos and come across something that isn't a throwaway or isn't an absolute keeper? You sit there and debate whether it's a two-, three-, or four-star photo. Either way, it's not your favorite, so you'll probably never do anything with it. Yet you're giving it too much time in the rating process. And, inevitably, when something takes too long, we stop doing it.
Instead of using ratings, try using the flagging system. This way, you get two choices:
Go through your photos quickly and hit "Z" to flag or "X" to reject. If you don't flag it or reject it, then it stays unflagged, which is that grey area you're just not sure about. But you don't have to press a key to be indecisive—Lightroom just assumes you're indecisive about the photo by leaving it unflagged. So your job becomes really easy! Flag it if you like it and think there's a remote chance you'll do something with it again one day. Reject it if you don't. Then hit the right-arrow key and move on.
Another way to speed things up is to keep your library as clean as possible and get rid of the stuff you’ll never use. If you followed the previous step and are using the flag system, you should have some rejects that were marked with an X. A simple way to delete them is to select the filter icon near the search bar at the top of the window and then select the rejected-photos flag. Select all the photos in the filmstrip at the bottom and right-click > delete. Lightroom will delete all the rejects at once so you don't have to go back and get rid of them later.
Using Albums in Lightroom is more important than ever and probably one of the fastest and best ways for you to speed up your workflow. Photos that go into an album are photos that should be one click away and the photos you'll want to see most often.
Let's say you have 2,000 images from a wedding. You want to quickly show them to the bride/groom or family. Do you go through and show them all 2,000 photos? No way! Instead, you create an album. It's a way for you to get to your favorite photos in just one click.
Typically, I'll look at my photos and go through them one by one. I'll hit the letter Z to flag photos as a favorite when I come across them. Then I can quickly sort to see only my picks by clicking the flagged icon in the Filter strip.
Once I've figured out what my favorites are, I select them all (Edit > Select All), go to the Album panel, and create a new album with a descriptive name (usually the last name of the bride/groom).
Albums have an extra level of organization called Folders that are key for events like weddings. Think of a folder set as a group of nested albums. If you put your picks from a wedding/event into an album, you'd have all the best photos from all parts of the wedding in one place (the album you created). The problem is that this album could be huge. This is where folders come in.
You'd create a folder (for example, a top-level folder with the bride/groom name) and then create albums within the folder for each part of the wedding (formals, church, reception, etc.). Here's what a folder could look like in Lightroom:
Once your photos are all cleaned up and ready to go, you're just a few clicks away from uploading them safely into your SmugMug website. The publish plug-in is free, gets your photos seamlessly into SmugMug, and also lets you sync, make galleries, and keep your online presence as clean and organized as your Lightroom library. You can also see and adjust your customer's event favorites, republish, and even proof your orders all right within the SmugMug Publish module. Get it now.
_______
What Lightroom tricks have cut time off your photo-editing workflow? We'd love to know!
In 2022, we celebrated 20 years of helping photographers all over the world showcase their art, cherish their memories, share their experiences, and run their businesses. And a lot has happened in those 20 years! We’ve heard amazing stories from photographers about their work and how they run their businesses. We’ve told some of their stories with SmugMug Films, where we highlight the inspirational work of amazing photographers around the world. And we’ve heard from our customers about how much of an impact our platform has made in their lives.
As your business grows, we’re enabling you to do more of it while on the go. We added notifications to our mobile apps to let you know when you make a sale. We also added mobile support for proof delay and made it possible for you to check on the status of orders no matter where you are. These small changes free you to manage your business when and where you want.
When you’re at your desk, we’ve added support for proof delay directly into the SmugMug plug-in for Lightroom Classic, allowing you to stay in this powerful tool while fulfilling customer orders.
It can be difficult to know if your photos are getting in front of your potential buyers, so we added improved SmugMug gallery engagement stats to get the data on how your potential buyers are responding and if the promotional channels you’re using are effective.
Our world-class customer support Heroes answered more than 120,000 inquiries. Many issues were resolved in just a few minutes. We’re proud to continue offering this level of courteous, effective, and fast customer support.
We made improvements to search to make finding photos easier for you and for your customers. Search is now faster and more accurate across all our subscription plans, and for customers opted into SmugMug Source™, it also includes auto-tagging of objects and geolocation.
We improved the purchase experience for customers ordering digital downloads from mobile phones and tablets, solving a fulfillment pain point many of you shared with us. We also added the ability for you to sell digital packages, giving you the best-in-class tools to deliver photographs to your clients.
But none of that matters if all of your photos aren’t safe and readily accessible. In the past two years we made it easier for you to store your RAW files along with your finished JPGs with SmugMug Source, an add-on feature to any SmugMug subscription plan. And in this past year alone, we invested in the stability and reliability of the SmugMug platform and storage. While you can’t always see these changes, everyone benefits from faster page loads, improved browser experiences across devices, and the peace of mind that every pixel of your work is safely stored and ready to be served at a moment’s notice.
You’ve told us you want to sell your work. We’re here to support you in achieving that goal. In the coming year you’ll see improvements that help people find and purchase their photos more easily. We know many of your customers increasingly are giving up their desktop computers (if they ever had them) and are using their devices on the go. We’re committed to making that experience easier for them and for you when managing the sale.
You’ve said you want photos available for purchase faster. We’re investing to enable more options for uploading. We’re excited about the opportunities in this space and can’t wait to see how it accelerates your business.
We want to be the best employee you’ve ever had, supporting you with the mundane parts of running your business so you can do the work that’s unique to you. Letting you do the work that your customers depend on. We’re also working on improvements to help you get photos onto our platform more easily, whether that’s on your desktop, tablet, phone, or camera — uploading to SmugMug should always be fast and reliable.
Like many of you, we’re concerned about the world we’re leaving behind for future generations, so we’re working to reduce the environmental impact of our business. This means continued investment in how we run our platform and business in a sustainable manner. We’ll continue to optimize our software, storage, bandwidth, and energy usage to ultimately become climate neutral.
Our purpose as a company is to build a better world through the power of photography. At SmugMug, we’re creating the best platform for all photographers and we’re incredibly humble that you’ve chosen us to be a partner throughout your journey. The next 20 years will be transformative for the photography industry, just as the introduction of digital cameras was. So stay in touch and look for more from us throughout the year!
_______
Tell us what you think! Start a conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.