Smugmug to Prime Photos

huseyin · November 9, 2014

Hi everyone,
Will there be a migration tool focused on transferring batches from Smugmug to Amazon Prime photos?
When I check their integration, it looks surprisingly similar to smugmug's font & interface, did Amazon hire or buy a portion of smugmug code to power their prime photos service?

I don't plan to cancel my $60/yr subscription and use Amazon as my primary service, but it would be really nice to have a back up at Amazon without having to download everything and upload them there, after all the pictures are at Amazon anyway.

Hero Amanda · November 9, 2014

Hello huseyin,

We aren't aware of a tools to migrate your photos from SmugMug to Amazon's Prime Photos, or plans for any. You may want to check with Amazon to see if they have any tool to help with this.

SmugMug is not involved in Prime Photos in any way. It is it's own service, and is in no way connected to us.

If there's anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

huseyin · November 9, 2014

Hero Amanda wrote: »

Hello huseyin,

We aren't aware of a tools to migrate your photos from SmugMug to Amazon's Prime Photos, or plans for any. You may want to check with Amazon to see if they have any tool to help with this.

SmugMug is not involved in Prime Photos in any way. It is it's own service, and is in no way connected to us.

If there's anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

Thank you for the reply.

Alameth · November 11, 2014

huseyin wrote: »

Amazon Prime photos... looks surprisingly similar to smugmug's font & interface, did Amazon hire or buy a portion of smugmug code to power their prime photos service?

And here I was, thinking Amazon Prime Photos looked like a bad integration of Dropbox and Flikr. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >

<csg>

WinsomeWorks · November 12, 2014

huseyin wrote: »

Hi everyone,
Will there be a migration tool focused on transferring batches from Smugmug to Amazon Prime photos?
When I check their integration, it looks surprisingly similar to smugmug's font & interface, did Amazon hire or buy a portion of smugmug code to power their prime photos service?

I don't plan to cancel my $60/yr subscription and use Amazon as my primary service, but it would be really nice to have a back up at Amazon without having to download everything and upload them there, after all the pictures are at Amazon anyway.

Well.... I mean.. you do realize, don't you, that you can simply get "SmugVault", and that that service (all the storage/backup/whatever you want to call it) is actually provided by Amazon? It's extremely reasonable (actually, the cost has gone down several times!) and basically means you can store files other than Jpegs, etc... like RAW or PSDs, or TIFFs etc. The nice thing is that if you decide to put a photo on your Smug site instead of having it locked-down in storage, you can just move it or copy it to one of your galleries. It gives you lots of peace of mind, because (the last I knew) SmugMug has servers in several different places around the U.S. And the galleries work just like your regular galleries, so you can keep much of the same structure, if you like, for backup. I have 1000s of photos in my SmugVault, & Amazon takes a couple bucks a month out of my account, so no worries about forgetting a payment, etc.

cmwade77 · March 27, 2015

Now that Amazon has just announced their completely unlimited plan for $59.99/year, I would love to either have migration tools and have a similar price on Smugmug that allows me to store anything and everything.

huseyin · March 27, 2015

cmwade77 wrote: »

Now that Amazon has just announced their completely unlimited plan for $59.99/year, I would love to either have migration tools and have a similar price on Smugmug that allows me to store anything and everything.

I think Smugmug still has the edge over Amazon due to customization, pro accounts, video display and sharing and of course few other goodies like uploader and plug folder/album management.

At same price, I'd still stay with Smugmug, but Amazon's file storage is actually very tempting.
I think Smugmug will have to do something about that in order to retain non- Professional Photographers.

Richard · March 27, 2015

I was interested in the latest announcement for photos only. I'm not a pro, so the prohibition against business use wouldn't apply. It seems like a pretty cheap off-site backup solution for me (not a SmugMug replacement), but I didn't see any clear statement that all types of photo files were acceptable, in particular raw, PSD and TIFF as well as JPGs. Anyone know?

Teach · March 28, 2015

Let me clear up some confusion about SmugVault. We are not currently offering the SmugVault service for new accounts. If you sign up for a new account you will not have an option to use SmugVault. It is only available for older accounts. This service is being transitioned, and we hope to find another solution for you soon!"

Richard · March 28, 2015

Richard wrote: »

... but I didn't see any clear statement that all types of photo files were acceptable, in particular raw, PSD and TIFF as well as JPGs. Anyone know?

DPReview has a discussion thread which answers some of this. Bottom line is, TIFF seems fine, some raw formats are accepted, including DNG, which could be used for unsupported ones. It rather sounds like they intend to provide support for most raw formats but have only implemented a few so far. No mention at all of PSD and it also isn't clear whether XMP and GIF are accepted. So as it stands, it's not a perfect solution for me, but damn, it sure is cheap.

Ferguson · March 28, 2015

If you are looking at Amazon Drive as a general backup solution (which includes photos), it is not really ready for prime time as it has no sync features. For many (most?) photographers, while photos may be 95% or 99% of their storage needs, the rest is very important - accounting, directories, catalogs, financials, documents, etc. One reason Smug Vault never appealed to me is it was very photo centric (or that was my impression, moot now).

I use Amazon S3 storage for backup (including Glacier) and love it, but was excited by the announcement of unlimited storage as a cheap option -- unfortunately I have yet to find any tools that let you use this as a sync option. It is all drag-drop to a desktop tool. Until there is a sync client, or a decent (incremental) backup client, it won't be very useful for most people as a comprehensive solution.

I've been looking at other alternatives this morning and did not find anything better frankly than Glacier. Microsoft's "unlimited" plan isn't (with a 20,000 file limit most photographers won't get far), their personal one-drive which lacks that limit has space limits and is integrated with Windows 8.x in ways that does not make it very useful as a backup tool, dropbox is expensive compared to Glacier, google drive is expensive if you have more than 1TB of data (huge jump from $10/mo to $100/mo).

With Amazon announcing drive API availability this may change.

With Smugmug looking for a Vault alternative just to whisper a recommendation -- don't assume photographers only need to back up photos!

denisegoldberg · March 28, 2015

Ferguson wrote: »

I use Amazon S3 storage for backup (including Glacier) and love it, but was excited by the announcement of unlimited storage as a cheap option -- unfortunately I have yet to find any tools that let you use this as a sync option. It is all drag-drop to a desktop tool. Until there is a sync client, or a decent (incremental) backup client, it won't be very useful for most people as a comprehensive solution.

I've been looking at other alternatives this morning and did not find anything better frankly than Glacier.....

I use CrashPlan for backups. It syncs automatically, includes unlimited storage and is a flat rate per year.

http://www.code42.com/crashplan/

--- Denise

Ferguson · March 29, 2015

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I use CrashPlan for backups. It syncs automatically, includes unlimited storage and is a flat rate per year.

I may take a look at them again. When I first started with cloud backup I got fed up with the "unlimited" guys, as they all rigged their system to prevent "Abuse" which, almost by definition, includes many photographers' archive of terabytes of data.

There's a certain advantage to paying by the gig for storage -- the more I use, the more money they get, so they have no vested interest in reducing how much I can use (quite the reverse). Every "unlimited" plan for backups has a vested interest in not making it attractive to people with very large storage needs. Crashplan for example throttles bandwidth (they say they don't -- then they say a bit further down that you can't expect to get more than 10 gig per day transferred -- strange definition of not throttling).

Amazon Cloud Drive has in the past required vendors of 3rd party equipment to pull support for backup to cloud drive. Goodsync for example, used to support it, and had to remove it. You can still sync to S3 or glacier with it, but not Cloud Drive. There's a ton of people saying "Amazon doesn't get it" about their brain dead PC client, but I think they get it just fine -- they don't want the heavy duty PC desktop users, they want all the cell phone users and tablets -- those guys don't take nearly the resources, and are the fastest growing segment.

All us old farts with terabytes of photos on our desktop -- how are they going to make money off of giving us unlimited space. None of the vendors really want us.

denisegoldberg · March 29, 2015

Ferguson wrote: »

I may take a look at them again. When I first started with cloud backup I got fed up with the "unlimited" guys, as they all rigged their system to prevent "Abuse" which, almost by definition, includes many photographers' archive of terabytes of data.

There's a certain advantage to paying by the gig for storage -- the more I use, the more money they get, so they have no vested interest in reducing how much I can use (quite the reverse). Every "unlimited" plan for backups has a vested interest in not making it attractive to people with very large storage needs. Crashplan for example throttles bandwidth (they say they don't -- then they say a bit further down that you can't expect to get more than 10 gig per day transferred -- strange definition of not throttling).
...
All us old farts with terabytes of photos on our desktop -- how are they going to make money off of giving us unlimited space. None of the vendors really want us.

You're right, CrashPlan definitely throttles bandwidth. It took a long time for my initial backup to complete but I don't see a lag in my incremental backups. They do offer a seed option where you pay to have them send you a hard drive that you send back with your initial backup.

I originally was using Amazon S3, unfortunately through a vendor who opted not to support Glacier. I had no reasonable way to move my data from S3 to Glacier, and I felt that the pay-per-use model was killing me - I was paying many times what I currently pay via flat rate on CrashPlan.

--- Denise

Ferguson · March 29, 2015

denisegoldberg wrote: »

You're right, CrashPlan definitely throttles bandwidth. It took a long time for my initial backup to complete but I don't see a lag in my incremental backups. They do offer a seed option where you pay to have them send you a hard drive that you send back with your initial backup.

I originally was using Amazon S3, unfortunately through a vendor who opted not to support Glacier. I had no reasonable way to move my data from S3 to Glacier, and I felt that the pay-per-use model was killing me - I was paying many times what I currently pay via flat rate on CrashPlan.

--- Denise

S3's migration to Glacier can now be managed directly on Amazon, though having said that I am unsure how a restore would occur if the vendor of the tool you use didn't support it. You'd probably have to change that area back to S3 online then restore.

I use Cloudberry backup, which will support a bunch of different storage vendors. I don't have a good reason, but it does make me feel better having software independent of the storage company. For example, it means Amazon can't decrypt my data, it's encrypted before it leaves my computer and they don't have the keys.

I suspect it will not be long until some of the unlimited plans replace Glacier for me also, but there's still that nagging "where's the catch".

denisegoldberg · March 30, 2015

Ferguson wrote: »

S3's migration to Glacier can now be managed directly on Amazon, though having said that I am unsure how a restore would occur if the vendor of the tool you use didn't support it. You'd probably have to change that area back to S3 online then restore.

At the time I made the decision to switch (back in 2013) there wasn't a reasonable transition. I could have migrated directly on Amazon but the Glacier structure was going to mirror the S3 structure which without the intermediate vendor would have been a nightmare - and I would have had to find another vendor for the continued Glacier backup. I've been much happier with the CrashPlan solution.

--- Denise

Smugmug to Prime Photos

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