Use CONTROL-F (COMMAND-F on a Mac) to search the document.
See also our Step-by-Step Setup Guide!
Galleries are groups of images shown on your website. (Services and applications other than PhotoDeck might also call them "albums", "folders" or "categories").
Images must be published in galleries to be visible on the website. You can publish an image to multiple galleries.
Like folders on a hard disk, Galleries are hierarchical: you can create up to 10 levels of sub-galleries.
With PhotoDeck, it is possible to create up to 1000 sub-galleries under any gallery, including the root gallery. Each gallery can contain up to 50000 media.
For maximum flexibility and ease of management, you should organize your galleries like you would organize folders on your computer, creating a "category" of galleries for each type of galleries you will create.
Even if you can change the structure later on, it is advisable to do it right initially, especially if search engines (Google) are important to you: changing the structure might affect individual galleries' URLs.
If you plan to use PhotoDeck for a single purpose (for example, portfolio display or stock), you can skip this step. But if you feel you even might use PhotoDeck for multiple purposes in the future (e.g. public galleries AND protected client galleries), we recommend to create the proper structure upfront.
Gallery structure illustration
Here are a few important examples - you don't need to create them all at once:
Note that when a gallery is empty, it is not visible on your website.
A key promise of PhotoDeck is that your website can be multipurpose. You can combine a portfolio, a client proofing area, ecommerce archives, and even a blog on the same website. Naturally, the presentation of the images and features vary depending on the purpose.
So when you create a new gallery, we present you with a few presets to speed up your workflow. Pick the preset closest to what you need, and if required, you can subsequently adjust the settings once the gallery is created. (You can change all settings at any time).
Preset | Display style | Access settings |
---|---|---|
Portfolio gallery Public gallery with Portfolio display style. Ideal for portfolio displays. | “Portfolio” display style. | The gallery is NOT hidden, no free download allowed. |
Public archive or ecommerce gallery For standard, public galleries that balance functionality with aesthetics (e.g. public archive, ecommerce galleries or stock) | “Standard” display style. | The gallery is NOT hidden, no free download allowed. |
Private gallery with general password Same as archive/ecommerce gallery, but with a general password. Ideal for private ecommerce galleries. | “Standard” display style. | General password required. No free download allowed. |
Protected gallery for professional clients Perfect to send high-res images to a client | “Proofing” display style. | The gallery is hidden. You need to give individual clients access to the gallery via the gallery’s access settings or the Send by email panel. |
Protected proof-retouch-deliver gallery Recommended when working with professional clients, and when the client must select images before their final versions can be prepared and delivered. | “Proofing” display style. | The gallery is hidden. The client can order high-res images for free but not download them until you set the files in FINAL state and deliver the order. You need to give individual clients access to the gallery via the gallery’s access settings or the Send by email panel. |
Gallery display styles make it easy to change the way galleries are displayed on your website, from full-screen autoscaling slideshows to mosaic tile walls.
A gallery style applies to all galleries using that style.
Gallery styles also allow you to display images and galleries in a different way, according to each gallery's purpose.
To change the Display Style used by a gallery, open that gallery under My Images & Videos, then click on the link displaying the current display style in use, located right below the gallery title.
Each theme includes the following default display styles:
Style | What for? | What it does |
---|---|---|
Portfolio | To showcase your work with as little visual distraction as possible | Aesthetics first: large images, no distracting action buttons or metadata (so it's not suitable for ecommerce or proofing galleries), automatic slideshow, no search box. |
Proofing | Usability first: best user interface for a client to select images. | Uncropped thumbnails with hover preview, easy access to proofing features and image information. |
Standard | Simple ecommerce and search | Somewhere between the Portfolio and Proofing styles, good compromise between usability and aesthetics. |
Blog | Blog index and blog posts | Displays a gallery like a blog: big previews on the same page, image descriptions readily visible as text, … |
The display style customization screen is made of 3 main sections:
Enlarged images and videos
This section gives you complete control over how opened images and videos appear in your galleries. This is also the place to adjust slideshow behavior for full-screen autoscaling slideshows using, for example, the Portfolio style.
It is also in this section that you can adjust the size / quality of the images and videos displayed on your website.
Image quality on a website is always a compromise between:
- displayed size on screen
- quality
- loading time (its importance is too often overlooked)
You can adjust various settings in the gallery display styles to maximize quality:
- use a higher size - this will result in longer loading times
- turn upsizing off in the auto-scale settings
- reduce the allowed crop
Also make sure that you upload files that are at least 3000px wide.
Thumbnails pages
This section controls the gallery index pages (i.e. the pages where the images/videos thumbnails for a gallery are displayed). For example, you will find here the option to either split long galleries onto multiple pages, or to display them as a long page with "endless scrolling".
A notable option here is the Click on gallery cover opens parameter. This will dictate if visitors see a large image / slideshow or thumbnails when they first enter a gallery.
Use this section to customize the way thumbnails are displayed. Choose from great presets such as the magic mosaic wall tile, or edit small details like whether or not to display download icons on the thumbnails.
Hide components in this gallery style
This allows you to hide parts of your design in the galleries that use this gallery style.
To re-order galleries, drag-and-drop their cover thumbnails to their new position (My Images & Videos panel).
Galleries can be nested within each-other without limitation. To move a gallery under a new "parent gallery", drag-drop its cover thumbnail to their new parent in the left-hand side column.
Alternatively, open the Name and main settings dialog for that gallery, and type the name of the new "parent gallery" under the Goes under… section.
To re-order images within a gallery, simply drag-and-drop the thumbnails to their new position. You might need to change the number of thumbnails displayed per page, via the Settings icon displayed in the thumbnails panel top-right corner.
Alternatively, you will find a series a automatic order options under the Basic Settings dialog for that gallery.
PhotoDeck offers a very flexible way to control who can access your galleries, and who can download "for free".
To open the authorization panel for a gallery, click on the link above the thumbnails that indicates whether the gallery is public or private (by default for public galleries, "public, visible").
The first row (Anyone) applies to anybody who is not specifically listed on another row. When you add authorizations for a specific client, the Anyone row applies to everybody except that client (and others previously listed).
You can add authorizations for specific clients. They will need to login to be identified. You can add an authorization even for clients who have not registered on your website yet: they will gain access once they register with the same email address you have specified.
We recommend you don't use on the same gallery both a general password and client-specific login access. While it is possible, it can be confusing for your customers.
Can enter gallery indicates whether access to the gallery (seeing its content) it allowed. For Anybody, you can optionally indicate a password: anyone knowing the password, logged in or not, will then gain access to the gallery.
Low-res download indicates whether a button is displayed to easily download preview images. The preview images are 800x800px, and are watermarked if you used a watermark upon initial upload. Note that savvy users will always be able to extract the preview images displayed on your site, whether you enable this or not, via a screen capture or other means. So this feature is really for your clients convenience, and you must make sure that you have a proper watermark in place if preview theft is a concern.
Originals download indicates whether FREE download of the originals is allowed. The originals are the very same files you have initially uploaded, without any modification. This column has additional options: 1-click download makes it very easy for clients to immediately download files. 1-click download, FINALS only only allows immediate download for images/videos which state is FINAL (the state of a file is part of its editable metadata). Via cart requires the client to submit an order, which will give you the opportunity to retouch/replace images before they are delivered for files that are not in the FINAL state.
When original downloads are enabled, a "Download all" button is displayed if the gallery contains less than 500 images.
Originals downloads are meant to deliver files to assignment clients. They bypass any download pricing profile you might have attached to the images/videos in the gallery!
To give access to the gallery and/or to download capabilities to a specific client, click Add authorizations and enter the client's email address. You can add a client's email address even if he is not registered on your website yet. Tick the boxes corresponding to the access rights you wish to provide him.
Alternatively, you can also open the Send by email panel to send the gallery to a client by email and give him the proper access rights in a single step!
… except if they define authorizations of their own.
For clarity and to avoid errors, if you set new authorizations for a sub-gallery, it will NOT inherit authorizations from its parents anymore, so you need to define all authorizations for that sub-gallery.
If you want a gallery to inherit from the same authorizations as its parent gallery, simply make sure you remove all its authorizations.
When you Hide gallery, it removes the gallery from the thumbnail navigation. A hidden gallery is therefore not be visible anymore in the gallery index (or as a sub-gallery of its parent).
NOTE that if you include a hidden gallery in a menu, it will in effect become visible to casual visitors, regardless of this setting.
The Include images in public search option lets you control whether to include a gallery's content in the public search on your website and on search engines (e.g. Google). (Search within the hidden gallery will always be possible).
Comments and ratings are a great way to interact with clients on a private gallery.
To prevent Spam comments if you allow commenting on a public gallery, it is highly recommended you do not allow anonymous commenting, and preferably you require commentators to have an account.
To delete comments on your website, log onto your website with the same credentials you use to access your PhotoDeck admin space. Open the page with the comment to remove: you will notice a Delete button next to the comments.
Ratings are useful to help a client make his selection of images, as there are shortcuts to add 5-star images to a selection, to download them, etc…
The last rating on an image or video overrides the previous one, so it is usually not a good idea to allow ratings on public galleries.
PhotoDeck's blog facility is meant for photographers who want a simple way to promote new work, under the same roof as their website.
A PhotoDeck blog is simply a gallery, with sub-galleries as individual posts, all styled like on a standard blog.
A blog is a gallery, a post is a sub-gallery
This way, a PhotoDeck blog integrates perfectly with your normal workflow and with the rest of the website. All gallery features can also be used: images can be priced, downloadable, comment-able, etc…
The gallery introduction for a post/gallery becomes the main piece of text for the post. The title and description of included images or videos are also displayed and integrate with the post.
A blog post
And naturally, videos can be included in the very same way as images.
The blog facility is not meant to be as full-featured as a dedicated blogging platform (see our WordPress integration if you really need a full blogging platform).
It is designed for busy members who favor simplicity, and prefer not to maintain multiple platforms.
With this in mind, it is for example not possible to:
Like any gallery on your website, your blog has its own RSS feed, e.g. www.mysite.com/-/galleries/blog.rss
Here is a recommended way of setting up galleries when working with private individuals, where privacy and simplicity are key.
Once you have set up a first gallery, it will be easy to reuse the same settings for other clients.
In some cases, you might want to allow your clients to download high-res files. This can be done by adding new authorizations to the access options.
Note that you can allow only specific clients, based on their email, to download the images. This has two benefits: you get a better control and view over who downloads what, and you can allow a wide group of people to purchase from the gallery (say wedding guests) while allowing a subset (e.g. groom and bride) to download high-res files for free. The drawback is that it requires your clients to create a login on your website in order to access the free downloads.
Alternatively, you can allow anybody with access to the gallery to download for free. This of course, will override any download pricing profile set for the individual images and won't provide you information on who downloads images.
Please refer to the help on authorizations for further help!
Here are two recommended ways of setting up galleries when working with professional clients, where security, accountability and effectiveness are key.
Once you have set up a first gallery, it will be easy to reuse the same settings for other clients.
This section will show you how to let a client order a selection of images or videos out of an unprocessed shoot, so you can process/retouch ordered images and delivery them, in a professional and integrated way.
Typical settings for a full assignment proofing gallery.
When your client has made a selection and placed an order, you will be notified by email. When you receive the order:
Image delivery on the order page.
To get familiar with the process from a client's perspective, try it yourself with a "test client" email address! For clarity, make sure it is different from your PhotoDeck login.
We recommend you upload full-resolution images/videos to benefit most from what PhotoDeck has to offer, as the system automatically generates the preview images on your website. If you are not planning to deliver the images digitally (e.g. if only for portfolio display), and if you don't wish to upload high-res files, uploading 3000px-wide images will you the best long-term flexibility.
The max image file size allowed with your plan is indicated in the upload window.
Images are best left not sharpened (or only very slightly sharpened as part of e.g. the RAW conversion process), so that your clients keep full flexibility in the printing process.
To save on disk space and upload times, we find that high-quality JPGs (rather than TIFF images) are suitable for most applications.
In most cases, images are resized automatically. For license purchases that specify a size in pixels or a file size (e.g. Royalty-Free, Rights Managed Web uses), the buyer gets an image exactly the size purchased. For low-res downloads, we deliver an 800x800 pixel image that has your watermark applied, if it was applied upon upload.
In all other cases where a digital file has to be delivered, we deliver the high-resolution image you have uploaded, without modification.
All preview images are converted to the sRGB color space, so you can safely upload high-resolution images in the space of your choice (e.g. AdobeRGB), as long as you embed the profile.
Note that for performance reasons (page display speed), the sRGB profile is not embedded in the thumbnails, so the color will be accurate only on the larger previews (assuming the viewer's browser is properly color-managed).
You can upload video clips in the same way as still images. We support all common video formats.
For display on your website, your clip will be converted into various formats that browsers can display.
E-commerce: You are able to define what format(s) the clips are to be delivered in, both in the pricing profiles settings or when answering a quotation request.
Proofing galleries: as for stills, for "high-res delivery" via proofing galleries, we deliver the original file.
By default, the cover image is a frame automatically taken out of the video. You can also use your own cover image (in the same ratio) for MPEG-4 formats (.mov, .mp4…) by embedding it into the video file. Tools that allow it include for example mp3tag (Windows), MetaZ (Mac), VLC (multi-platform).
H.264 is currently the leading video encoding format. It is unfortunately a proprietary format for which multiple companies hold patents, jointly licensed by MPEG LA.
It is our understanding that when delivering video clips encoded with H.264 technology, MPEG LA requires content providers (you) to hold a license for both:
PhotoDeck uses H.264 technology to display videos on your website.
H.264 technology is also used in the delivery of downloaded clips, depending on the format chosen.
Since PhotoDeck provides only the technology and is not a party in your content distribution, it is your responsibility to clear possible licensing issues.
The license should be free of royalty payments in most cases.
Our attempt to obtain from MPEG-LA clearer and more concrete guidance for video producers have unfortunately not been successful.
Please contact directly MPEG-LA if in doubt!
This article on Betanews.com is also informative.
The PhotoDeck-Lightroom Publish plugin allows you to:
Lightroom allows to create two different kind of collections :
In PhotoDeck, both are galleries. In Lightroom, a folder can only contain sub-galleries, not images. A Lightroom gallery can contain images, but not sub-galleries.
Therefore, to create from Lightroom a gallery that will contain sub-galleries, create a new "Folder".
Gallery synchronization doesn't match existing images in PhotoDeck with your Lightroom catalog, as there is no reliable way to achieve this: only images uploaded through this plugin will be visible in Lightroom.
Gallery synchronization is optional: when you create a gallery in Lightroom, a new PhotoDeck gallery is created only if no gallery with the same name and parent is found on your site. You can therefore simply add in Lightroom the PhotoDeck galleries you need to manage, without synchronizing the whole structure.
Gallery synchronization can be performed at any time from the PhotoDeck publish service settings.
When an image in Lightroom image is changed (metadata updated or image redeveloped), Lightroom will mark the image as needing a re-publish. Going through the corresponding gallery and hitting the "Re-publish" button will, by default, only update the metadata and not re-upload the image, as LR can't tell whether the actual pixels have changed.
If you need to re-upload the image, go to Lightroom's PhotoDeck publish service settings and check the corresponding setting. Don't forget to uncheck afterwards it if this is a one-time need!
This plugin also allows simple one-time exports, without having to publish in a gallery.
Exported images will show up in PhotoDeck under All files (they will not be visible on your website until you publish them from My Images & Videos in PhotoDeck).
This plugin is open source so any developer can keep improving it. The code is hosted on Github.
You can upload images directly from within Photo Mechanic. The PhotoDeck uploader is included with Photo Mechanic, but if your Photo Mechanic software isn't up to date, you can manually install the latest plugin version:
To upload images to your FTP account, connect using the settings indicated on the Upload page.
Images and videos uploaded via FTP are not published to any gallery. You will find them under All files, and you can publish them to a gallery from there. It is not possible to create galleries via FTP.
FTP folders are scanned once per hour for new images, which are then moved to your PhotoDeck account (if you don't want to wait, you can force an immediate import from the Upload page).
You will receive a confirmation email after each successful import from your FTP folder.
Please note:
For large data transfers, you can send in a hard disk with your images, directly to Amazon, our cloud storage provider.
The uploading of a hard disk is subject to a 1-time disk import fee of US $200 / €140 (+VAT).
Sending a hard disk is simple, but you must follow carefully these instructions. CHARGES WILL OCCUR IN FULL EVEN IF THE UPLOAD FAILS. The upload process is fully automated by Amazon, no manual intervention is possible.
Device type and interface:
Device Serial ID# (must be visible on device):
Total size to upload (GB):
Number of videos:
Return address:
Phone number:
Description of data contained (e.g. "Digital images"):
Country where the device was manufactured (e.g. "Taiwan"):
Device value (USD):
Files with names starting with a dot will be ignored, as well as Trashes/Recycling bins.
Item | Requirement |
---|---|
Power for External Devices |
|
Interface Type |
|
Dimensions |
|
Weight |
|
File System Type |
|
Device Capacity |
|
(For performance and reliability reasons, we recommend internal SATA units, especially if you are located outside the US.)
Image metadata is very important for Search Engines to properly index your website. Embedded IPTC metadata is carried over when uploading images.
Image metadata also includes your own star ratings and the File state (PROOF or FINAL) that is used when offering free downloads to professional clients.
The image title (sometimes also called "Headline") is used in several places:
If your images have embedded IPTC Description fields but no Title fields, no worry: for each image that has a Description but no Title, on your website we display the Description in place of the Title - until you define the image Title.
The Description allows you to provide to your visitors more information about the image. It is used only below the image (except when you have a Description but no Title: in that case, the Description replaces the Title).
Upon upload, we import the IPTC Description / Caption field as the description.
The keywords help Search Engines know what your image is about - and it allows them to index keyword searches. There is no penalty for having many keywords, but they should be relevant. 20-25 keywords per image is a good target, answering the usual "Who, What, Where, Why, When" questions.
These work like additional keywords, but are displayed separately for your clients' convenience.
The Author (called in some applications "Creator" or "Photographer" or "By-line author") and Copyright Notice fields are also imported upon upload and displayed on the image page if present.
PhotoDeck field | Imported from embedded XMP, IPTC or EXIF metadata field (highest priority first) |
---|---|
Title | [XMP] Headline - [IPTC] Headline - [XMP] Title - [IPTC] ObjectName |
Description | [XMP] Description - [IPTC] Caption-Abstract |
Keywords | [XMP] Subject - [IPTC] Keywords |
Location | [XMP] Location - [IPTC] Sub-location |
City | [XMP] City - [IPTC] City |
State | [XMP] State - [IPTC] Province-State |
Country | [XMP] Country - [IPTC] Country-PrimaryLocationName |
Author | [XMP] Creator - [IPTC] By-line |
Copyright | [XMP] Rights - [IPTC] CopyrightNotice |
Artist rating | [XMP] Rating |
Date created | [XMP] DateTimeOriginal - [XMP] DateTimeDigitized - [XMP] DateTimeCreated - [EXIF] DateTimeOriginal - [EXIF] CreateDate |
You can rate your own images:
Ratings are automatically imported from the image metadata upon upload, so if you're already rating your images with Lightroom or other similar software that follows the same standard, the rating will carry over. In any case, a single click allows you to add/change/remove a rating (enable the rating display on the thumbnails via the search box options under My Images & Videos). You can also batch-edit ratings, and also search for images by rating.
You can sort your media by rating, and similarly you can re-order images in galleries by rating, to put your best images first.
A 5-star rating means "Artist's pick" and PhotoDeck automatically adds a star on your website next to these images, so your clients know what images you recommend.
Your own ratings are independent from your clients rating, if you have enabled them for a given gallery.
The search on both your website and on the admin space look into all of your images' metadata (keywords, caption, location…), but they work in different ways.
When you search for images within your admin space (My Images & Videos), the system looks for exact matches. For example, a search for cats will not return and image with the keyword "cat". Partial matching and wildcards are not supported.
Tip: to look for an image, enter its ID. The ID of an image is its filename, without the .jpg/.tif extension.
You can limit the search to look only at keywords instead of the whole metadata by using the keywords search field.
You can also save a search as a Smart Collection. The internal admin search is also used by the automation features.
The search is NOT case-sensitive. It looks at the following metadata: image ID (filename minus its .jpg/.tif extension), title, description, location, city, country, state, region, keywords, author.
This also applies to private galleries which public indexing is forced via the gallery's authorizations panel.
On your website, the search looks at the same metadata fields, but is much more sophisticated. For example, it knows plurals, so a search for cats will return images with the keyword "cat". It relies on a separate image search index, that is updated separately.
As a consequence, it can take a couple of hours before new images / new keywords appear in the search on your public website.
This also applies to public galleries which public indexing is forbidden via the gallery's authorizations panel.
Media in protected galleries aren't included in your website's public search index. They can only be found from the gallery that holds and protects them.
To search for images in a private gallery, a client therefore has to open that gallery, authenticating himself if needed, and perform the search from that gallery.
Results of a search from a private gallery include media in those sub-galleries that inherit the same authorizations (unless the private gallery contains over 20.000 media in total). In this case, the results are always grouped by sub-gallery by default.
This applies to both the search in the admin space and the search on your website.
Boolean operators help you or your visitor refine their search. For instance:
When your galleries contain very similar images, you can group results by galleries via My Website / Setup / Advanced settings.
This way, when performing a search, your client gets the list of galleries having images that match, along with the number of results of matches per gallery.
You can display a search box on any website by adjusting and pasting the following piece of HTML code (replace YOUR-PHOTODECK-URL-HERE by your own website URL):
<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="///YOUR-PHOTODECK-URL-HERE" method="get">
<input name="search" placeholder="Image search" type="search">
<input name="commit" type="submit" value="Go">
</form>
A watermark is the only real protection against image theft and screen captures.
Watermarks and their settings are accessible via the Upload window. You can use multiple watermarks, and choose for each upload what watermark should be applied.
To offer a robust protection, watermarks are embedded directly into the preview images (or videos) displayed on your website. The watermark is therefore applied upon initial upload.
Watermarks don't know about galleries: if an image or video is present in multiple galleries, the same watermark will be visible in all the galleries.
The default watermark is used when importing images through FTP, Lightroom and Photo Mechanics. It is preselected when opening the upload window.
Behind the scenes, it is also used when generating missing preview formats for use on your website (for example in some cases when you change the size of the displayed images in the Gallery Display Style settings).
To change the default watermark, open the watermark in the image upload window, and click on the "Use as default watermark" checkbox.
You can either use the tools provided by PhotoDeck to create and customize a text watermark, or for best branding and flexibility (depending on your subscription level), use your own watermark image.
If you use your own watermark image, for best results use a PNG format with transparent background, and upload it in a large size (500 to 2000 pixels wide depending on how wide the watermark will be displayed).
The gallery display styles include an option to automatically crop preview images so that they appear bigger on the screen, especially for the Portfolio styles (for example for a full-bleed effect).
Depending on the purpose of the gallery in question, you can either reduce the amount of cropping allowed (via the corresponding gallery style settings) and keep the watermark (recommended for client and ecommerce galleries), or not use a watermark (recommended for Portfolio galleries). Alternatively, you can also center your watermark on the image.
To apply a new watermark, the preview images must be regenerated. If needed, a watermark can be applied to all your images at once:
Collections are groups of images, just like galleries, but they are never published on your website.
They are therefore suitable for your own library management purposes, like selections for your admin space.
They can also be used to automate actions, for example automatically pricing images based on their metadata.
Unlike galleries, collections cannot be nested.
Galleries and collections can be associated with a series of actions to automate your workflow.
In the collection’s or gallery's More / Automation settings, you can choose to automatically import images to the collection based on their metadata.
For example, you can create a collection named "Landscapes", and use the Automatically import feature so that all images that match the keyword search "landscape" will be assigned to the collection.
Matching for images and videos occurs in the very same way as for the internal search in your library. Refer to the help on the internal search for more details!
Note: By default, Images are checked for automatic import upon upload or keyword changes. Check the box Rescan whole library and import matching images to check at once all images in your media library against the keyword search criteria.
The following example automatically completes keywords and location metadata for images matching the search criteria "Manhattan", and publishes them to dedicated gallery:
Smart collections are saved, dynamic searches. They allow you to quickly reuse searches and filters across your media library.
For example, you can create smart collections to quickly see what images are not published, what images have a certain keyword attached, what images have been uploaded in the past day, etc…
You can set up your PhotoDeck website under the URL (domain name) of your choice. For example, www.alexsmithphotography.com
or archive.alexsmithphotography.com
. When properly set up, your whole website will be under your custom domain, and the photodeck.com domain will not appear at all.
No domain transfer is usually required. You will merely point your existing DNS configuration to PhotoDeck servers for your website.
Since PhotoDeck does normally not have access to the configuration for your domain, you need to configure it with the company that manages your domain (e.g. GoDaddy, Moniker, Network Solutions, etc…). It is usually the same company you have purchased the domain from.
If you don't own a domain name yet, purchase one from an independent provider. We recommend ovh.com. GoDaddy is also a popular alternative.
If you already own a domain purchased from the same company that provided your previous website, you must transfer your domain to a neutral domain name provider. We recommend ovh.com. (PhotoDeck does not offer domain hosting, and we consider it a better practice to host your domain separately from your website).
When your domain is under your account with a neutral domain name provider, you're good to go!
PhotoDeck does not provide email services. If you wish to use email with your domain, the company that hosts your domain name is likely to offer such service.
This first step allows a visitor's browser to find out where on the Internet your website is: on PhotoDeck servers.
www
" for "www.alexsmithphotography.com". The record must be of type "CNAME" (if the record already exists but is of type "A", you might need to delete it first). sites.photodeck.com
". (Some DNS hosts require you to add a dot, i.e. sites.photodeck.com.
). 3600
") NOTE: Do not redirect directly to your own personal PhotoDeck URL - it won't work properly !!!
include:spf.sites.photodeck.com
to it."v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf.sites.photodeck.com ~all"
."v=spf1 include:spf.sites.photodeck.com ?all"
.First step is complete. It might take a few hours to be effective. Once your URL points to PhotoDeck servers, you will see the front page of your website, or alternatively a PhotoDeck "website not found" error page. In both cases, proceed to step 2 to properly link the URL to your own website.
Q: What is your server's IP address?
A: You shouldn't need it, unless your domain host does not offer the basic options we recommend using (in which case changing host might be a good idea). Our primary IP addresses might change at any time without notice -- that is why it is important that you stay as close as possible to our recommendations.
If you really don't have a choice, you can find the current IP addresses for sites.photodeck.com
here, for example.
For further help with this step, please contact the support of the company that manages your DNS.
When Step 1 is complete, your URL will redirect to PhotoDeck, but it will not yet work properly with your website.
This second step is to tell PhotoDeck what your website custom URL is, so that when a visitor's browser comes to our servers asking for your website, the system knows that it is your website that is being requested.
www.alexsmithphotography.com
This applies only if you have links in custom pages, for example, if you have build a custom splash page with an ENTER link.
Links on custom pages are created manually, and therefore not automatically updated. If you have created custom pages, make sure the links work, and update them if necessary.
Your PhotoDeck website is a language freak! Not only can you change your website's language, you can also have it support multiple languages via the Multi-language add-on.
All messages that PhotoDeck displays on your website have been translated into multiple languages. We have also translated the default menus for the major languages.
Once you have changed your website language, you might still need to translate your own menus, and naturally, your own content (pages, metadata, pricing profiles names…).
Choosing supported languages in the Website Settings
With the Multi-language add-on, your website can work in several languages:
mywebsite.photodeck.com
)mywebsite.photodeck.com/es
for Spanish, or mywebsite.photodeck.com/de
for German.When your website supports multiple languages, we recommend you add the "Language switcher" Component in your website design, to make it easy for your visitors to switch language.
Then, all your content can be edited in the various languages your website support.
A menu item in English and French.
Multilingual support includes image/video metadata
Note: your website automatically notifies Search Engines of the various languages available for each page. This way, Google will automatically direct visitors to the most appropriate language version of your website, depending on their location and language choice.
Your own Terms and Conditions, if defined, must be accepted by your clients upon ordering and registering.
The date when a customer accepts your terms, if it has been recorded, is visible on the client's record page.
These terms can also be delivered to your clients as a PDF file along with ordered image downloads.
Terms and Conditions accepted by your customers are a contract that helps safeguard your business interest and for example, are a good place to provide mandatory information, or set boundaries on what your customers can do with the images they download. If you serve customers in Europe and are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), they are a good vehicle to comply (they provide a "contractual basis" for the data).
If you haven't defined terms and conditions yet, and especially if you sell goods or services through your website, we encourage you to learn more about this topic as well as the GDPR if it applies to you. If contacting a qualified legal counsel isn't practical, it is easy to find Terms and Conditions templates on specialized websites (make sure they apply to your location and the kind of products you sell, if any).
The terms might be complemented with the information we provide on the data collected on your website and its location and on cookies.
Note: the information on this page does not constitute legal advice.
How do I link images on my other website to PhotoDeck pricing and checkout?
On your other website image pages, place 'Buy' links that point to:
http://[your PhotoDeckURL]/media/302348fe-41ac-11df-8124-002219dda2c0/price
: link to the pricing page for image whose PhotoDeck ID is 302348fe-41ac-11df-8124-002219dda2c0. Use our CSV export feature on the Images/Manage page (at the very bottom) to get the list of your images and corresponding PhotoDeck IDs. This is the safest and best-performing methodhttp://[your PhotoDeckURL]/media/IMG_1234/price
: link to the pricing page for the image whose original file name starts with IMG_1234http://[your PhotoDeckURL]/media/IMG_1234.JPG/price
: same, using the full original image file namehttp://[your PhotoDeckURL]/media/IMG_1234/price/rm
: link to the Rights Managed pricing page for that imageThe front page ("home") is what visitors first see when they go to your website URL. It can be changed under My Website / Front Page.
The front page can be:
If you set a specific gallery as the frontpage, you will need to make sure that the other galleries are accessible via links in your menu. Refer to the section on menus for further help!
Frontpage slideshow with multiple images and taking the text from the image titles
The size and layout of the slideshow within the page will be directly based on your design.
A custom page is a page of free-form content, mostly useful for information pages.
Custom pages are independent from the galleries but, like galleries, are displayed within the global website design.
Note that custom pages do not appear in the menus displayed on your website unless you add them!
The free content editor lets you add elements (text, images, buttons, quotes, preset forms and more) in a layout you fully control.
The content is organized in rows. Each row can be a single element, or be split into columns. The columns' widths ajust to the screen's width while retaining their respective proportions. On smartphones, the columns are displayed one above the other.
Columns can be easily resized by drag-dropping the resizing bar, visible when placing the mouse between the columns.
A menu is a set of links, displayed on your website.
Links can point to any part of your website, or to any external website (for example, your Twitter or Facebook page).
A menu is displayed within a Menu Component in your website design. There must therefore be a Menu Component in your design for each menu you wish to display. The position and style of the displayed menu is defined by the Menu Component in the design tool.
PhotoDeck base themes include a single menu. To add a new menu, you must both create a Menu Component in your design and associate it to a new menu (set of links).
To add a new link, use the + link link and choose the kind of link you wish to add. A number of options allow you to easily link to specific parts of your website, for example to specific galleries, to the cart, etc… Use External website / full URL to link to an external page, or a page you want to provide the full URL of.
To re-order the links within the menu, simply drag and drop them into their new position.
You can also add separators to split your menu into groups. The separators have their content and style defined via the design panel, as part of the Menu Component options.
A sub-menu (drop down menu) allows you to nest up to 15 sub-menu items under a single menu item.
A sub-menu creates a new top-level menu item under which you can then add more sub-menu items. Existing menu items can’t be used as sub-menus, so you’ll have to set up new ones.
To create a sub-menu, use the + sub-menu button at the bottom of the menu editor. Once you’ve named your sub-menu, you can proceed to add links by clicking on the Add button directly under your newly created sub-menu.
You can reorder sub-menu items just like any other menu - simply drag and drop the items into the desired order. Using separators is also possible.
These custom slideshows are designed to enhance a page or a gallery overview. They can contain images and videos that will automatically play (or naturally, just a single fixed image). They can be located:
To showcase a full gallery by itself in slideshow mode, use for example the Portfolio gallery style on the gallery instead of a banner slideshow.
To create a new custom slideshow for a gallery, open that gallery's More / Banner slideshow dialog, and and choose a template.
To create a new custom slideshow for a custom page, open that custom page in your admin space, and choose a template under the Banner / Background tab.
Banner above gallery index
The simplest is to add content taken automatically from a gallery.
You can also hand-pick images and videos, in order to display a single one, to remove some of them from the slideshow (e.g. images in portrait orientation), or to add images/ videos from different galleries.
The quality of the images / videos is the same as when they are displayed by themselves (i.e. determined by the gallery display style).
These options allow you to position the slideshow either above the content, or as a background for the page.
The Max height setting is important when you display the slideshow above the content: regardless of the size of the viewer's display, it allows to always display some of the content below the slideshow. This can be useful to constrain the slideshow to a banner format (e.g. max 40% of the window height), or to make it more obvious without scrolling that there is more content on the page than the slideshow (e.g. max 90%).
It is normally not a good idea to constrain the slideshow height if you display it as the page background!
To be able to nicely fill the whole space allocated to the slideshow, the images / videos are cropped. The Max cropping options allow you to limit the cropping to avoid having important parts of images cut out.
When adding overlaid text, it is even more important than usually to test the result also on a smartphone.
Optional slideshow text include:
Slideshow using images' captions, and highly lightened
When displaying text over a slideshow (or a slideshow as a page background), it is important that the overlaid text stays highly legible. To that avail, you can change the Color of overlaid text setting. In addition, the Images luminosity option can come in handy to dim/lighten the slideshow and ensure that the text stands out.
Your PhotoDeck website is optimized for search engines, which means that we make sure it is easy for search engines to understand how the site is structured and to discover images. We also automatically submit to search engines a sitemap of your site, including links to images, when they index your site.
To get your website in Google, you must have links from other websites pointing to your own site, preferably with your website name in the link text. You can start with links from your Facebook/Twitter/… profile
How well your site ranks on Google for specific searches depends on many factors, and the most important ones relate to how popular Google thinks your site is, based for example on the number of links coming from other websites, and how fresh the content is.
To go deeper, check out our full guide on SEO for photographers!
If you wish to fine-tune the way search engines index your website, you can adjust a number of settings.
Someone looking for photos of New York might type in a search engine "New York photos", "New York pictures" or "New York images".
Your website cannot rank high on all search terms, so pick your main keyword meaning "photograph". That word is displayed in many places throughout your website, for example below the images.
It is a key element in how your website is indexed by search engines (also called HTML Title Tag). It usually appears as the website title on Search Engines result pages.
On galleries thumbnails pages, the browser bar text is automatically generated based on the gallery name and your global SEO settings. You can add text before and/or after the gallery name.
In addition, you can specify a custom title for individual gallery indexes and custom pages via their settings.
On pages that feature a single image (or video), the browser bar text is always automatically generated based on the image title and your global SEO settings.
The Meta tags are embedded in the HTML code of each page, but not displayed.
The Meta Description sets the content of the Description Meta tag of a page on your website. It is sometimes used by search engines (when displaying results, not for ranking), and by social networks.
Like Titles, the Meta Description is automatically generated based on your global SEO settings, and you can specify a custom description for individual galleries and custom pages via their Settings.
The Meta Keywords fill the Keywords Meta tag on every page of your website. Search engines don't use it and its use is therefore very limited.
The European Union law requires that a website shall get user consent before setting cookies. These cookies include tracking cookies used by analytics services (like Google Analytics) and by embedded content providers (Vimeo, Youtube, Facebook widgets, etc…). Purely technical, short-lived cookies such as those set by PhotoDeck are exempted.
DISCLAIMER: PhotoDeck does not offer legal advise nor qualified recommendations. If in doubt, please consult with your attorney or local government body.
Compliance is not a black-and-white thing however, and two risks must be balanced:
PhotoDeck provides you with several options to help you achieve the balance that is right for you.
PhotoDeck automatically generates for you a cookies policy page based on your chosen option for cookies consent.
This policy is linked from the default cookies consent bar on your website, and you can also add it to your website menu via its dedicated link type.
The full URL for this page is http://YOUR-SITE-URL/cookies-policy.
You can easily change the message displayed on the cookies consent bar. In this case, the link to the default generated policy is also removed, so you can either:
<a href="/cookies-policy">Learn more</a>
<a href="/PAGE-URL-FRAGMENT">Learn more</a>
(The page URL fragment is defined as part of the custom page settings. See screenshot for full example)A design in PhotoDeck is only concerned with the overall layout and the style of your website. Designs are like "skins", the same features are always available regardless of your design. Your website has 2 designs, one for desktop computers, laptops and tablets, and the other, optimized for smartphones.
Within any design, it is also possible to greatly customize the way the images and galleries are displayed (via the Gallery Styles), what is shown on the front page when a visitor comes to your site, etc…
This is where you choose and customize the overall "skin" for your website, both for the desktop/tablet and for the smartphone versions. What is done on this panel applies to all pages of your website.
This is where you customize the items that form the layout of your website: logo, menus, colors, fonts, …
You can preview a work-in-progress design via the Preview button (top-right corner of the screen), without it affecting your live website. If you are unhappy with the changes you have made, hit the Revert button to reset the work-in-progress design to what you have on the live website.
Click on Apply once you are happy with the changes. After that point, there is no going back to a previous design.
Changing the global colors allow to easily create a professional-looking and unique color palette, when the individual components' colors are automatically computed:
The options follow a hierarchy: what is customized at the global level applies to any individual component, except if that component defines its own customization. Hovering with the mouse over an option group shows what components are affected by these options:
Similarly, clicking on the "filter" icon on a component (for example your social networks icons) will bring up all relevant customization options:
Every setting has a "switch" which allows to activate or deactivate its customization:
The gallery Display Styles allow you to customize how images are displayed, based on the purpose of the gallery they are in. Please refer to the section on Gallery Display Styles for further help.
PhotoDeck websites are designed to adapt automatically to small displays like tablets. When you change your design, it is therefore important that you make sure your website still looks great on tablets. If you don't have a tablet, simply progressively make your browser window smaller until it is approximately half the width of a standard laptop display, and you will get a good feel on how it will behave on small tablets.
To use your own logo:
Choose your font on the Google font repository. Then simply type its name in the PhotoDeck panel to select and use it!
It is best to restrict yourself to a maximum total of one or two fonts in your design, and/or a couple of font weights. This way your site will stay clean-looking, and will keep loading fast.
Clean fonts we like: Lato, Open Sans, Source Sans Pro, Roboto, Raleway, Montserrat, Vollkorn, Klara.
Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) is a leading commercial webfont provider.
#ws_page { font-family: "proxima-nova", sans-serif; }
. The font-family is shown in your Adobe interface for each font in your project. If you wish to apply a font to a single component of your design, you will need to use a webpage inspector (e.g. Firebug or Chrome/Safari built-in developer tool) to identify the proper CSS selector. CSS selectors examples: #ws_page .block .title
for page titles, #ws_page #component_xxxxx
for a given component…This font map shows how different font families render on standard Windows and Mac browsers.
(For each pair listed, we use additional similar-looking fallback fonts for systems where either font is not installed).
Once you have completed the design of your PhotoDeck website, you can export it as a WordPress theme. This way, your blog will appear to be completely integrated into your website.
The resulting WordPress theme is based on WordPress' default Twenty-Ten theme, which is part of WordPress 3.0 (and above) distributions. If the Twenty-Ten theme is already installed (which is normally the case), all you need to do is install onto WordPress the custom PhotoDeck theme (zip file).
The theme has multiple widget areas, so it is easy to customize it with blog archives, linkrolls, tag clouds and any other WordPress widget.
Note that for best results, the block that normally contains the images on your website should be at least 950px wide.
Once you have downloaded your custom WordPress theme, log onto your WordPress blog as an admin and go to: "Appearance / Install Theme / Upload".
WordPress limitation: if you want to update a former custom WordPress theme, you will have to delete it first. (If it is active, you have to switch to another theme before being able to delete it).
NOTE: www.wordpress.com does not allow the installation of custom themes. Most website hosting services offer full-fledged WordPress blogs, though.
By default, Safari automatically opens downloaded zip files, whereas WordPress requires the theme zip file. To work around this, you have 2 options:
Regular clients can log on your website to access advanced their own client space. There, they can easily access their order history, shared galleries, selections, etc...
Client accounts are usually created seamlessly, for example when they receive an invitation to access a private gallery or when they place an order for the first time.
Your visitors also have the possibility to create a Client Account by themselves from the registration page on your website. In this case, the client receives an email and must then click on a link to activate the account, to make sure his is not being impersonated.
There are few things more annoying on a website that having first to create an account to be able to use it or to place an order. At PhotoDeck we believe in making your client's life as easy as possible. A visitor can manage a selection and place orders without first creating an account.
An account is required to access login-protected galleries, but its creation happens seamlessly when accessing the first protected gallery. (Galleries protected by a simple general password don't require login/client accounts.)
Having an account also offers more possibilities: a logged-in client can easily save and manage multiple selections, does not need to re-enter address information upon purchase, can view past orders, etc…
You shouldn't need to: for example when sharing a protected gallery to a new client via PhotoDeck sharing features, the process seamlessly has the client create the account in a secure way if needed, while accessing the gallery, i.e. without adding significant friction.
We do not recommend you create user accounts on behalf of your clients, for both security and liability reasons.
If for some unforeseen reason you really need to create a client account on his behalf, follow the same steps your client would follow:
NOTE: by creating yourself the account, you don't get the client to accept your terms and conditions or validate his subscription to your newsletter, if you've enabled either of them, so your legal exposure might increase.
Here is a recommended way of setting up galleries when working with private individuals, where privacy and simplicity are key.
Once you have set up a first gallery, it will be easy to reuse the same settings for other clients.
In some cases, you might want to allow your clients to download high-res files. This can be done by adding new authorizations to the access options.
Note that you can allow only specific clients, based on their email, to download the images. This has two benefits: you get a better control and view over who downloads what, and you can allow a wide group of people to purchase from the gallery (say wedding guests) while allowing a subset (e.g. groom and bride) to download high-res files for free. The drawback is that it requires your clients to create a login on your website in order to access the free downloads.
Alternatively, you can allow anybody with access to the gallery to download for free. This of course, will override any download pricing profile set for the individual images and won't provide you information on who downloads images.
Please refer to the help on authorizations for further help!
Here are two recommended ways of setting up galleries when working with professional clients, where security, accountability and effectiveness are key.
Once you have set up a first gallery, it will be easy to reuse the same settings for other clients.
This section will show you how to let a client order a selection of images or videos out of an unprocessed shoot, so you can process/retouch ordered images and delivery them, in a professional and integrated way.
Typical settings for a full assignment proofing gallery.
When your client has made a selection and placed an order, you will be notified by email. When you receive the order:
Image delivery on the order page.
To get familiar with the process from a client's perspective, try it yourself with a "test client" email address! For clarity, make sure it is different from your PhotoDeck login.
Perhaps one of the best ways to reach your clients is to use PhotoDeck’s built-in mailing facility. From rich text emails to client groups, it’s fully featured to make it easy to spread the word about your business.
To start, you’ll need to access the mailing facility via the My Business / Mailings tab. Use the Create a new mailing button: the rich text editor allows you to beautifully format your mailing, including images, tables, and more. When you’re ready, use the Save Draft button and double check everything before you send. It’s a good idea to try sending the email just to yourself at first to see it in action.
Email software vary tremendously in their ability to display complex pages. We recommend you keep your mailing layout as simple as possible!
When your message is ready, proceed to add email addresses. This is also a great place to easily add new contacts to your mailing list. Additionally, you can use client groups to effectively target different groups that you have set up.
A pricing profile is a set of prices that is applied to individual images (to sell a whole gallery, see the gallery's options instead).
It can be a simple price list, or a much complex structure for which the final price depends on a number of options -- PhotoDeck gives you extreme control over your offering and your prices.
To show prices on your website for an image or video clip, you must attach one or several pricing profiles to the image / video clip.
Defining several pricing profiles allows you to split your media library into different pricing tiers, and/or sell different kinds of products.
There are multiple pricing profile templates available to sell downloads, prints, stock photography, videos and documents, and all can be deeply customized.
Setting up automatic fulfillment through a leading pro lab is as easy as creating a pricing profile.
You retain all the powerful customization options and full control over pricing, taxes, and the scope of products you want to offer. In addition, you also keep a direct relationship with the lab.
Le lab will bill you directly for each fulfilled order.
You keep a direct relationship with the labs you use. PhotoDeck´s role is merely to forward orders for fulfillment purposes on your behalf, it is therefore your responsibility to ensure that no unnecessary order is sent to a lab, and that if any personal data is included in the orders, the lab is able to process them legally (e.g. GDRP)!
Some partner labs, like WHCC or One Vision Imaging, require a customer account with them, and it must be connected your PhotoDeck account.
Connect a pricing profile to your account with a partner lab via the pricing profile's Lab Connection tab.
The Automatically submit orders to this lab, on my behalf option activates the automated fulfillment. When enabled, as soon as an order on your website containing items linked to this pricing profile is paid (or manually marked as such), or when you manually trigger the delivery of such an order, PhotoDeck will order the corresponding fulfillment to the lab, on your behalf.
Alternatively, when the option is unchecked, you will have to manually trigger the lab order. In addition, when the option is unchecked, and for lab orders sent to you (i.e. not directly to your customers), you also have the option to allow lab orders to be grouped. If you frequently fulfill orders within a short timeframe that are all sent to you, this can help you save on shipping costs.
To view all lab orders, submitted or pending submission, go to My Business / Orders / Orders to Labs. Each order placed on your website also links to the corresponding lab order(s).
PhotoDeck's role is to automatically submit orders on your behalf to the lab of your choice.
PhotoDeck's job is completed when an order is submitted to a lab: lab order follow-up must be done directly with the lab. Each lab order carries an order ID, known to the lab.
When you have created a pricing profile connected to a partner lab, you can customize what products to offer to your customers, and their price.
A partner pricing profile includes all the products that can be offered through this lab. The first step is to determine what products you wish to sell for your images, within this pricing profile. You can add/remove products from your pricing profile at will. Once a product has been removed, it can be re-added later on.
Don't overwhelm your customers with too wide a choice: make it easy for them, only offer a few options.
You can also change the names of the products shown to your customers, as well as their description: once you add a product to your pricing profile, the description field is pre-filled with information about the product. You can also supplement this information with your own description, and even add your own images.
For each product, its price list defines what options are available to your customers, and at what price.
The column on green background defines the "base price". Each option in the table carries its own additional price.
You can elect to simplify a product by removing options: simply keep the corresponding cells empty, and the option will not be offered to your customers.
Estimated fulfillment costs for each option, provided by the lab, can be displayed via the Display estimated costs checkbox.
The system allows you to sell below estimated cost. A red background will appear for all prices that are below estimated costs.
To see the price table in action, use the Check prices facility at the bottom of the screen.
Prices can be reset all at once at any time via the Reset prices checkbox. This allows you to easily define prices based on your margin preferences and cost estimates provided by the partner lab. The exact formula is:
price = image price + print cost x (1 + markup on print / 100) + options cost x (1 + markup on options / 100)
The prices are then rounded according to your rounding preferences, set under the Settings tab.
Sizes that don't approximately match an image's ratio will not be shown to your customers for that image. If some cropping is still required, it will be done automatically by the lab.
These pricing profiles types are simple pricing lists, easy to customize, and easy for your clients to use.
You can re-order the list by simply drag-dropping rows in the list table.
When an image is delivered to your client, it is automatically resized in the size you define in the Delivery Specifications column.
Note that PhotoDeck does not display prices for sizes that are bigger than the uploaded image file.
For example, if you upload an 11 Mpixels image and if you have defined a price for 12 Mpixels, that price will not be displayed (PhotoDeck does not upsize at delivery).
Rights-Managed pricing profiles are extremely customizable. To make the most of this ability, please note the following:
Price ratios answer the following question: "how much more expensive is this option compared to the base price option?"
Consider the following example:
The price for an A3 image would then be: $100 * (300/200) = $150
The image is delivered in its original size and format, unless for web uses where a pixel size is defined. In that case, the image is resized to the corresponding size.
The images/videos in a gallery can be sold independently (as separate items), or a gallery can be sold in full (in this case all files are sold to the customer under a single price, regardless of the gallery size).
To access the pricing options for a gallery, open the gallery under and open the Prices popup.
This section attaches pre-defined pricing profiles to all files in the gallery. It simply automates the process of selecting one or more images or videos and attaching/detaching pricing profiles. Please refer to the pricing profiles documentation for more information about pricing profiles.
This allows you to sell a gallery as a whole and deliver all files under a single price. Just like for individual images, it is possible to sell the original files downloads and/or also to sell lower-resolution downloads.
In addition, it is also possible to sell the gallery as an "offline" product, i.e. a product that you will deliver outside of the system (e.g. physical product).
Multiple options to sell a full gallery
The "Buy" button will appear on the gallery (thumbnails pages) if and only if the gallery display style used by the gallery doesn't hide the gallery-wide "action buttons". In addition, this feature is only available for galleries of 500 files or less.
For digital sales (stock or downloads), when defining a price value, you can indicate that the purchased image or video must be delivered in a certain format (the Description does not matter).
You can define a size in KB/MB, in which case the image will be resized to exactly your specifications (1 Mpixel = 3 MB).
Alternatively, you can define a pixel size, as well as whether the delivered image should fit within that size, or should be just big enough so that the defined size can be cropped without resizing.
For generic web/email use, considering that a standard computer display is around 1500 pixel wide, 800 pixel-wide images are usually a good compromise.
For example, if your original image width/height ratio is 3:2:
Note that PhotoDeck does not display prices for sizes that are bigger than the uploaded image file.
PPI (pixel per inch) is a figure that indicates to a printer what physical size the image should be printed to based on its pixel size. It is just a metadata figure, that has no one-to-one relation with the size or quality of an image. For example, a "300 ppi file" (commonly called "300 dpi file"), says nothing about the quality unless a size is associated with it -- a tiny 30x30 pixel image can be printed at 300 ppi, it will just come out as a 0.1 x 0.1" print.
What really matters is the pixel size!
Note that we indicate, for your clients convenience, how big a specific image size would print if it where to be printed at a "standard" 300 ppi resolution, but it doesn't mean anything more than that.
Similarly, video pricing profiles allow to define options for delivered sizes, as well as encoding format.
This type of automated fulfillment is meant for local and flexible pro labs, and in case our off-the-shelf partner lab integration does not suit you.
You can work with any lab for automated print fulfillment, as long as they are able to receive orders via email.
If automated fulfillment is enabled for one or more items ordered on your website, the system will automatically email an order to the lab(s) in question, on your behalf, to print and ship these items.
You will receive a copy of all orders emailed to your lab(s).
Any lab that is able to accept orders by email is supported. A lab simply needs to open a free Lab account on PhotoDeck to be supported. The lab will bill you directly.
Feel free to send your lab more information about receiving orders via PhotoDeck.
You keep a direct relationship with the labs you use. PhotoDeck´s role is merely to forward orders for fulfillment purposes on your behalf, it is therefore your responsibility to ensure that no unnecessary order is sent to a lab, and that if any personal data is included in the orders, the lab is able to process them legally (e.g. GDRP)! You also need to make sure that the lab can work with the descriptions you use in your pricing profiles and your additional instructions.
The connection happens in your pricing profiles. For every Print pricing profile, you can associate a lab for fulfillment. This way, you can chose to have some products fulfilled by a lab, and others (using a different pricing profile) by another lab, automatically.
You can also associate a pricing profile with a lab for fulfillment without having orders automatically emailed to the lab. In this case, you will have to send the order manually via a dedicated button on the client´s order page in your admin space.
Make sure that the lab is able to fulfill your orders as specified !!!
To charge to shipping, select a shipping profile under the Shipping & Taxes tab. You might need to create a shipping profile first. Once the shipping profile is associated, you can define in the shipping profile settings whether you would like the lab to ship directly to your clients, or to you.
If no shipping profile is associated to the pricing profile, shipping will be free to your customers, and the lab will be instructed to ship directly to them.
A lab can also be used in connection with a Package pricing profile. In that case:
To automatically group multiple client orders into a single order to the lab:
When new customer orders are ready to be delivered (e.g. when they are paid), they will be combined into a single order to the lab, until you manually send that grouped order to the lab (via the dedicated button from any relevant customer order page).
Coupon codes are a great way to promote your products and reach new customers. It's a familiar concept with online shoppers, and setting one up for your own clients is fast and easy.
If you're giving a global discount, be careful to not apply additional discount rules for individual pricing profiles. The discounts will be added together, and you may end up giving a much bigger discount than intended.
Your clients may have only one coupon in their carts. A coupon can only be applied to items attached to the same taxes.
A shipping profile defines a method of shipping and its associated prices.
Shipping profiles must be attached to the pricing profiles they correspond to (you can reuse the same shipping profile for different pricing profiles).
You can also create and attach multiple shipping profiles to the same pricing profile, to offer various shipping options to your clients: "standard shipping", "overnight delivery"…
When using a partner lab to fulfill print orders, shipping profiles specific to the lab are available and must be used.
Partner labs can either ship products directly to your customer ("drop-ship"), or to you.
To enable/disable a shipping method, simply check/uncheck the corresponding box under the pricing profile's Tax & Shipping.
When the lab ships directly to your customers, the shipping options and prices are directly linked to what the lab will actually charge you. You can optionally also define a markup on the estimated costs.
Shipping directly to your customers is by far the simplest option.
When the lab ships to you, you can create a fully customized shipping profile to define your own prices. Note that you must then aim to recover both the shipping costs charged by the lab when sending products to you, and the costs of forwarding to your customers.
This option is useful when you must review the products before forwarding to your customers, or when your customers can physically pick-up the products from you.
This option can also be handy to ship to destinations not covered by the lab, or when the lab's drop-ship prices are prohibitive.
When a client purchases an item on your website, the system looks for Shipping Profiles attached to this item (based on its Pricing Profile).
If there are several shipping profiles available for that item, they are displayed as options, and the client can choose upon checkout. (A client can therefore split an order into different shipping methods). To offer multiple shipping options, you must create a shipping profile for each option.
Ordered items are then grouped by Shipping Profile. If the items are in different Shipping Tiers, the price for the Shipping Tier with highest Priority (usually the most expensive) is used. Shipping tiers are used to offer different prices based on size and weight (see below for details).
You have defined 2 shipping methods (ie. you've created two shipping profiles), "Standard Mail" and "Expedited delivery", and associated them to your Pricing Profile for Prints.
For both Shipping Profiles, you have defined 2 shipping tiers, "small items" and "large items".
A client purchases the following:
The shipping costs to your clients will be the sum of:
Shipping tiers are used to define what price to apply, within a shipping profile, based on the size/weight of items. (Shipping tiers are invisible to your clients. To offer multiple shipping options, you must instead create a shipping profile for each option.)
It is a good idea to align Shipping Tiers as closely as possible to the Shipping Tiers used by your Shipping carrier. For example "Small items under 1 pound" would be a good shipping tier if the shipping carrier for that Shipping Profile has defined such a tier.
When multiple items of different sizes are purchased, the underlying idea is that the biggest item(s) define the shipping cost.
To that avail, the Priority defines what tier should be used when multiple items are purchased, with different Shipping Tiers.
For example, when a client purchases items in a "large items" Shipping Tier, and items in a "small items" Shipping Tier, the Shipping price will be the one corresponding to the Shipping Tier with highest priority (normally the most expensive).
Note that the number of items purchased does not affect the price.
For each Pricing Profile, you can offer several shipping options, by linking the Pricing Profile to several Shipping Profiles.
When attaching a Shipping Profile to a Pricing Profile, you will define the default Shipping Tier to be used. For example, if you sell mostly small prints, the default Shipping Tier for a Shipping Profile would be the one corresponding to small items.
Then, for each option in the Pricing Profile, you can define a new Shipping Tier that will override the default. For example, if the default Shipping Tier is for small items, you can specify that for large prints, the Shipping Tier be changed to one for bigger items.
The Quotations system allows you to handle price requests and negotiations with the same level of automation and professionalism as with standard sales.
Your clients can request a quotation for single images, or for the images in a selection (and it works with video clips, too). You can also create new quotations for media or services (e.g. shooting session, workshop, etc…) from your admin space.
When you receive a quotation request, you can access it via your PhotoDeck account (under My Business / Orders / Quotations) to handle it: set the description (it will be used in the final receipt to the client) and price for each item. Then, send the quotation to the client.
The client can then get back to you if needed, and ultimately, add the quotation to her cart and complete the checkout in the same way as for standard stock sales. If you have allowed it, the images will be automatically delivered upon payment. For video clips, you can also specify the delivery format.
It is only possible to use the providers we have integrated with: the payment integrations are complex, as the system must be notified when payments have been made (for example, to automatically deliver digital purchases). It is not possible to easily add new payment providers.
For Paypal, all you need is inputting the email address you use to access your Paypal account. Don't forget to disable Paypal's shipping and tax calculations if you have used them in the past and now prefer to use PhotoDeck's!
charge
, checkout
et source
types). Click on the Add endpoint button to create the Webhook Signing secret; To add SOFORT or iDEAL as a payment method on your website, activate it first on your Stripe account (Payments / Settings), then create the new payment processor in PhotoDeck.
The new payment processor can then be configured in your PhotoDeck panel just like for the standard Stripe payments (see previous paragraph).
You need an account with Authorize.Net to access their Server Integration Method (SIM) service. Note that Authorize.Net serves only US clients and only supports US dollars.
http://[your website URL]/payment/notify
and http://[your website URL]/m/payment/notify
, for example: http://alexsmith.photodeck.com/payment/notify
and http://alexsmith.photodeck.com/m/payment/notify
You can accept any form of payment outside of the system, by using an "offline payment" payment processor as an alternative for checkout. See this example:
Example payment page with 2 alternatives. The descriptive text and the buttons are customizable.
Your offline payment instructions. The photographer is notified when the client clicks on "Accept".
Once an offline payment is received, a single click on Mark order as paid in your admin space will initiate the automated delivery of any licensed image file present in the order.
PhotoDeck sends the client an email with links to download the images. The images are resized to the purchased size for RF uses, as well as for those RM uses where a pixel size is defined. The images are sent in the same format they have been uploaded in (JPG or TIF), and all the metadata present at upload is preserved.
Videos are re-encoded according to the order specifications.
RAW images are delivered as they were uploaded, without any change.
If the order contains many images, a zip archive download is offered.
A PDF copy of your own Terms and Conditions is also included if you have specified them (under My Business / Legal).
Alternatively, the client can download the images via your website, from his secure area.
This is a selection of images from your website.
They allow your clients to select images, save that selection, and share it with others, along with comments.
PhotoDeck enables you to choose the most appropriate term for your clients: you might use Selection, Lightbox or even Favorites. Technically, this is the same feature, but some would prefer a different wording.
When this feature is enabled, you will find the selections created on your site under My Images & Videos / (your website) / Selections.
A new selection is created as soon as a visitor clicks for the first time on an Add to selection (or, depending on selected term, Add to lightbox or Add to favorites) button. To be able to access the selection later on, a client must save it to his account (i.e. create an account on your site if needed).
Once a selection is saved, it receives a unique URL and can be shared.
Clients with a PhotoDeck Client account can save and manage multiple selections. From the selection page on your website, they can switch easily between selections they have created, and selections that you (or other visitors) have shared with them by email.
When a logged-in client shares a selection, the recipient must log in to edit it (everyone with the link can view the selection).
When sharing a selection, a logged-in client can choose to keep the selection "read-only". This way, the person with whom the selection is shared can view but not modify the selection.
Click on Authorizations to open the access control panel. You can add new clients to the access list, and indicate whether they are allowed to modify the selection.
An email will be sent to all selected customers, guiding them through the account creation process when needed.
If you don't want customers to have to log in, you can also leave the selection in public access, and email separately the direct link to the selection on your website. You can edit the selection access rights at any time via the selection authorization panel.
If the images are not in any gallery, or if you want the customer to be able to make his own sub-selections, it is preferable to create a client gallery instead of a selection.
Your own visits to your website are included in the stats.
The Date is displayed in your local timezone (adjustable via ME / My Profile).
Origin is the estimated location of the visitor. It is based on the IP address. Note that advanced Internet users can easily spoof their location.
Pages is the number of pages viewed during that visit.
Views is the number of time the pricing page was accessed or refreshed. If the pricing profile is a multi-option profile (with drop-downs), every change in selection in a drop-down triggers a new calculation and adds to this number.
It is normal to see significantly less visits reported via Google Analytics or StatCounter.
Google Analytics uses Javascript for tracking, so visitors need to have Javascript enabled for their visits to be recorded. In addition, it is easy for visitors to forbid Google Analytics tracking.
On the other hand, PhotoDeck stats are based on server-side access logs, and that may include visits by automated robots (although we don't include in the stats the robots we know about).
PhotoDeck logs include these automated robots we don't know about. Having one's site crawled by automated robots is normal and is not necessarily an indicator of suspicious activity -- after all, the Internet is public. If image theft is a concern, make sure you have an adequate watermark on your images. Your private galleries and high-res files are always protected.
No. It is not possible to reliably know where a visitor is located, and IP-address based filters only give a false sense of security. It is easy to spoof one's IP address / location, for example using a virtual private network (VPN), which is nowadays commonplace.
Team members are additional users who operate your account in your name and under your responsibility. They are managed from My Dashboard / My team.
Team members' access can be restricted to specific parts of your account. Note that these rights are permissive, with the objective of allowing team members to work effectively with as little friction as possible, and it is essential that access is provided only to trusted persons.
The account holder can do everything allowed by the subscription. Only he/she is able to add and manage team members, manage the account subscriptions, accept the Terms and Conditions, create/delete media libraries and websites.
You can add team members simply to perform specific tasks on your images and website -- or you can set up multiple media libraries and websites and give different accesss to different team members.
This set of access rights allows the team member to access your media library (or libraries) to the extent you determine.
Like a virtual hard disk, a media library is the repository where files are uploaded (and from there, optionally published to your website).
The rights apply equally to all files in the media library. If further segregation is required, for example if some team members should not see all files, you can create different media libraries.
For example, photo agencies might create a media library per photographer, while brands might create a media library per department and creative agencies one per project. Please refer to the documentation on media libraries for further details!
A team member can be given access to several media libraries, with different access rights for each of them.
The following rights are available for every website on your account.
Website media
Allows access to all files on the website, including (un)publishing in existing galleries, assigning pricing, sending originals.
Galleries
Allows for example to create / delete galleries and to set their authorizations and prices.
Users and orders
Allows for example access to orders and their related media files, as well as to clients/stakeholder accounts and data.
Business administration
Allows access for example to the stats, e-commerce setup, legal setup (terms, cookies policy, mailings acceptance) and mailings.
Custom pages
Allows to create / delete custom pages, edit the website menu and access the Graphics Library
Website customization
Allows access for example to all design customization, the Graphics Library, analytics and SEO setup, redirections. Does NOT allow to create or delete websites.
When media files within an account must internally be split into different "buckets", new media libraries should be created.
This allows for example:
All media libraries share your account's storage quota. Team members can be given access to multiple media libraries.
An account with two websites and three media libraries
Each media library has its own:
Websites and media libraries are fully independent. It is possible to publish to the same website gallery from multiple media libraries.
On the gallery's admin page:
The advanced proofing, delivery and e-commerce features are available to photo agencies and collectives in the same way as for individual photographers.
In this section, we focus on how to use PhotoDeck's multi-user features in the context of multiple photographers or contributors uploading images and video clips to a single agency account. Access to these features requires a subscription plan that includes them.
Access to a PhotoDeck account can be given to team members. Each contributing photographer should therefore be added as a team member to be able to access the agency account with his/her own PhotoDeck credentials.
Each team member has a set of personal user rights, as defined by the account holder, that can allow him/her for example to publish images to the agency website(s), manage orders and clients, access the website(s) administrative features, etc...
By default, an account has a single media library. A media library is like a virtual hard disk, it is the repository where files are uploaded (and from there, optionally published to a website). The team member access rights settings include rights on the media library, and it is for example possible to restrict actions to seeing the files in the media library and to uploading new files, but without allowing deletion.
The team member's rights on a media library apply to all the media library's files. In the case of agencies and collectives with independent photographers, it can be beneficial to have a stronger segregation between the files from different photographers. In this case, a new media library can be created for each photographer, so that a photographer can only see his own files, while still having full access on them. Files from multiple media libraries can be published onto the same website and into the same gallery.
Media from different libraries can be published on the same galleries. The colored tag indicates what library each media belongs to.
Please refer to the documentation on team members and to the documentation on multiple media libraries for further details!
If you sell or license files via your PhotoDeck website, the order history's CSV export includes for each ordered file the name of its media library, as well as its Author and Copyright metadata, in addition to its price. This can be used to easily allocate sales to photographers or contributors.
Access your account and billing preferences via Dashboard / My membership. From these pages you can renew, upgrade or close your account, purchase additional options such as expanded storage, as well as set up auto-renewal.
Please see this page for a description of the different plans.
From the Subscription & add-ons page, you can easily renew your subscription in 1, 3, and 12 month intervals (3 and 12 months for some plans and add-ons). If you have purchased optional add-ons, the system will also renew them if possible.
You can make your life a little easier by setting up auto-renewal via the Billing preferences section. Auto-renewal kicks in 1 week before the expiry of a subscription, and also includes other subscriptions (e.g. add-ons) set to expire before the end of the new subscription. Of course, you can cancel auto-renewal at any time from this section as well.
You will receive a simple payment receipt by email for every purchase. For proper book-keeping purposes, invoices in PDF format can be found under My Orders.
Use the Buy / terminate add-ons button to add additional features to your cart. These include for example expanded storage and the multi-language option.
Note that the same add-on cannot be purchased multiple times. For example, if you already have subscribed to a 40GB extension add-on, you cannot purchase a second one, you must pick the 100GB add-on instead (and let the 40GB add-on expire).
You can upgrade/downgrade your subscription at any time using the All plans button. Note that changes are immediate when you switch to a different plan. If you downgrade, please do make sure you understand what features and customization you will be losing!
You can close your account at any time via the subscription management page in your admin space.
With the "Tell-your-Friends" program, you get rewarded for helping the PhotoDeck community grow, all while helping your friends save some money.
Here is what your coupon code is about:
(Your coupon code is displayed on your dashboard. You must have previously purchased a subscription to be eligible.)
Here are a few ideas:
Have more ideas? Share them on our Facebook page!