A Dummies’ Guide to SmugMug Photo Uploading

SmugMug is a popular ‘paid’ digital photo sharing website. Chris MacAskill (father) and Don MacAskill (son) started the original company as a video game-oriented web service in February 2002. With a change in focus small portion of their video game website was spun into a photo sharing service called SmugMug. By November 2002, it was turned into a company that backs up your precious memories so they’re safe and sound.

Today, SmugMug is one of the biggest photo sharing service available in space. In July 2013, SmugMug was rolled out a totally redesigned website, which was ‘rebuilt from the ground up’. SmugMug membership charges vary between $40 (for a basic account) to $300(for a business account) per year for their service. SmugMug provide its users an unlimited storage, advanced privacy preferences and the ability to share via email and various social networks.

Store and Share Your Photos on SmugMug

Uploading photos and videos to SmugMug is really very easy. The simple drag and drop is by far the easiest mechanism to upload a bunch of photos or videos. Here’s how you can proceed:

1. Login to your SmugMug account

2. Click “My Homepage” at the top of the page.

3. Click the “Upload” tab and select an Existing Gallery to upload your photos to. or Click “New Gallery” if you want to create a new gallery to store your photos.

4. Drag and drop photos from your computer to the “Drop ‘em here” icon.

5. Alternatively, you can click the “Browse” button to use a traditional file browser to select photos stored on your computer.

6. Click “I’m Done Uploading”.

7. Select the photo you wish to share from your newly created gallery.

8. Select whether to share your photo via email, via a SmugMug URL, or a social network or bookmarking website.

9. Clicking “Be social” will allow you to share your photos via Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, or Tumblr.

Store and Share Your Videos on SmugMug

1. Login to your SmugMug account

2. Click “My Homepage” at the top of the page.

3. Click the “Upload” tab and select an Existing Gallery to upload your videos to. or Click “New Gallery” if you want to create a new gallery to store your videos.

4. Drag and drop videos from your computer to the “Drop ‘em here” icon.

5. Alternatively, you can click the “Browse” button to use a traditional file browser to select videos stored on your computer.

6. Click “I’m Done Uploading”.

7. Click the video you wish to share from your gallery.

8. Select whether to share your video via email, via a SmugMug URL, or a social network or bookmarking website.

9. Clicking “Be social” will allow you to share your videos via Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, or Tumblr.

What type of files to upload to SmugMug

You can add JPEG, GIF, and PNG files to your SmugMug account. To add larger files and other file types like RAWs, TIFFs, and PSDs you need to have SmugVault.

SmugVault is an additional service to your current SmugMug account and it allows you to store anything for a small additional charge. The files which are not supported by SmugMug can be stored here in SmugVault and accessed in your SmugMug galleries.

You can upload video files to SmugMug with a size limit to 3 GB up to 20 minutes long. Anything beyond that will have to be uploaded at SmugVault.

Upload photos from Lightroom to SmugMug

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography software program developed by Adobe Systems. The software runs on both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms. Lightroom facilitates users to store digital photographs in large quantities and also allows them to do any post production editing. In all, Lightroom is a combines photo management & editing features. Lightroom is meant for people or photographers who take digital photography seriously.

Uploading from Lightroom to SmugMug

1. Open Lightroom and you should see SmugMug Logo under Publish Services.

2. Click ‘Set Up’ on the bar to open Lightroom Publishing Manager and highlight SmugMug.

3. Now you should see two buttons here: ‘New to SmugMug’ and ‘Authorize Account’.

a. Clicking on ‘New to SmugMug’ will allow you to create a new SmugMug account, if you don’t have one.

b. Clicking on ‘Authorize Account’ would allow SmugMug to transmit your account info to Lightroom. Verify your account.

4. Back to Lightroom. Configure your settings in the ‘Publishing Manager window’. This allows you to choose how you want your files to be named, resized, etc. on each upload.

5. Click ‘Save’ when you’re done. If you kept Sync Hierarchy checked, Lightroom will take a few minutes to pull in your SmugMug galleries. Your galleries will appear at the left, arranged by Category.

6. Its time to edit. Open the gallery you want to edit in Lightroom’s ‘Develop Pane’. And save.

Publishing to SmugMug

1. Now that you have imported photos into Lightroom and edited in the ‘Develop pane’ as required. it is time to publish them to SmugMug.

2. Create new galleries by right-clicking a ‘Category name’ on the list and selecting “Create Gallery.” When you publish your photos to SmugMug, the new galleries will be created on your site. Edit Gallery settings if you wish to.

3. Once done, you are now ready to upload.
4. Simply drag the images from your ‘Library’ into the ‘SmugMug’ gallery you want on the left.

5. Click ‘Publish’ button in the ‘Library pane’ and watch your photos get uploaded to SmugMug.

Upload from Picasa to SmugMug

Picasa in a Digital photo organizer designed to organize and edit digital photos. It is a photo sharing website as well. Picasa was originally created by Lifescape, Inc. in 2002. It was later acquired by Google in 2004. Picasa offers an array of features to its users. Right from importing, to tracking, facial recognition, tagging, sorting and several editing facilities.

Here’s how you can upload photos from Picasa to SmugMug:

1. Add a ‘SmugMug’ button to your Picasa account. So that you can directly upload picasa photos to your SmugMug galleries.

2 Click here to download ‘picasa2smugMug.pbz’ file and Click yes when it ask if you want to install a button:

3. Add the button within Picasa:

4. Select photos from your Picasa album that you want to upload to SmugMug. Then click the teal ‘SmugMug button’. You’ll be asked for the login to your SmugMug account.

5. Fill in your account information.

6. Select an existing SmugMug gallery, or create a new one to upload photos from Picasa.

7. Click the upload button and you’re done. You have successfully uploaded your picasa photos to SmugMug.

Upload from Flickr to SmugMug

Transferring or migrating Flickr photos to SMugMug is done through third party softwares. Here is the list of apps you can use to transfer photos between online photo sharing services. The easiest tool available is PicBackMan. Its fast, it is easy and it automates the upload process. Try it if you haven’t yet.

Upload from SmugMug to Facebook

1. Select photo you wish to share from your SmugMug gallery.

2. Select whether to share your photo via email, via a SmugMug URL, or a social network or bookmarking website. Select ‘Social networks’

3. Clicking “Be social” will allow you to share your photos on Facebook.

4. Disable the Easy Sharing option in the gallery settings. (so that no one can share your photos)

5. Choose location where you’d like to post photos from the drop-down menu.

6. You can share the photo on your wall or to any Fan pages you own.

7. You can also click ‘Post to Wall’ button to authorize the connection and share your message.

Upload to SmugMug from Photoshop

It is quite easy to upload photos to SmugMug from varied Adobe products. You can either use Photoshop CS3 Bridge or Lightroom. We have already explained the process of uploading from Lightroom to SmugMug. Here is the process to upload photos from Photoshop CS3 Bridge to SmugMug.

1. Use the Simple Uploader on SmugMug

2. Drag ‘.jpg’ files directly from Bridge, to the uploader. Or

3. You can upload directly from within Bridge.

How to upload to SmugMug from within CS3 Bridge

1. Open Photoshop CS3 Bridge

2. Click Tools>Photoshop Services>Automatically check for services.

3. If you don’t see the Photoshop Services option, open your Bridge CS3 Preferences, then highlight “Startup Scripts”.

4. You should see a checkbox that says “Photoshop Services”. Check this box, click Ok, then restart Bridge.

5. Highlight a photo or photos in Bridge, then click Publish Photos with SmugMug.

6. You’ll see in your Tools > Photoshop Services > Online Portfolios and Galleries > Publish Photos with SmugMug

7. You will get a login screen

8. Log in, and then you will see your galleries, you can choose an existing gallery or make a new one.

PicBackMan’s SmugMug Uploader

PicBackMan is the best and probably No.1 SmugMug bulk uploader that backs up 1000s of photos and videos to your SmugMug account, whether its the SmugMug Free Account or SmugMug Pro Account. PicBackMan is the best available solution to upload photos and videos from SmugMug to various other photo storing and photo sharing services.

Here’s why PicBackMan is No. 1 SmugMug Uploader

1. It facilitates bulk upload photos and videos to SmugMug

2. Moving photos from SmugMug to Picasa is dead easy using PicBackMan.

3. PicBackMan allow users a quick download from SmugMug to your computers.

4. PicBackMan truly automates the whole Photo & Video Backup process.

5. PicBackMan allows you to easily manage multiple SmugMug accounts

6. With the help of PicBackMan you can easily move photos and videos from SmugMug to Flickr

7. You can move photos and videos from SmugMug to SkyDrive / Onedrive

8. Move photos and videos from SmugMug to Dropbox

9. Move photos and videos from SmugMug to Box

10. Move photos and videos from SmugMug to Photobucket

11. Move photos and videos from SmugMug to Facebook

12. Move photos and videos from SmugMug to Google Drive