Zenfolio.com

2006 May 3 by Josh

Zenfolio.com Screenshot Last summer we were privileged to work with the great folks at Zenfolio, a professional photography hosting service that has just recently launched. While it shares some similarities with Flickr, Zenfolio shines for the professional (or "pro-sumer") photographer.

With Zenfolio, photographers can upload their photos, categorize them, add metadata, and organize them into galleries for viewing by the general public. Soon, photographers will be able to sell prints and digital files to the public from their Zenfolio accounts as well.

In general, the technology under the hood is pretty beefy. There is a lot of polish, glitz, and sophistication underneath the gallery layouts. Here are some of my favorite galleries:

Costa Rica 2 by Natalia Valik
Portfolio by Mike Peyzner
Big Island of Hawaii by Juliya Rubin
Australia by Sasha Yevelev

Be sure to resize your browser window while viewing the galleries. The loading and reflowing of photos is pretty darn slick. Also, check out some individual photos as well. The responsiveness of the service is amazing. Hopefully it will retain the gee-wow factor as more people hit Zenfolio's servers.

For our part, we designed the vast majority of the Zenfolio web-application, as well as the public-facing gallery templates and pages. Of course, you'll find plenty of our icon work in their as well. If you're a photography lover in any sense, you need to check out Zenfolio.

Chris Harrison says

Looks great. I love how everything scales with browser resizes. Very slick. Nice work overall.

Brutal says

Great site!

(Though the link at the end of the article is wrong - it reads http://www.zenfoliio.com)

vuong says

I briefly saw the contents. I have to ask: What makes this better than Deviant Art aside from the clutterness and ad-driven?

Nice to see the resize feature, though.

-V-

Josh Williams says

Ahh, the sticky "iii" in my keyboard. Link fixed.

Vuong - I haven't spent much time on Deviant Art in a long while, so I'm probably not the best one to comment here. That said, Zenfolio does cut the clutter and ads. AND, it is specifically tailored to the needs of pro photographers. Zenfolio is probably not for everybody, but for those looking to display their high-end photography to clients, Zenfolio offers a great solution.

Miko W. says

The images load superbly fast. Love how the enlargement of images work.

George says

Link on the top is wrong too.

vuong says

Josh: I revisited Zen and agreed your assessment of its market. The fee page reveals that it is nothing more than a template hosting site for those not familiar with basic or advance codings.

I think it will become successful as more digital mid-range and advance cameras are sold.

How great do you think this will diminish the demands for hiring web designers to put together a photo gallery-like package?

Hank says

How does it compare to fluxiom.com? Is it a similar type of digital asset management product?

Josh Williams says

Hank -- It meets a very different need than Fluxiom. If you'd like to share files (any type of file) with your colleagues, etc., then Fluxiom is a great choice. Zenfolio is specifically tailored to the needs of photographers, so the tools it provides meet those needs.

Hank says

@Josh

Then how does this compare to Extensis Portfolio?

http://www.extensis.com/en/products/asset_management/index.jsp;jsessionid=GJZ2JIIYR3PTTLAQAAUARSQ

Thanks in advance.

Hank

Charlie says

Found another very simliar site. http://www.PhooDoo.com . Looks close, but you get your own actual domain name instead of the subdomain.

Bernhard says

Extensis Portfolio is a Windows Photo Management software of which there are many others like Picasa (though, that runs on Linux quite nice too) and more are coming.

Zenfolio is an online services which you can access from recent (javascript-enabled) browsers such as the free Firefox, indepentent of which computer you are using at the moment or where you are. It's completely different kind of thing, plus you can use it show show off your photos to others or/and to the public over the internet that way by sending an email and it has dozens of great features - didn't try it yet but that'S just from the public information on the site and from viewing a photographers page.

Phoodoo.com is a nice site offering photographer a gallery and a photo shop, but these do not even have a slideshow, and with the unlimited space subscription to zenfoilio, you can also use your own domain.

Again, Phodoo is a quite different gadget for a different need.

Erasmus says

A clean fast is better than a dirty breakfast... Erasmus

Felix says

A hungry belly has no ears... Felix

Felix says

Small rain lays great dust... Felix