In looking for a way to create a personal website to display some of the photos I've taken, I came across some very convincing material on Adobe Portfolio. It's free (if you subscribe to various Adobe packages), and from the little I've seen it seems to be extremely easy to set up, not to mention the lovely templates. Granted it doesn't have a lot of the features professional photographers who want to sell their artwork need, but for hobbyists it seems like a no-brainer. The question is: why isn't it more popular than I believe it is? Am I missing something here? Are there major issues with it that I'm not aware of? If you have used it, I'd love to hear about your experience.
(PS: wanted to add that it seems to be so much easier to use than to set up your own site using wordpress, or using easy-to-use but expensive platforms like squarspace.)
I think it’s not more popular because people don’t know about it. It’s a great option though, and I would not choose a wordpress site over portfolio under any circumstances! I can’t think of anything portfolio won’t do that you might need for your website.
Not sure how poplar it is or isn’t or why. You are correct, it does not have have the selling features that something like Zenfolio. I had Zenfolio but it was overkill for my needs. I’ve been using Portfolio for 6 years and I’ve never had any issues. Works like advertised. Nice little addition to the photo plan for the price.
I've been using Zenfolio for 13 years and have been quite satisfied. Yeah, its overkill for my (nonprofessional) needs, but I've got a good (legacy) deal at $40/year for unlimited photos.. I purchased Adobe's 20GB Photography plan about a month ago, primarily for Lightroom Classic, but I spent a couple hours playing around with Portfolio thinking it might be a replacement for Zenfolio, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get a clean look similar to what I have in zenfolio. I'll try again some time, but I've been too busy recently, processing photos and wasting time watching the world cup and the NCAA women's volleyball tournament.
@Zenon Char your site looks pretty nice. Would you mind shareing what theme you use and/or any other info about how you set it up?
ShotByTom wrote:
I think it’s not more popular because people don’t know about it. It’s a great option though, and I would not choose a wordpress site over portfolio under any circumstances! I can’t think of anything portfolio won’t do that you might need for your website.
Your website looks fabulous. Did you make that using Adobe Portfolio? If so, what theme are you using? And how did you get the store in there?
Zenon Char wrote:
Not sure how poplar it is or isn’t or why. You are correct, it does not have have the selling features that something like Zenfolio. I had Zenfolio but it was overkill for my needs. I’ve been using Portfolio for 6 years and I’ve never had any issues. Works like advertised. Nice little addition to the photo plan for the price.
Thanks for confirming my initial reaction to Portfolio. Nice website. You have some great pics.
I recently looked at Adobe Portfolio ... was pleased by it (work in progress). Seemed like you could get a variety of layout with reasonable ease. It likely has its limits, but staying within that context, it seems like a hidden gem.
vbnut wrote:
I've been using Zenfolio for 13 years and have been quite satisfied. Yeah, its overkill for my (nonprofessional) needs, but I've got a good (legacy) deal at $40/year for unlimited photos.. I purchased Adobe's 20GB Photography plan about a month ago, primarily for Lightroom Classic, but I spent a couple hours playing around with Portfolio thinking it might be a replacement for Zenfolio, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get a clean look similar to what I have in zenfolio. I'll try again some time, but I've been too busy recently, processing photos and wasting time watching the world cup and the NCAA women's volleyball tournament.
@Zenon Char@ your site looks pretty nice. Would you mind shareing what theme you use and/or any other info about how you set it up?...Show more →
Honestly it has been 6 years so I can't remember how I set it up. I just kinda mucked through it until I got it the way I liked it.
Some general info. Portfolio is integrated with LrC. As we know LrC requires local file storage with an option to sync to the cloud. If you sync it only sends smart previews, nor your files. You can sync collections and download them into Portfolio. I have not done so yet as I just prefer to upload single files from my desktop to Portfolio.
I don't know anything about Lr (cloud version) and Portfolio.
I've used it for a long time, but very, very simplistically. Each gallery just has a link to a google gallery of images which are trivial to update (just drag and drop into them from file explorer) so I only ever edit the website if I want to add/delete or change the location of a gallery.
I've been using Portfolio for the past couple of weeks. It is very easy to set up and use. But there are major limitations. Although the layouts are pleasing, it has very few of them and there's no way to create your own. In addition, you cannot have collections within a collection. So if you wanted to segment your work by landscape and wildlife, etc., and then by theme or geography (for instance), I haven't figured out a way to do that.
For those who don't need anything more than a simple structure this is a great free resource to use. A no-brainer, really. Far better than mucking about with the confounding, byzantine, bug-ridden world of Wordpress.
Now the question for others out there is: what are the reasonably-priced alternatives that offer more than flexibility than Portfolio, but far easier to use than Wordpress? As a frame of reference, I consider Squarespace to be expensive for a hobbyist who has no interest in selling his/her work.
The obvious step-up comparison is SmugMug. I pay $110/yr for a "Power" account. SmugMug is focused on photographers, both amateur and professional (although pros who want to sell on the web site need to pay more). SmugMug has a lot of easy to manage well designed photography oriented layouts, a good LR Publish module, and galleries are customizable. The customer support is superb. I have been a satisfied customer since shortly after they started business twenty years ago. But, it's not free.
Adobe Portfolio looks like a good option. It offers some good looking photo layouts, but with less flexibility and customization. Most photographers don't need either. And it's free with the LR/PS photography plan.
dclark wrote:
The obvious step-up comparison is SmugMug. I pay $110/yr for a "Power" account. SmugMug is focused on photographers, both amateur and professional (although pros who want to sell on the web site need to pay more). SmugMug has a lot of easy to manage well designed photography oriented layouts, a good LR Publish module, and galleries are customizable. The customer support is superb. I have been a satisfied customer since shortly after they started business twenty years ago. But, it's not free.
Adobe Portfolio looks like a good option. It offers some good looking photo layouts, but with less flexibility and customization. Most photographers don't need either. And it's free with the LR/PS photography plan. ...Show more →
Smugmug is lovely indeed. Can you use your own domain (e.g., www.myphotos.com)? They make no mention of it on their website.
FYI, Zenfolio currently has 50% off all annual plans when you subscribe by December 31th (the discount is only for the first year).
I haven't used it, but Zenfolio supports custom domains. I'd be surprised if SmugMug doesn't too. In both cases it might depend on which plan you get (i.e. how much you pay).
My legacy Zenfolio plan has unlimited storage, but it looks like the current plans all have limits. SmugMug appears to have unlimited storage for their lowest priced plan.
Both SmugMug and Zenfolio have free trials. I tried both them them when I decided to stop managing my own website 13 years ago.
bvphotos wrote:
Although the layouts are pleasing, it has very few of them and there's no way to create your own. In addition, you cannot have collections within a collection. So if you wanted to segment your work by landscape and wildlife, etc., and then by theme or geography (for instance), I haven't figured out a way to do that.
While I agree that Portfolio seems to be more limited than other commercial photo-hosting sites, Zenon Char's (Portfolio) site demonstrates that it is possible to have collections within collections. Maybe it depends on which layout you start with.
vbnut wrote:
While I agree that Portfolio seems to be more limited than other commercial photo-hosting sites, Zenon Char's (Portfolio) site demonstrates that it is possible to have collections within collections. Maybe it depends on which layout you start with.
It appears that you can add a LR album to a collection, but not a collection to another one. So, I guess you can get 2 levels. Which should be sufficient for most photographers.
Yes, at this time I am pointing 4 custom domains (e.g. daveclark.photos) at my Smugmug web site. You can do this with any hosted web site, but the key is that Smugmug, and many others, will also adopt the custom domain so that is what appears in the URL of the browser. If more than one custom domain is directed to the account, only one can be adopted and appear in URL of the browser. For example, davidclark.photos goes to the smugmug site but becomes daveclark.photos. This is pretty standard for web site hosting services. I assume Adobe Portfolio does the same.
If I was selling I'd probably be using Zenfolio. I once paid $150 CND for it and it was overkill, but I really liked the site as it was easy to set up. Now I see the least expensive plan is Portfolio on sale for $4 a month CND. That sale had deadlines but I see they removed. That is only for 1 year and then it goes to $8. Still not that bad but just to display images the Adobe Photo plan is the best solution for me.
