PhotoDeck is written by my friend Jef Maion, a brilliant French photographer and IT guru. It is set-up to be YOUR stock site. As an example: Let say an art director went to your site and wanted to see your stock collection of images that you did not place or were not accepted into the Getty or Corbis collections. They can easily do that by clicking on the area of your site that you have set-up as stock. It is completely seamless.
Set up a page on your site called archive or stock or whatever you choose to call it. When you set up your photodeck page – you can make it look exactly like your web site. You use CNAME to have the address as archive.acephotographer.com. Your client never leaves your site nor are you sending them off to Getty or another agency. Take a look at the video and the site. This is a killer approach written by someone who knows how to create a site that is elegant, functional and simple. http://www.photodeck.com Videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/jfmphoto
Basically you are creating your own fully ecommerce stock site with delivery of your images directly from your site. It is clean, simple, easier to use than the other options and it works. You keep your client on your site and offer something unique to them without them having to jump ship (your site) to go look for your stock images.
Cameron,
Thank you so much for this. To give credit where credit is due, the technical implementation is the responsibility of a _real_ tech guru, there is no way I would have been able to build such a robust service by myself
J-F
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Cameron,
Thanks for bring this to the attention of the many photographers who can surely benefit from this software. When will it come out of beta and be available for all?
BY
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Cameron Davidson Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 12:13 am
Bill
Not sure when it comes out of BETA. Best to try it out while it is free. I am going to test it alongside my PS account. I’ll keep the PS account for prints and some sales. No need to change everything. I think Jef has done a great job with this. Time will tell.
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Cameron,
Do you see this as a better way to go than Photoshelter? I haven’t looked into the details of what you are proposing, but it sounds like you are favoring it because “you are creating your own fully ecommerce stock site with delivery of your images directly from your site”.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Thanks,
Paul
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Cameron Davidson Reply:
May 17th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
I like and respect the PhotoShelter Team. Grover is a good guy and I could call him tomorrow and speak directly with him. I have a PhotoShelter site and will continue to use it. Jef Maion, the creator of PhotoDeck is also a friend and I would like to see him succeed with this very focused project. It is different than PhotoShelter and I like his lean and clean approach.
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Cameron Davidson Reply:
June 13th, 2010 at 6:28 am
I am not suggesting one over the other. PhotoShelter is the leader and the just made some pretty incredible changes to their structure and web presence. I am in the process of changing my photoshelter site to reflect these new positive changes.
Photodeck is in Beta and they are working hard on creating a pretty amazing, very focused type of site.
They both work well. I plan to use them both and do not prefer one over the other. I know the owners of PhotoDeck and PhotoShelter. Having well-designed stock sites for photographers is a win-win for the industry.
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As one of the photographers who was originally contacted by Photodeck to be part of the Beta project, I am much impressed with how the whole thing works. Photodeck took on board a couple of my suggestions and were prompt to come up with answers and solved a couple of problems. I hope this succeeds for both Photodeck and photographers and I look forward to it coming out of Beta and to be available to other photographers.
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Thanks for the write up. of course it is a bit subjective, but at least both platforms are your friends
One year later, what would you say about both platforms now? PS still charges more for licensing, but does PD offer print services in the UK and US? I am ok to split this functionality as I don’t think the same buyer needs the same product, but it would be a pain to have to pay 2 monthly fees if I want to offer prints as well as licenses.
Cheers, Harry
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Cameron Davidson Reply:
June 26th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Harry
I still use both of them. I like the folks and service at PhotoShelter and of course Jef at PhotoDeck is on top of some very interesting html approaches.
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