500px Awesome Membership
Discussion
Dogsey said:
Any of you guys on here use 500px awesome membership as your website? I'm currently looking at getting one set up and this seems the best vfm / ease of setup / professional look that I've found. Any negatives with using it?
Haven't thought about using it as my website but considering upgrading and adopting 500px as my new image host. Would mean I could dump my flickr pro status and just retain my 180 most interesting shots with space for a few new ones now and again purely to maintain a presence. Flickr - dying but not dead yet IMO.I have a free account with them and have some images uploaded. I do like the look of it very much. I haven't really explored to check out the paid option, but I think it's definitely worth considering. Overall quality of images is absolutely no comparison to flickr! The only thing I don't like about it is that every image has to have a title (which to me makes it a bit messy), so I've ended up using "." for a title for all my images as it seems to be the best option!
Edited by Gemm on Tuesday 3rd July 20:57
flat-planedCrank said:
Not sure I quite got it though?
It's just a posh flickr, like flickr explore every day 
My friend has the Plus membership, as he didn't need another domain name to manage! Not really looked into selling shots yet, although there are some enabled to buy.
I do like it a lot, different class from flickr in my opinion.
I have a portfolio made with 500px. It looks really slick, but the options are a bit limited - e.g. you can't change colours or fonts, but you can have an image for the title so there is some scope to make it more individual. It's really easy to upload/organise the portfolio, and then view it instantly, and it allows you to forward your domain name and track the stas with google analytics.
The UI could be better, I have the side 'scrolling' one and the motion (when dragging with the mouse) is a not fluid like an ipad gallery, and the < and > buttons are on the images which is slightly annoying. Also I wouldn't have the small square icons in the top right corner but there you go. Basically, if you can live with a few gripes, then it's a very quick and easy way to setup a very professional looking portfolio. Whether there are easier/quicker/cheaper/better ways out there I couldn't tell you, but a friend of mine uses tumblr to do a similar thing...
As for the main site; it's good but again not perfect. I find the square thumnails with the title blocks can really kill an image, as can the odd crops on the 'flow' pages, and given that it's supposed to be about showing your best work, I find it frustrating not to be able to re-arrange the order of the images on your profile page (so it is just like flickr's photostream in that respect). Also it's not that different from flickr in the 'pat each other on the back' department, I've made a few critical but constructive comments, often the recipient just deletes them, leaving only the vacuous 'great shot', 'i'm in love with this one' type comments(!). Having said that, it's still a lot less crappy than flickr can be, and the work and ethic is a much higher standard....for now!
The UI could be better, I have the side 'scrolling' one and the motion (when dragging with the mouse) is a not fluid like an ipad gallery, and the < and > buttons are on the images which is slightly annoying. Also I wouldn't have the small square icons in the top right corner but there you go. Basically, if you can live with a few gripes, then it's a very quick and easy way to setup a very professional looking portfolio. Whether there are easier/quicker/cheaper/better ways out there I couldn't tell you, but a friend of mine uses tumblr to do a similar thing...
As for the main site; it's good but again not perfect. I find the square thumnails with the title blocks can really kill an image, as can the odd crops on the 'flow' pages, and given that it's supposed to be about showing your best work, I find it frustrating not to be able to re-arrange the order of the images on your profile page (so it is just like flickr's photostream in that respect). Also it's not that different from flickr in the 'pat each other on the back' department, I've made a few critical but constructive comments, often the recipient just deletes them, leaving only the vacuous 'great shot', 'i'm in love with this one' type comments(!). Having said that, it's still a lot less crappy than flickr can be, and the work and ethic is a much higher standard....for now!
ian in lancs said:
be careful! They have disabled right click but neodownloader can harvest hires images from it.
I've heard this, but I think you can do it with flick also...The only way to guarantee protection of high-res images is to not upload them in the first place. For the few pictures I put on 500px, I re-export them from Lightroom @ 900px on the long edge (the maximum size 500px will display). This also allows you to control the sharpening and resizing rather than rely on the website to make a good job of it.
ian in lancs said:
be careful! They have disabled right click but neodownloader can harvest hires images from it.
Even if right click is disabled, anyone can still download them anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it. It's actually a bit annoying as I couldn't download my own image onto my phone the other day, so I had to bluetooth it! 
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