Online Printing API?

Question

tl;dr: Is there a way to have SmugMug-like + printing service integration hosted on your own website? (The API to the printing service is the piece I am missing)

I am looking for an automated ordering process, but SmugMug and co are not really to my liking because I want it to be self-hosted and 100% customizable.

What I have in mind:

1. I upload pictures to my website as an album or for a specific client shoot.
2. Client goes to the album
3. Client orders some prints
4. PayPal / other means of payment approve the money is received
5. I send the specifically sharpened/resized image for the output format to the printing-service (automatically, I don't have to do it myself for every order)
6. The images are printed and shipped to the customer. The printer charges me.

I can code 1-4 myself. The problem I have is what printing service offers an API so I can automate the ordering completely?

Solutions like a shopping cart with manual ordering is nothing I want to do because I may be on vacation or at a conference where I do not have access to all the tools I need.

Any suggestions? Also I prefer to use services like MPIX or eZprints over a local printer because they usually offer a wide range of products and also usually at a cheaper price.

p.s.: Yes, I will filter for high volume orders and check them myself before I fire out an 2000prints order to /dev/null. But the occasional 4 pictures from the last event order is nothing I want to handle myself every single time.

Asked by mmlac

Answer

Have a look at Pwinty http://www.pwinty.com . It's a nice simple API for ordering photos - and you don't need users to leave your site like the other options suggested.

they offer world wide shipping.

I don't think Peecho offers much in the way of prints and posters and doesnt't look like fotomoto offers what you want either

Answered by tgallard

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Where can I have photos printed in bulk at wholesale prices?

Question

I would like to sell prints of my photos, does anyone have know of any suppliers that print photos off in bulk? Ideally based in the UK but I would also consider printers abroad.

I don't want to use sites like PhotoBox, Snapfish because the margins will be lower.

Asked by IconicDigital

Answer

Try ProAm Imaging, based in Bradford. I haven't used them personally but have heard good things, and they have apparently won awards. 52p each for 8x10" prints. Sell them for £5 each and you're laughing!

Answered by ElendilTheTall

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What's the easiest and safest way to sell photo gear?

Question

I'm looking to make some upgrades in the next couple of months (new camera body, new lenses, new tripod); and will no longer be needing some of my equipment (old camera body, some old lenses).

I'd like to sell the stuff I'll no longer be using in order to lessen the economic impact of the new purchases. I've heard great stories about eBay, Craigslist, and local classified ads; and I've heard horror stories about eBay, Craigslist, and local classified ads.

I'm trying to strike a balance between ease of sale, and not shipping my lenses to someone who has no intention of paying. I'm curious as to where you've had successes, or failures, selling your gear.

Answer

The easiest and safest way to sell photography equipment is to sell it to people you know! I've had the good fortune to be able to do this in the past. Failing that, I've also sold stuff on eBay and not had any problems. You only ship when the buyer's funds are in your paypal account, and using an insured & signed for delivery system prevents them from claiming they never received the goods. I'm not an eBay expert but it seems relatively safe these days and gives you access to a very large market.

With any service you have to use your wits to spot potential scams, it's usually fairly easy to tell if someone's a photography enthusiast or not. I would recommend selling to those who are!

Remember, the scare stories you hear are always the exception to the norm, "man doesn't get ripped off on eBay" isn't as newsworthy!

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Is there a web script for clients to pick the photos they want to buy from me? [closed]

Question

I'm currently developing a website for a multimedia business and they do event photography. I'm looking for a script/software that could help their clients to pick the photos they want to buy from a specific event.

The idea is to integrate such system on their website and the whole thing should work more or less like this:

They create an event and upload a bunch of photos to that specific event. The photos should be in thumbnails only (for obvious reasons) so if the script has an option to resize all the photos, better. But my opinion is that it's just better if they upload the thumbnails themselves (faster and easier). So resize is not that important. Each event should be password protected so that person A from event X can't access event Y and order photos from an event he/she didn't attend.

After login, the client picks the photos they want (something intuitive like clicking on each photo would be nice), add their name, address, etc, whatever my client wants. And then either e-mail all this information to a specific e-mail address or save them so that my client can login to the admin area and see their clients orders. The payment doesn't need to be in digital fashion.

It doesn't need to work exactly like I described, it's just a basic layout of what my client wants/needs.

Now, I could code all this myself, that's what I do. But unfortunately I don't have time to do it at the moment and it's something we didn't agree to do initially (they never mentioned it to me when we first talked about their website), so I'm not obliged to do it. I don't mind looking for a script, install it and configure it without any extra cost. But developing something like this takes time and would cost them more. But like I said, I have no time for now. The problem is that I can't find anything that does this... Maybe I'm missing the right keyword in searching but English is not my main language and I don't know what else to search for.

Does anyone know of a script that could help me with this. The website is in WordPress so a PHP script is the optimal choice.

Answer

You're right: what you're looking for doesn't exist. Not exactly. You need an online service or web software that does all that. smugmug.com is one of the best options. Users can create galleries (and password protect them), which can be sent to their clients. From there, clients can order from hundreds of options of prints and merchandise.

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How can I make extra money with photography?

Question

I have photos in Getty Images, in Shutterstock, Imagekind and I recently added some to RedBubble, but I'm not having the expected results.

Does anyone have some history of success selling photographs or working as a photographer?

Examples of my work are available in my gallery on Flickr.

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Also asked by nute

I am an amateur who sometimes takes pictures of nature or random things. I've been told by several people that my pictures are worth money.

How can I monetize my best shots?

I don't really want to do a lot of work, editing, SEO or whatever. I'm looking for an easy way where I would just upload my pictures somewhere and let it go.

Maybe stock photos? People buying prints? I have no idea how that works...

EDIT: maybe a link to see which type of photography I do can help http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasht00/

Answer

I'm going to be a bit blunt here: your photography isn't the kinds of stuff clients who buy stock/microstock go for. In 2011, the vast majority of stock photography is used to sell business products to business people. And if it's not that, it's used as a source of images to be composited with other images.

I've worked in interactive and print advertising and design for the past 13 years, on literally hundreds of campaigns for international brands the world over.

Here are things we bought: people in suits doing business things (all white, we're in europe); people in suits doing non-business things - like jumping, running, hanging off a ledge; pretty, neutral spaces like kitchens, offices, living rooms we could put people and products into; an amazing amount of travel photography with clearly visible landmarks for an airline; landscape photography that included sweeping vistas that we could, again, place items into. Give me any of these things in a cohesive series and I will love you to death.

Some things stand out in your photography that would cause me to look over most of it, even if I had a market for the subject matter. Post processing for a look either by defocusing elements, color tinting the image, adding blur - I want sharp objects I can cut out/composite with other objects. I want my starting images to be as neutral as possible.

There's a huge difference between people liking your work on flickr and actually buying your work. For someone to buy stock photo, they have to be able to use it as an element of making more money for themselves. Look at your photography and ask yourself if this is the kind of work you can imagine being used by people who actually lay out the money to license those images.

Ask the microstock houses what kind of photography they need more. I almost tried selling stock on a now defunct stock site. They had a great list of what they had more than enough of, and what kind of stuff they needed. Number one with a bullet is always: "People in suits doing things."

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What are some good places to sell photo prints online?

Question

What are some good places to sell photo prints online? Is it possible? Is it depends on country, laws, copyright restrictions. Any comments are welcome.

Thank you.

Answer

It depends very much on what you are trying to accomplish. There are at least 3 broad categories, which I'll try and give some examples. Note that my examples are probably US centric, but the services might also have foreign affiliates, I haven't looked into them all, so...

Selling Prints to Clients

Okay, so you've done a photo shoot with some clients, and they want to order prints from you. Where do you direct them? This will depend somewhat on what country you are in, but here's a few.

• Smugmug
• Pictage
• Shutterfly

Selling prints to strangers

So, you took an awesome landscape picture, and now you want to sell a print to a complete stranger. You could use the above sites, but you might have more luck with a dedicated site. The truth be told, however, is that unless you already have a fairly well known name, you're probably not going to have much luck online from this type of picture. I don't have much experience here, but I'll post a few that I've heard of.

• Cafe Press
• Photo Shelter
• Image Kind

Selling the rights to use your images

This is also known as stock photography. These photos typically either sell a concept, have a type of photo illustrated, but can include landscapes and other general interest pictures. There are at least 2 sub-categories here, I'm more familiar with the micro-stock site. Specifically, you can look into sites such as those listed below.

• Bigstockphoto
• Fotolia
• Dreamstime
• Shutterstock

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