SmugMug is a paid digital photo

Digital photography

Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...

 sharing

Photo sharing

Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others . This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images...

 website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

.

History

Chris MacAskill (father) and Don MacAskill (son) started the original company to build a new video game-oriented web service in February 2002. By August 2002, though, their focus shifted. A small portion of their video game website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

 was spun into a photo sharing

Photo sharing

Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others . This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images...

 service called SmugMug, which launched in November 2002.

Standard Member

• Priced at $5/month or $40/year
• Unlimited Photos & Traffic
• Privacy & Security Controls
• Max file size of 24MB (jpg, gif, png)
• No Ads
• Custom smugmug.com subdomain
• Gallary/Site Passwords
• Option to disable downloading/printing
• Share via twitter, facebook, friendfeed & tumblr
• Send HTML emails with photos embedded
• A published API which allows programmers to create new functionality.
• Detailed Traffic Statistics
• XML
  XML
  Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
  
  -based RSS
  RSS (file format)
  RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
  
   and Atom feeds.
• An email
  Email
  Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
  
   upload interface to allow camera phone
  Camera phone
  A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture still photographs . Since early in the 21st century the majority of mobile phones in use are camera phones....
  
  s to upload images.
• Keyword tagging
  Tag (metadata)
  In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
  
   for searching and categorization of photos.
• Enables Google Maps
  Google Maps
  Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
  
   integration for geotagged photographs
• Viewers can 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' photos to select the most popular photos using PhotoRank.
• Upload from Add photos from Lightroom, Picasa
  Picasa
  Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website, originally created by Idealab in 2002 and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my...
  
  , iPhoto
  IPhoto
  iPhoto is a digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. and released with every Macintosh personal computer as part of the iLife suite of digital life management applications...
  
  , Aperture
  Aperture
  In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. The aperture determines how collimated the admitted rays are,...
  
  , iPhones, and other software packages
• Prints can be ordered from SmugMug EZ Prints (available to all account types) and Bay Photo (available for Pro members only).

Power Member

• Priced at $8/month or $60/year
• All the features of a Standard membership included
• Unlimited number of video upload in Full HD (upto 1080p in quality and 20 minutes in length). The maximum file size allowed for any video is 3GB.
• Link with your own domain instead of SmugMug subdomain
• Customise look and feel of homepage via HTML
  HTML
  HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
  
  , CSS
  CSS
  -Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...
  
  , and JavaScript
  JavaScript
  JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
  
  
• Right-click image protection to prevent users from right clicking and saving file

Pro Member

• Priced at $20/month or $150/year
• All the features of a Power membership included
• Users can sell their photos and videos (in print or digitally) at their own price
• The photographer gets 85% of the markup over the base photo price.
• Create custom coupons for promotions
• Create custom single and multi-image packages
• Add local sales tax to orders if your state requires it
• Collect profits via direct deposit (US members) or PayPal (International members)
• Can add custom watermarks to images

Privacy and security

SmugMug has options to allow control over the privacy and security of published photos. They have support for both account-level and gallery-level passwords, as well as hidden galleries.

There is also a friends and family social networking interface for members of the service to use, which allows sharing of photos limited to people known to the publisher.

Professional services

In conjunction with their print service, SmugMug has created a service aimed at professional photographers. Professional accounts have the ability to add custom watermark

Digital watermarking

Digital watermarking is the process of embedding information into a digital signal which may be used to verify its authenticity or the identity of its owners, in the same manner as paper bearing a watermark for visible identification. In digital watermarking, the signal may be audio, pictures, or...

s to their photos. They can also sell prints and digital downloads of their photos through the SmugMug interface with their own pricing.