PhotoShelter Upgrades Personal Archive

25/03/08

PhotoShelter Inc., a trusted provider of state-of-the-art online archiving and e-commerce solutions to a growing community of more than 20,000 professional and amateur photographers, today announced new features for the PhotoShelter Personal Archive, a complete e-commerce solution for photographers to archive, distribute, price and sell images as prints, rights-managed or royalty-free licensing. New features available include gallery slideshows which can be easily added to users’ customized websites, an enhanced shopping cart to make checkout easier, larger sized thumbnails and full size images for display, and the ability for clients to crop their own prints before ordering.

WPPI attendees can visit PhotoShelter Booth #406 to take advantage of special discounts on the PhotoShelter Personal Archive Basic and Standard subscriptions, with savings up to $70. Show special discounts are also available for existing Personal Archive users to add more storage. The offers will expire March 26 – one week after WPPI ends.

The PhotoShelter Personal Archive is a complete business-in-a-box solution for photographers seeking bulletproof archiving capabilities, asset protection and ecommerce tools to sell their images directly to clients. Using the Personal Archive, photographers can use customizable templates to seamlessly add galleries and ecommerce sales to their websites, tailored to match their individual look and feel. Also, inexpensive incremental storage is available, so the Personal Archive can grow with each user’s unique needs.

With the new features announced today, photographers can now add slideshows to their galleries. This feature was highly requested by wedding photographers seeking to please their clients with slideshows that can be shared with family and friends immediately after an event. Slideshows enable all photographers to showcase the breadth and depth of their work from their website, adding another marketing vehicle to their arsenal. Also among the new features, photographers now have full control of the image sizes displayed on their own website, providing a more unique presentation and better user experience. In addition, photographers can now allow clients to crop their own photos, eliminating wait time for custom print requests. Finally, PhotoShelter has improved its shopping cart, allowing multiple images to be purchased simultaneously through a simpler user interface.

Several recognized wedding photographers are using the PhotoShelter Personal Archive to power their websites. “PhotoShelter is a true partner and an extension of our brand,” said Missy McLamb, principal of Missy McLamb photographers. “After switching to PhotoShelter, we are more confident with the quality of the images being displayed and delivered to our clients, and we are able to sell and market directly to clients through beautiful galleries that we designed – all without paying exorbitant commissions or inundating clients with excessive email promotions.” On Monday, March 17, Missy will join the PhotoShelter Team in booth #406 at 2:00 p.m. to answer questions about how her company uses the Personal Archive.

“We’re thrilled to introduce these significant new features for the PhotoShelter Personal Archive,” said Allen Murabayashi, CEO of PhotoShelter. “We are dedicated to empowering photographers by providing the resources they need to easily manage and differentiate their unique businesses online. Personal Archive has been upgraded based on feedback from the photographer community and we’re proud to unveil it at WPPI so that wedding photographers can immediately benefit from our new features.”

PhotoShelter Personal Archive is available at http://pa.photoshelter.com. The PhotoShelter Personal Archive is a monthly subscription-based service and is a compliment to PhotoShelter’s open-but-edited image marketplace, the PhotoShelter Collection, which provides amateur and professional photographers alike with a platform for selling stock images directly to buyers. With 14,000 contributing photographers from 120 countries, The PhotoShelter Collection offers buyers a diverse catalogue of images that are priced for instant online purchasing of rights-managed and royalty free images. Photographers set their own pricing, keep 70% of all sales, and the PhotoShelter Collection is free to join. The PhotoShelter Collection is available at http://www.photoshelter.com.

The SWPP 2008 Convention was an outstanding success,
we have 145 days to get ready for the 2009 convention - which starts on January 14, 2009

Photo Quote: I never know in advance what I will photograph, ... I go out into the world and hope I will come across something that imperatively interests me. I am addicted to the found object. I have no doubt that I will continue to make photographs till my last breath. - Ansel Adams