FAQ

About PhotoDeck

• What, yet another photo website provider?
  PhotoDeck goes way beyond web galleries and portfolio display. We believe that a simple online portfolio is like a shop without inventory or cash machine – it’s not enough in our times.
  PhotoDeck is a full online archive, e-commerce and proofing platform for independent stock, assignment and portrait/wedding photographers. PhotoDeck supports video in the same way as still photography, as well as multiple languages.
  PhotoDeck can be used to display portfolios, but it is not just a portfolio site. And beside making you look good, PhotoDeck makes you more productive.
• What makes PhotoDeck unique?
  PhotoDeck is the most flexible platform for archive and e-commerce photography websites. You’re not limited to customizing pre-designed themes – you can design your own (no coding required). You’re not limited to using pre-defined pricing models – you can build your owns (no coding required). And if you don’t want to spend any time customizing anything, you don’t have to.
  We are a photographer friendly company. Who we are, and our values, set us apart.
• Is my work safe with PhotoDeck?
  At PhotoDeck we take extensive measures to minimize any risk of losing data. For example, we perform a daily offsite backup of the whole database (not including images). The images are hosted on the Amazon AWS/S3 cloud, designed for mission-critical storage. Although the likelihood of losing work is very low, no hosting service is 100% safe and we strongly advise our members to keep copies of their images on their own hard disks. Note that with PhotoDeck you can also export the metadata of your images into a CSV file suitable for backup purposes.
• Will you still be around next week / month / year?
  Hell yeah.
  PhotoDeck is an independent company — no external investor to please. We owe nothing to no-one and we’re profitable.
  Most importantly, while most Internet firms are created to grow fast and be sold quickly, we build PhotoDeck organically, to sustain ourselves while having fun creating a great product — for the long term.
• Can I install PhotoDeck on my own server?
  No, we only provide a turnkey hosted service, and for a number of good reasons PhotoDeck cannot be installed independently. PhotoDeck is a complex piece of software, not a php script, and it leverages advanced server configurations to maximize performance and robustness – monitored 24/7. PhotoDeck is updated at least weekly, often daily, to bring new features and improvements, which all websites then automatically benefit from. With PhotoDeck, you can focus your time and energy on your work, not on maintaining a web server!
• Why is it more expensive to pay in € / US $ ?
  The EUR-USD exchange rates continously fluctuate (unfortunately), and we cannot change our prices every month to reflect this fluctuation. On the bright side, you are guaranteed a stable price in your currency, regardless of the rate of the day.

Customization and Integration

• Is it possible to customize my website layout?
  Absolutely! Besides themes you can choose from, with a PRO/STUDIO subscription our visual Style and Layout Editor provides great flexibility in the design of your website with zero coding. For example, you should be able to match the visual identity of an existing portfolio website. Custom CSS is also possible.
• I’m busy. I don’t have the time to customize the website myself – can you do it for me?
  If you prefer not to do it yourself, we’ll be happy to create your custom website on the PhotoDeck platform on your behalf. Contact us for a quote!
• Can I use my own URL / domain name?
  Yes! We encourage our members with a PRO/STUDIO subscription to use their own domain.
• How can I integrate with my existing website?
  If you need to keep another website beside PhotoDeck, the most important integration is the visual integration, so that your PhotoDeck websites matches visually your existing website. With the Style and Layout Editor, you can match most designs. In addition, we can host your PhotoDeck website under your own URL/domain name, so that your clients don’t notice the transition from a site to the other.
• All I need is a cart / e-commerce backend for my existing website!
  That is possible too. We provide a feature that enables you to put “Buy” links next to your images on your exisiting website, and PhotoDeck handles everything that happens behind that link: image pricing based on your settings, checkout and payment collection, even digital delivery.

E-commerce

• How do I get paid and when?
  PhotoDeck is not a party in the sales between you and your clients: to accept credit card payments, you can easily connect your PhotoDeck website to a credit card payment provider (a free PayPal Business account is enough). The payment does not go through PhotoDeck, so you get it immediately.
• What freedom do I have in setting the prices for my images?
  In addition to prints and products, PhotoDeck supports both Royalty-Free and Rights-Managed pricing.
  For simple downloads and Royalty-Free licenses, you have full freedom in setting the prices and their parameters.
  For Rights-Managed licenses, you can completely customize a series of base usages and their prices: our algorithm, similar to what major stock agencies use, computes the prices for all the possible usage combinations based on these references, and you have control over additional parameters for that algorithm. In fact, we probably offer the most customizable pricing module around.
  With a PRO/STUDIO subscription you can also create multiple pricing profiles, and split your collection into different license models and pricing tiers.
• What happens when somebody orders/buys and image on my PhotoDeck website?
  You control that too. You can choose a fully-automated checkout, where credit-card payment is collected and the image is delivered immediatly, or you can choose to manually review and edit each order before requesting payment or delivering an image. Credit card payments are made directly to your account with a credit card processor (a free Paypal account is enough).
• How about selling prints?
  No problem! We offer fully customizable pricing profiles for prints too, you can structure the pricing and options exactly at you want. But for the time being you’ll have to manage the printing and shipping separately.

PhotoDeck for stock photography

• I have a huge archive – editing and keywording would be a daunting task, what should I do?
  Focus on your current workflow first: as an active photographer, your archive keeps growing, so the key is to make sure that the work you are shooting now is well archived from the start, and work on the older archive little by little.
  Also, if can you can bring clients to your website, you don’t necessarily need to have great keywording from the start, if you can arrange past shoots in galleries for your clients to browse.
  And naturally, this is an archive not a portfolio, so you should not get bogged down too much in editing: if you think an image has any potential value, just put it up!
• There are many stock agencies around there, why should I bother building my own website?
  Stock agencies and portals sell contributed images, and keep a hefty commission on the sales. They also control the prices and the relationship with the photo buyers. With PhotoDeck, a photographer can create his own online store to sell his work directly to photobuyers, keeping the relationship with his client. PhotoDeck takes no commission on sales that originated from your website. In addition, PhotoDeck offers extensive features for commissioned work proofing and delivery.
• Will you market my images?
  No, not directly – PhotoDeck is about getting out of the way of your relationship with your clients and help you establish your own brand. A PhotoDeck website is build to rank well on Search Engines, so that new buyers can find your images easily (read more on the PhotoDeck Story). Since you know who your customers are, you can also build a relationship for repeat sales – something that is not possible with traditional stock agencies. Other marketing tools include for example integrations with social networks and Google Analytics. We constantly work on extending and improving the ways PhotoDeck supports your marketing, stay tuned!
• How will you protect my images against theft?
  The most effective way is to add a watermark to the images you display: PhotoDeck does exactly that, as soon as you upload an image. You can customize the font, size, opacity, color of your watermark, tile it all over the image, remove it completely, or even upload and use your own watermark.
  We also disable right-clicking on an image, and drag-dropping.