Tag Archives: printroom

This is the third article in a series on the best photography website templates. Also see:

The Best Photography Website Templates: Introducing a New Series

Review of Photobiz Website Templates

Also, Photocrati has just released an outstanding set of WordPress themes for photographers. Unlike Photobiz, Printroom, and most other solutions, these templates combine gallery management and blogging in one package.

Overview of Printroom.com Online Storefronts

Printroom.com offers online storefronts for photographers. Although still in the realm of website templates, Printroom.com is an entirely kind of solution from Photobiz-style templates. After setting up an account, you upload images to your Printroom site. They offer very few choices regarding the appearance of your “homepage” or galleries, and very little flexibility. The major advantage of Printroom and similar sites like Smugmug is the integration of galleries, shopping carts, and order fulfillment. In a Printroom store, your clients can browse images, select what they want in terms of print sizes and styles, speciality items, even digital downloads. They checkout and pay, and Printroom alerts you to the order. If you have not done so already, they will ask you to upload high resolution versions of the relevant images. And that’s it. Printroom handles all order fulfillment – printing, packaging, shipping.

I’d like to emphasize something up front. In some sense, comparing Printroom or other “pro storefronts” to full-blown website solutions like Photobiz is unfair. I can’t imagine any pro photographer using a Printroom store front as their sole or even primary online presence. Printroom just doesn’t offer the kind of attractive templates or customization options that allow photographers to present their online portfolios in all their glory. Usually, Printroom is a secondary site, one used to store client images after a shoot and give clients the ability to browse and, most important, order prints. That’s the best use of Printroom.

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