Selfie Stick Comparison (Looq, Polaroid & iStabilizer - 5 Models Tested)

Looq Mini, Looq Be Selfie, Looq Super Selfie, Polaroid PLMONBT, iStabilizer Monopod

If you’ve been to Asia over the past year there’s no mistake that the hottest gadget on the market right now is the infamous selfie stick. You literally can’t go anywhere without seeing people whipping these things out and taking photos of themselves or group photos with their loved ones.

At first I rolled my eyes at the sight of these gadgets, but I quickly warmed up to them after seeing how much fun my wife and son were having taking photos together. Before long we found ourselves jumping into shots with our friends and using these things just about as often as everyone else around us during a November trip to Korea and Japan.

My son and friends enjoying a group selfie shot
Click to see a full selection of Selfie Sticks ($29.95 & up)

Yes, there are cheap knockoffs from China that when they work seem to do a good job. However, I prefer to buy products from reputable brands without having any fear that they might damage my phone (and if they do, I have someone to go after). As a result, I limited the scope of my review to devices that were in-stock and sold by B&H as of December 2014.

Sizes Extended and Retracted

Selfie Sticks Extended - 40", 24" and 5.9" respectively

While the sticks tested could go up to 40”, I found that to be an unwieldy length. More often I found 18 – 20” to be a comfortable length for a two to three person group shot with the camera on the LCD side of the phone (i.e., the Selfie / FaceTime camera).

Selfie Sticks Retracted - 6.5", 11” & 10” minimum (with attached heads shown above removed)

All of the devices supported removable heads which helped make them much more compact, but with the heads attached was how we typically used them. This added a few extra inches and a lot more bulk. This meant that an average small purse could only hold the smaller Looq branded sticks and a medium to large purse or messenger bag was required to hold the largest sticks.

None were comfortable in a pocket unless the head was removed, so I never carried them in my pocket.

Tested Sticks Rated

My wife, 12 year old daughter, 5 year old son and I all had fun trying out the selfie sticks featured in this article. After a family discussion, here is our consensus on how we’d rank the devices we tested for this article.

5th Place – Looq Be Selfie

Looq Be Selfie

I tested this with a iPhone 4, 5, 5s, 6, & 6+ as well as a LG G3, Samsung Note 4 and Galaxy S4 & S5. For the Android devices it would bring up a menu that had nothing to do with photos when I pressed the button, but it did nothing on the iPhones. As a result, I was unable to properly test this device.

Final Verdict: Didn’t work, so NOT RECOMMENDED

4th Place – Looq Mini

Looq Mini

The only good thing I can say about this selfie stick is that it works – IF you remove your case to plug it in. However, the big problem with this one is that the button required such force to press it that everyone who tested it got blurry shots from movement caused by pressing the button. At a whooping 5.9” long, it really offered no advantage over using your arm extended out without a selfie stick at all.

Final Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED

3rd Place – iStabilizer Monopod

iStabilizer Monopod

This device doesn’t really try to do anything more than hold a phone or compact camera. I didn’t find it to work very well with large phones like the iPhone 6+ or Galaxy Note 4, despite its claims that it works with all phones.

No matter what phone or camera you use, you’ll need a self timer because this device does not feature anything to trigger the attached device. This was a big drawback over the other devices tested which made me think “what’s the point”?

The only good thing I can say is that with a point and shoot camera you can’t trigger them from any of the sticks tested anyway, so you can save $10 by getting one of these for your point and shoot.

Final Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED for phones, but good for compact cameras

2nd Place – Polaroid Bluetooth Monopod

Polaroid PLMONBT

This was the Swiss Army Knife of selfie sticks tested and arguably the best one overall. It offers both iOS and Android support over BlueTooth as well as up to 40” of extension for phones as well as compact cameras (shown later below). It also featured Micro-USB charging so no separate batteries are required.  What was also nice about this one is that it not only worked with all modern iOS & Android phones with BlueTooth except extra large ones like the 6+ and Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Polaroid Selfie Stick with Bluetooth Shutter - Controls View

I found the controls (shown above) to be intuitive and pairing was super simple (just hold and choose “Polaroid” from your phone’s BlueTooth device menu). What was even better is that this stick is beefy enough to hold compact cameras like my x20 (as shown below). This implies that others of similar weight like the Sony RX100 III, Canon G16 & s120 and others that are roughly the same weight with a tripod receptacle should work too. 

The Polaroid can hold, but not trigger compact cameras
so you’ll have to use your self-timer on the camera

This was a probably the best built and most sturdy of the bunch, but this also meant it was the most bulky and heavy which made it cumbersome to carry around. It would only fit in the largest of my wife’s purses and I fear it could be prohibited in some public venues as it is large and solid enough to be used as a weapon.

This product appears also to sold under the name Satechi Smart Selfie Extension Arm, but I have not personally tested the Satechi device so I only base this on what I’ve seen on the web. 

Final Verdict: RECOMMENDED, but bulky & heavy. Being self-contained battery powered means you could find yourself out of luck if you forgot to keep it charged.

1st Place – Looq Super Selfie

Looq S Battery-Free Extended Selfie Arm with Button

Coming in at $29.99 at the time this article was written (after $15 instant savings), this was tied for the lowest price but it was also by far my favorite selfie stick that I tested. My wife loved how it was compact enough to easily fit in all of her purses, and I loved that it “just worked” with no batteries or BlueTooth required. We didn’t need to install any apps or do anything fancy to get it to work with the iPhone 4s, 5, 5s, 6 & 6+. It should be noted that while it could control the 6+, it didn’t hold the 6+ securely enough for me to recommend it for that phone. For the LG G3, Samsung Note 4 and Galaxy S4 & S5 it would trigger a menu to pop up when the button was pressed, but it failed to take photos with those phones.

Integrated Mirror lets you use the high resolution side
of your phone camera instead of the low-resolution selfie camera

I found the button easy to press and the 24 inches extension was the most we ever found ourselves really needing. I also LOVED the fact that using the mirror on the back of the phone mount (shown above) you can use the high resolution rear camera of your phone instead of the typical 1.2mp low resolution “FaceTime” selfie camera found on most iPhones.

Final Verdict: RECOMMENDED for iPhones excluding the 6+. The 6+ sorta works, but it was too unstable for my comfort. 

Conclusion

Our phones are very important to us these days so it is much harder for me to hand a phone (with lots of personal, work and financial data on it) over to a stranger to take a photo than it is my compact camera (which holds no personal data beyond photos). There’s also a point where the weight of a camera on a stick gets so heavy that it becomes tough to hold it steady to get a sharp shot. While I liked the idea of being able to support my compact camera on the bigger sticks featured by iStablizer & Polaroid, I honestly can’t see myself really using it with them.

I’ll also admit that for this review I’m biased to iPhone 5, 5s & 6 solutions as that’s what I’d most likely use a selfie stick with in my household. Android users might have views that differ from my conclusions here, but if I did have an Android I’d probably do more research and figure out how to get one of the Looq sticks to work with it. I also can’t emphasize how valuable using the mirror on the Super Selfie can be as I loved being able to get a 8mp picture instead of a measly 1.2mp, so that and size was really the big reason why the Looq Super Selfie won this comparison test.

Where to order

Please click one of the following links to order or THIS LINK to see B&H’s current selection of selfie sticks:

1. Looq Super Selfie (1st Place)
2. Polaroid PLMONBT (2nd Place)
3. iStabilizer Monopod (3rd Place)
4. Looq Be Selfie (4th Place)
5. Looq Mini (5th Place)

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• HOW TO: Drastically Improve Your Handheld DSLR or Mirrorless Camera Shots
• Ron’s Recommendations
• Tripod, Ballhead and Monopod Recommendations 
• Things You Need AFTER You Buy Your New Camera - Must Have Photography Accessories

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

B&W Showdown: Nik Software-vs-Topaz Labs-vs-onOne Software (with discounts)–Part II of II

Black & White Comparison
onOne Software Perfect B&W, Nik Software Silver Efex, & Topaz B&W Effects

Thanks for joining me for the second part of this series where I compare the top three black and white conversion plug-ins. The first part was called COMPARISON: Nik Silver Efex–vs–Topaz B&W Effects–vs–onOne Perfect Effects (with discounts) - Part I of II, in case you missed it.

With that said, let’s jump into two more processing comparisons and see which I liked the best.

Processing Comparison #2 – Portrait

For the original color portrait (found here), I decided I would use just the presets with my only allowable enhancements beyond that was to turn film grain off. I figured this would give myself and users who just use the presets pretty much “as is” an idea which might work best. This image was taken with a Canon EOS 6D (review) set to f/9 @ 175 mm for 1/60 sec at ISO 100 using studio lights (key light was the Elinchrom 39" Rotalux Deep OctaBox).

I created a huge 24” x 36” contact sheet of images from all three products and then one sheet of large prints of my finalists. It was tough to decide which I liked the best, but what follows is the stack rank of what I felt after carefully examining my these prints in a lightbox.

For this test I thought that Silver Efex Pro 2 gave me the best result, followed by B&W Effects 2 and last was Perfect B&W . All three were solid images, but I just really loved the tonal range of the Nik Software version.

Silver Efex Pro 2 - Fine Art Process Preset

Overall, this preset nailed the look I wanted for this image. I felt that the contrast was very good overall and the blacks were simply delicious. I also loved the amount of light on the face without blowing anything out. The zones looked great and it just felt spot on.

B&W Effects - 100 Fuji Acros Preset (Grain turned off)

In second place was B&W Effects which used a film preset where I turned the grain off for a cleaner look. While the face was a little brighter white, I really liked the high key feel of it. In fact, if I were processing this shot for real I’d probably mask the eyes and facial skin from this one and put it on the Silver Efex version to create the perfect overall image (for my taste).

Perfect B&W - AutoMagic Preset

This image is pretty solid even with a neutral conversion, so when I poured through all of the onOne presets I found myself preferring its near neutral “AutoMagic” preset. It had a nice bright face, great tonal range and good contrast. If I were tweaking I’d probably bump the contrast a bit, but it was a good result. In fact, this preset was very satisfying with the Temple photo too, so I marked it as a favorite.

Processing Comparison #3 – Waterfalls

For the last image I decided to give myself a gnarly challenge. The original image from my 2012 camera of the year, the Nikon D600, was a disaster because I was resting my camera on a fence with the vibration of the falls coming through the very unstable fence blocking me from getting a better shot. I had a tripod but I couldn’t get it stable on the very uneven ground and in a position to clear the fence. As a result I just had to effectively handhold this shot with limited stabilization for 1.6 seconds. I tried about 30 different things to avoid having to resort to that, but none of them worked (with the long exposure that I wanted). I kept thinking this was the perfect location for the GT2531 tripod that I so desperately wished I had with me that day (and a rope with a long cable release <g>). I managed to get one click before people arrived and there was too much foot pounding to get another semi-clean shot like this.

The camera settings were f/9 @ 29 mm, 1.6s (handheld against a fence), and ISO 100.

Of course, even if I had a good angle on these falls I was also dealing with a lot of things that fight for the eyes attention in this shot. This meant in post-processing I’d have to do a heck of a lot of burning to help draw more attention to the water and less attention the background noise. I also considered the rocks to be an important secondary subject, so I wanted them to be strong but not distract too much from the falls. I’m not sure if I really accomplished that in the 20 minutes I gave myself as a maximum time limit to process each image, but I think it’s much better than the original.

In short, I had to use every feature available to each product to get the best result I could in a 20 minute time limit. That was no easy task as I could easily seem myself spending 7+ hours getting this image to look one of the awesome fall shots from Vincent Versace. I also limited myself from NOT using Photoshop and staying within the product* to get the final result. I used an asterisks because I did decide in all three cases to blend two images in Photoshop to create the final result as none of the products gave me the tools I needed to get it all perfect without using a Photoshop layer mask.  

For this test I thought that Silver Efex Pro 2 gave me the best result, but the U-Point controls were as painful to use as the spot healing brush in Lightroom. I fought hard to get the woods to darken out like I wanted. B&W Effects 2 was the easiest by far and gave wonderful results, but as the clock was ticking down I failed to notice that my vignette didn’t burn the brush on the foreground rocks enough. Last was Perfect B&W because the vignette at maximum darkness just didn’t cut it. It also had me cursing like a sailor at the lag on the dodge and burn tools which created some nasty effects over and over on the waterfalls. In fact, I ended up going over by 10 minutes on this image due to quirks in this version. The next result was that I just couldn’t get the effect that I wanted, so I had to cut my losses and stop short.

Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

While I’d still love a few more hours on this one, I think this most closely represents what I was going after. I wanted the falls to be the center of attention and the rocks to be next, yet I wanted the background woods and foreground cliff/moss to be heavily burned. While I’d love more time on the center rocks as they are still a bit too bright, I’m happy with this image in print. The global sharpening is really bad, so I would have spent some time tweaking it in Photoshop if I had the chance, but Silver Efex Pro doesn’t have granular control over this with its U-Point controls. I resisted the temptation to fix this as that would have gone outside the scope of what I was trying to do here.

Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2

This one was the last image I processed and it turned out so good that I went back and spent an extra 3 minutes on the Silver Efex one to make one tweak (I had blown the waterfalls too much). If I would have had more time I would have done a better job on the brush of the foreground cliff and selectively sharpened better, but this was by far the fastest and easiest product to use to get results that I enjoyed.

onOne Software Perfect B&W 1.0

On a computer display I am disappointed in this one, but in print it actually isn’t that bad. In fact, I think if I were doing a real print I’d probably back off the contrast of the other two for a better print tonal range. However, I wasn’t able to use the tools effectively to burn the cliff sides and background. The vignette wouldn’t go dark enough – even with two applications – and the frustrating dodge and burn tools fell short before I ran out of time.

What about doing B&W in Photoshop & Lightroom directly?

My friend Vincent Versace (and guest blog contributor) wrote a great book that covers this subject called From Oz to Kansas: Almost Every Black and White Conversion Technique Known to Man. If you have no day job and can spend a few days doing your black and white conversions then you don’t need any of these products. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of time, so I ultimately fall back on Versace’s finally chapters that basically say – just use Silver Efex Pro 2 (but now  B&W Effects 2 will be in the mix).

Samples Gallery

Click here to see a complete gallery of the images used in this two part review. Read the caption names to find out what’s what. I also have the originals of the landscapes and the portrait image original can be found here.

ALL images are copyright Ron Martinsen and MAY NOT be used for any purpose beyond your personal viewing. You may not save them to your hard drive, print them, share them on social networks, use them as wallpaper, etc… without a written licenses agreement with my legal signature in ink on it.

Conclusion

Like Peter Parker’s uncle says, with great power comes great responsibility, so the power of Silver Efex Pro sometimes caused me to waste too much time tinkering to the point of doing more harm than good. B&W Effects great presets and ease of use certainly had me realizing my artistic vision the fastest, but its local adjustment tools felt a bit crude compared to the others.

Perfect B&W is going to be a great product one day and it’s off to a great start, but today isn’t that day. It’s tough to pick a winner in this bunch, but my least favorite product to work in and my least favorite results in two of the three cases were with Perfect B&W. It’s not a bad product, and it’s got some excellent presets and features. It’s only issue is that it just needs some more bake time to catch up to the version 2 competitors which have benefited from customer feedback. If you own this product I wouldn’t jump ship, but I would keep current when updates are released.

So in the end, which is my winner? Well if you want the ultimate in control and are willing to pay the price, Silver Efex Pro is still the golden standard. Overall it’s just the strongest product and its Zones feature really helps to emphasize that it’s for serious B&W conversions. Perfect B&W tried to have a zone map but it’s useless. B&W Effects doesn’t have one (that I could find), but it’s presets are excellent. It’s ability to see large presets speeds up productivity as well. As a result, if speed and/or price are important then it is the clear winner.

Personally, I have all three so I’ll still probably find reasons to use all three. However, I’ll start first in B&W Effects 2 from now on. If I need more tweaking and have the time, then I’ll use Silver Efex Pro 2, as it’s clearly the most powerful. I’ll only use Perfect B&W at this point to try out its Ansel or AutoMagic presets.

Please note this is all subjective and one man’s opinion. It’s fine if you disagree, but this is what I felt after my admittedly very simplified test. You can do the exact same test yourself with your own images and the free downloadable trial versions, so I encourage you to do that. If you disagree, don’t be rude – just decide with your wallet and use the product that you like best (which may be none of these for some). In fact, if you end up with some great images then feel free to share them with me and my readers on my Flickr group or on my Facebook page. I love seeing my readers work and I am excited for those who have found a system that works well for them!

Discounts and where to order

Use this links below to Download the Trial Version or Order Now:

• B&W Effects by Topaz Labs ($59.95) – Full Review (Save 15% when you click here and enter the coupon code RONMART when you check out)
• Perfect B&W by onOne Software ($99.95 Premium Edition) – Intro Review – (onOne has discontinued its coupon codes)
• Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software ($24.83 but full Nik Collection by Google required) – Full Review (See my review for discount info)

You can also find details on my discount coupon codes at the end of each of my product reviews for these products. You can also visit my discount coupon code page where I have discounts for lots of other great products too. Be sure to also scan the right side of this blog for an index of some great articles.

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• COMPARISON: Nik Silver Efex–vs–Topaz B&W Effects–vs–onOne Perfect Effects (with discounts) - Part I of II
• Which Printer Should I Buy? Epson or Canon? (also see my huge Printing Series page)
• REVIEW: From Oz to Kansas: Almost Every Black and White Conversion Technique Known to Man by Vincent Versace
• How To: Using Epson’s Advanced B&W Photo (ABW) printing feature
• Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper Review and How To Walkthrough – A fantastic B&W Printing paper
• B&W Print Masters Interviews - Greg Gorman & Vincent Versace

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

COMPARISON: Nik Silver Efex–vs–Topaz B&W Effects–vs–onOne Perfect Effects (with discounts) - Part I of II (Updated Apr 10, 2013)

Black & White Comparison
onOne Software Perfect B&W, Nik Software Silver Efex, & Topaz B&W Effects

When it comes to black and white conversions, I’ll admit that I’m a Silver Efex Pro 2 fan boy. It’s a great product with gobs of control that allow you to dial in the results you want, where you want it. However, after a good first try Topaz Labs really upped its game with awesome follow up called B&W Effects 2. I’ve really been pleased with this product to the point that I find myself using it probably more than I should! It’s just very well done and it’s fast to get good results, so it’s tempting to fire it up and say “I wonder what this would look like in B&W”. Finally onOne surprised everybody by tossing its hat into this now crowded space with Perfect B&W. It’s got some impressive features and a wealth of presets, so I started to wonder myself – which one should I use?

For this Black & White showdown I decided to do a very unscientific comparison which I’m sure will piss off my anal retentive, OCD, engineer readers who are sticklers for scientific analysis. If that’s what you are looking for then I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. Instead, I got this crazy idea to just edit some images the way I’d do them in real life using all three products, then compare the results. I’m all about real world results, and I think this really measures what you can expect as I’m very familiar with all three products.

I have no doubt that if someone wanted to spend a couple days doing an analysis they could get all three products to produce identical results using the same image and mapping the values set by one to the others. I don’t have the desire to do that because I don’t think that’s real. Instead, I think that when you have a product you use it based on what’s easily accessible and you edit your image with subjective results based on how you are able to use the features within the product effectively. With that in mind, that’s how I approached this – I wanted to see what’s the best result I could get using the features of the product like I’d really use them and see which of the three gave me the best result for a variety of images.

To help me in this process, I also printed all of the images I did during my testing (which is more than you see here in this article) on my Canon iPF6450 and Canon PRO-1 printers to see which result I preferred when viewed inside a lightbox. I examined them as prints to draw my final conclusions, but in all cases my opinion of the display version mirrored my opinion of the print.

User Interface Comparison Overview

I’ll begin this review with a little run down on the user interfaces of each product. Click the images to see a larger version of the screen shot, and click the links under the images to see my current review for each product. I go into more depth on my reviews than I will here.

onOne Software Perfect B&W 1

onOne Software Perfect B&W 1

This is a slick looking user-interface that can be run standalone or as a plug-in in your Apple or Adobe favorite product. It features nice interactive previews of what your image would look with its large number of presets. It also features a handy search feature so you can get to your preset quickly (which none of the other products offer). It also not only allows you to mark your favorites, but it also has a way for you to see (or instantly run from Photoshop) your most recently used conversions. This is really great if you aren’t using Smart Objects and you decide “oh crap, I wish I would have created a custom Preset for this”. You can just reload the software and go back to one of your recently used items and save it as a preset.

All products in this review feature preset import & export, so I won’t go into details about one versus the other – I like all of them. All also feature live previews of your image with your preset too.

On the right side of the UI onOne Software matches the competition feature for feature and throws in the Glow feature as well as a wider variety of options for sharpening. In version 1.0, I found the local adjustment brushes on the main window toolbar to be a little more unsophisticated than the competition, and they often had an undesirable latency when I was painting with my brush. As a result, I’d call the brushes “barely usable”, but the rest of the product was pretty solid.

While there are no pending updates available, I did hit a bug where I applied a border which was shown in the preview window, but it never applied it when I went back to Photoshop. This happened 80% of the time (but oddly enough, not 100%) so there’s an odd bug here.

This is a good UI and impressive for 1.0, but the brushes performance needs work. Hopefully that’s coming soon in an update.

Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

This is, by far, the most powerful and complete user interface for black & white conversion of anything on the market. It’s the gold standard that work professionals rely on and trust, so I doubt anyone would find themselves less than happy with the controls at their disposal here. What’s more, not only do you have excellent controls you also have a brilliant zones map shown above that will overlay hashes while you over (or click to make them stay) the zone number on the histogram. This allows you to quickly identify gaps and anything missing rom the zone. Personally I always try to have all zones except for 10, but I tend to push zones 0 – 3 pretty heavily.

Some huge advantages of this user-interface for features not found in the other products are:

1. U-Point controls – If you use Nik Software you know that this is their magic control that allows you to quickly and easily create complex masks by simply putting a dot on the tonal value that you want to enhance. It’s a brilliant feature and it’s super helpful in B&W conversions where sometimes an area goes dark or you are missing a a zone.
2. Zones on the Histogram – mentioned above, this alone is worth the cost of this product for print masters. (UPDATE: B&W Effects 2.1 adds this feature)
3. Dynamic Brightness – This is the magic “just make it look like I want” slider. It’s very much like fill light in the old Lightroom, but much more advanced. You just have to try it to fall in love.
4. Brilliant Lightroom-like history – It’s so helpful to be able to go back and see what you’ve done and roll back if you need to. With the visual history featured in this product, you get the same level of rollback as you get with Lightroom. I LOVE THIS!
5. Fast & Reliable – Of all three products, this one has been out the longest so it seems completely free of bugs and the performance is outstanding. In short, it just works – very well!

There’s other advantages as well, but the ones above are all decision maker features that put Silver Efex Pro 2 on the top of my recommended plug-ins list (as of the time this paragraph was written).

Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2

Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2

If you are a preset clicker and not a tweaker, then this is by far the best and easiest to use interface. With huge live previews shown above (they disappear when you mouse out of the preset window), you can really see what your image is going to look like with a given preset before you apply it. While the others have this feature too, the previews are postage stamp size so this is really helpful. However, what’s even more helpful is the fact that all collections (including your snapshots, favorites and personal collections) can all be viewed in a single window for that collection (shown below). This means you can quickly see large previews of what every preset in the all Traditional Collection collection looks like using your image. Here’s what it looks like:

This is huge because you really get to take advantage of the huge number of presets because it only takes a few minutes to see what your image looks like with every one of them. This makes getting a good starting point go by very fast. Of course most people will gravitate to a few number of presets which they can flag as their favorites, and still use this feature to view their image with all of their favorite presets applied – WOOHOO! I hope this comes to EVERY product with presets!

This product matches the competition in all of the other features, but I felt like its local adjustment brushes were a bit lame. While they performed well and weren’t buggy like Perfect B&W’s, they are a bit cumbersome to use and very basic (effectively just dodge and burn with a limited intelligence brush). In short, I didn’t like using them.

What’s added and is unique in this product over the others is that it features Topaz Labs Adjust’s (and Detail’s) detail processing. This is effectively a very advanced sharpening tool that can be easily abused to destroy a photo. This product also had the best group of presets by far compared to the other products. This can be a big time saver for a fast start up.

I enjoyed this UI and felt that it was certainly the best of all Topaz user interfaces up to the day this article was written. While the brushes are a bit disappointing, I think most will be very satisfied with this user interface experience. 

UI Summary

I’d quickly stack rank the UI’s as:

1. Silver Efex Pro – The most powerful with the brilliant U-Point controls. However, the lack of an adjustment brush is problematic when U-Points don’t do exactly what you want (sometime brushing is easier). 

2. B&W Effects 2.1 – While not as powerful and polished as Nik’s, the large preset previews REALLY help speed up both creativity and productivity. It’s wealth of presets will be a huge time saver for busy photographers. The recent addition of the zones feature (since this was originally written – in the new 2.1 update) really helps close the gap to SEP2.

3. Perfect B&W – A good start and its Ansel preset is sure to please, but this product is just suffering from a little 1.0 quirks (some of which are now addressed in the latest update). It lacks the something special like Topaz pulled off. I like where it’s going though and expect it to blow us away in version 2. Perfect Photo Suite users shouldn’t feel bad either as this is an excellent product.

Processing Comparison #1 - Temple Nightscape

For my first test image, I decided to go with this temple nightscape photo that I took in Japan last year. It was an evening shot taken with a Canon EOS-1D X using f/5.6 @ 24mm for 1s on a Gitzo GT1541 tripod. Since I used ISO 800 at night, I decided to start by using Noiseware on it. I also removed some of the stars from the original as they felt more like sensor hot spots since there were so few.

For this test I thought that B&W Effects 2 gave me the best result, followed by Perfect B&W and surprisingly last was Silver Efex Pro 2. All three were solid images, but I just really loved the contrast and attention drawn to the foreground of the Topaz Labs version. For this image I did use U-Point controls in Silver Efex, but I didn’t use local adjustment brushes in either of the other plug-ins.

B&W Effects 2 - Copyright (c) Ron Martinsen - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Perfect B&W 1 - Copyright (c) Ron Martinsen - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The result I got from Perfect B&W offered the best tonal range but it fell a little flat in the mid-tones. 

Silver Efex Pro 2 - Copyright (c) Ron Martinsen - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This image has better mid-tones than the Perfect B&W and is very good overall, but I think I overcooked it. I regret doing the burned edges and I just wasn’t thrilled with the way the dark areas looked in print – it’s just too dark overall. Yes, this is clearly user error, but my argument here is that I use the product all of the time so this represents what I’d do with it in real life. I took advantage of all the tools in Silver Efex Pro and tweaked it so much that I ended up over tweaking. That’s not the fault of the product, but if I only had this product (as I did in the past) this is very likely the result I would have obtained. The same is true of the other products.

Click here to see part 2 for additional images compared head to head.

Samples Gallery

Click here to see a complete gallery of the images used in this two part review. Read the caption names to find out what’s what. I also have the originals of the landscapes and the portrait image original can be found here.

ALL images are copyright Ron Martinsen and MAY NOT be used for any purpose beyond your personal viewing. You may not save them to your hard drive, print them, share them on social networks, use them as wallpaper, etc… without a written licenses agreement with my legal signature in ink on it.

Conclusion

To see my conclusion, visit the second part entitled B&W Showdown: Nik Software-vs-Topaz Labs-vs-onOne Software (with discounts)–Part II of II.

Discounts and where to order

Use this links below to Download the Trial Version or Order Now:

• B&W Effects by Topaz Labs ($59.95) – Full Review (Save 15% when you click here and enter the coupon code RONMART when you check out)
• Perfect B&W by onOne Software ($99.95 Premium Edition) – Intro Review – (onOne has discontinued its coupon codes, but check my blog often for special short term deals)
• Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software ($24.83 but full Nik Collection by Google required) – Full Review (Click here for discount info)

You can also find details on my discount coupon codes at the end of each of my product reviews for these products. You can also visit my discount coupon code page where I have discounts for lots of other great products too. Be sure to also scan the right side of this blog for an index of some great articles.

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• B&W Showdown: Nik Software-vs-Topaz Labs-vs-onOne Software (with discounts)–Part II of II
• Nik Collection by Google now only $149 (before my discount - click to learn more)
• Nik Software Owners: Get onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7 for 50% off
• Which Printer Should I Buy? Epson or Canon? (also see my huge Printing Series page)
• REVIEW: From Oz to Kansas: Almost Every Black and White Conversion Technique Known to Man by Vincent Versace
• How To: Using Epson’s Advanced B&W Photo (ABW) printing feature
• Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper Review and How To Walkthrough – A fantastic B&W Printing paper
• B&W Print Masters Interviews - Greg Gorman & Vincent Versace

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: Search Engine Optimizations Follow-up

As promised in my Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup- Conclusion (6 of 6) article back on May 16th, I promised I would follow up with longer-term search engine optimization results.

As of July 5th, 2009 at 11:29 PM PST, the search results for the sites created in this article with the big three search engines were as follows:

Google.com	Bing.com	Yahoo.com
Smugmug (Page 1 - #4) SiteWelder (Page 1 - #6) liveBooks (Page 2 - #12) FolioSnap – not found	Smugmug (Page 1 - #2) SiteWelder - not found liveBooks - not found FolioSnap - not found	Smugmug (Page 1 - #1) SiteWelder (Page 1 - #3) liveBooks (Page 1 - #4) FolioSnap – not found

Foliosnap wasn’t found on any of the sites because my trial membership expired and the site was deleted. The other sites remain live, so if the results change in the future I may post another follow up.

One interesting note is that for liveBooks and SiteWelder my home page wasn’t the page referenced, but rather a link to my People portfolio (liveBooks liveBooks link & SiteWelder link). Apparently I did something special to that photo/category to cause it to perform better than the others.

UPDATE (July 6, 09 @ 11:16 AM PST)

It has been reported to me by SiteWelder that they are now #1 on Bing.com, so I ran a query and confirmed they are first, liveBooks was third, and Smugmug was fourth. This is totally different than my results from last night, so I’m going to ask that people click on the links above for Google.com, Bing.com and Yahoo.com and note the search results that they get (feel free to report your results as a comment to this blog). Here’s a map of which domain name belongs to which company:

Smugmug	http://ronmartinsen.com
liveBooks	http://ronmartphotography.com
SiteWelder	http://ronmartphoto.com

Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: SmugMug Pro Review

 

**** WARNING ****  **** WARNING ****  **** WARNING ****  **** WARNING ****

THIS ARTICLE HAS BECOME TOO OLD AND OUTDATED. I now use Zenfolio exclusively for my personal portfolio and http://ronmartinsen.com now only points to my Zenfolio site. Click here to read my Zenfolio review and learn why I feel it’s the best service available now.

**** WARNING **** **** WARNING **** **** WARNING **** **** WARNING ****

 

 

Introduction

Before this series there was only one service I’d highly recommend for online photo management, and that was Smugmug. In fact, I had written an article entitled Where should I display my pictures online where I sang the praises of Smugmug and insisted that it was the place to store your photos. I’ve been a long-time customer of Smugmug and the great folks there have treated me like I was a big customer well before my blog even existed. So I’ll state up front, I’m biased, but this is the Smugmug review - not my series conclusion.

I’ve been a computer programmer now for about 20 years. I hold a patent on Internet technology that is used by major browsers today. I know HTML, CSS, the DOM, W3C standards, AJAX, etc… well – very well. However, it is no longer my day job so I don’t get to play with it as much as I would like to anymore. I also know it well enough that if I want to spend time being a photographer, then I don’t have time to be a web programmer – combined they are too much of a time sink. This is why I finally gave up developing my own site and went to Smugmug. I’ve never regretted that decision – it’s just too damn easy!

When I started to do this series I started to ask myself the question – why are these sites so expensive when the stuff they are doing is so trivial? How could someone charge $195 for a flash slideshow when it literally takes them as much effort as it takes to copy and paste and replace a word? I just couldn’t understand why some very trivial web features were costing so much money when it was (and really should be) included in my inexpensive Smugmug site. With that in mind, I approached one of my pro photographer mentors and suggested Smugmug could do anything those expensive sites could do, and he scoffed at the idea. He said that Smugmug was a consumer site and that you can’t expect it to compete with pro sites, but I know the code behind the scenes. I know what is possible when someone like Smugmug opens the doors by creating its Advanced site-wide customization feature, so I smelled a challenge.

I decided to contact Markham Bennett (below left), VP of BizDev for Smugmug and I threw down a challenge to him –- I bet that Smugmug could build a site as good as or better than the big boys in this review. Well, since Markham is a superhero, he naturally took the challenge and enlisted his fellow caped crusader Barb Gates (below right) to join in the fun. As they used to do on Batman - KAPOW, BAM, BOOM! Now its time to kick some serious CSS ass!

Site Tour

In my article entitled Advanced Smugmug Customization by Barb Gates I showed how a default Smugmug site looks, and what a little love with Easy Customizer can do for it. However, Barb then goes on to build http://ronmartinsen.smugmug.com as you see it in this article (it’s a living site so it may evolve from what you see here – screenshots can be found here). If you’ve used Smugmug before then this will simply blow you away, as most users rarely go beyond the default view and have no idea that this level of customization is possible. This of course, is what the all new Smugmug Pro hosting is all about. This ain’t your father’s Smugmug (okay maybe that’s a bit overboard), but rather the new kick ass side of Smugmug you’ve never seen before called Smugmug Pro.

You’ll notice in the pictures throughout this article that the site is fairly similar to the Sitewelder and FolioSnap sites created during this series. It took a lot more work, but thanks to Barb we made it happen. Truth be told, Smugmug doesn’t have a good gallery style to match the offerings of the other sites in this series, so I had to settle for its Filmstrip view which is the bane of even the Smugmug team! It works, but it’s far from an ideal solution. Andy Wiliams, House Pro, says that something better is coming soon and I promise you that I’ll be the first in line to try it out! Here’s a sample view of my places gallery which features a shopping cart (a slideshow, but its hidden on my site), a lightbox view (shown in the smaller second image below) and more:

I’ll be the first to admit though, that this was the hardest site to build in this series. The other sites are great because you just pick a template and it works. Smugmug can do that too with its themes, but it won’t look as professional as its peers in this review. However, they cost three times (or more) as much so if you are willing to get your hands dirty you CAN match nearly anything done elsewhere!

In a way, Smugmug is currently like unfinished furniture – its just as good as the finished stuff, but for half the price. It’s also the same in that you’ll have to get a little dirty, and it might piss you off a bit, and even worse if you discover you can’t do it then you’ll need to pay to have someone finish it for you – and it won’t be cheap. This is why I created this article, so you could at least try to copy what was done on my site without too much effort.  You then only need to replace the colors and logos to your taste. In addition, you can just following along with the customization article on there forum, use Andy’s Fast Start (great) or if all else fails then contact help@smugmug.com to get steered in the right direction.

Shopping Cart

Where Smugmug shines above all others is in its incredibly well designed shopping cart experience as shown below (note: meaningless mock values entered):

You can add your own prices for 170 product offerings (as of the time if this review), and you can even choose between ezPrints or BayPhoto as your image provider. In the near future there will also be support for much needed custom packages and coupon codes. However, there’s still a big gap in that if you want to do your own fulfillment, there’s no built-in option for you. The other sites in this review all assume custom fulfillment, so this could be a major deciding factor for you based on your offerings and needs.

Uploading Images and Sharing Links

Uploading files on the other sites in this review was rather cumbersome because they want you to optimize your files for a specific size, and then your photos are stored in an art library where the files must then be moved over to a gallery. In Smugmug all of that hassle is simplified to a brilliant user-interface. You just create your gallery (and many of its settings – including pricing – can be done in ONE step) and then you just drag & drop (or select) the photos to upload. You can easily assign captions and the process goes by very quickly.

However, the best part of this process is that I only upload FULL size images (~24mb 5D Mark II images at JPEG 12 are fine) and Smugmug does the right thing to create 8 downsized images (complete with a sharpening option – scroll to the bottom) plus it maintains the original. I can choose which sizes I wish to display, but it can use the high res images for printing. This is how it should be done – period. No fooling around with “resize” checkboxes and manual optimizations. This just works and is brain dead simple – WELL DONE SMUGMUG!

Another cool thing is that you can save a lot of time exporting your photos directly from Lightroom to Smugmug using Jeffrey Fridel’s “Export to Smugmug” plug-in. This is a huge time saver, and it even supports creating new galleries!

In addition, I frequently I find myself wanting/needing to send or embed (in the case of my blog) a link of a specific size. Fortunately Smugmug also offers a nice “get a link” page where you can simply click to have the url sent to the clipboard for use elsewhere. Once again, this is brilliant and a huge time saver for me.

Video

I’m sure if you ask the other sites to give you video, they’ll accommodate you. But Smugmug has first class video sharing. Even the now infamous Reverie by Vincent Laforet is on his Smugmug site. Very cool!

Behind the Scenes: Administering your site

To get a behind the scenes look at my site, simply arrow through the images here. As you’ll see there is a tremendous amount of controls available for more customization offerings than any other service in this series. However, with great control comes great complexity, so for some it may seem overwhelming – even confusing. However, the good news is that the Easy Customizer will give the local pro wedding/portrait photographer everything s/he’s looking for. In addition, the easy of uploading photos and the advanced gallery support make it a breeze to create as many groups of gallery sets as you could possibly want. In fact, you have galleries up and ready for clients nearly as quick as your photos will transfer over the Internet. In addition, private galleries are trivial and unlimited (and they mean that – hundreds of terabytes are really allowed).

HTML/CSS Customization

I’ve already mentioned Advanced Smugmug Customization by Barb Gates and shown what’s possible – my site is the result. However, there’s much more available via third-party customizers like:

• Jerry Roek who built Alicia Hartfield's cool flash-based site with her assistance along with this one
• David Wolf who specializes in Smugization

Domain Name Registration

You can use SmugmugDomains.com to get your own custom domain name (i.e., http://ronmartinsen.com) for dirt cheap (only $7.69 at the time of this writing). Sure, SiteWelder includes this but when you consider Smugmug’s pro account costs $150 and you add your domain for only $7.69, that’s still less than SiteWelder’s setup fee!

iPhone Support

Visit http://ronmart.smugmug.com or http://ronmartinsen.smugmug.com/ from your iPhone to see the iPhone support in action. You’ll get a different interface optimized for the iPhone (above left), and you can go to the non-iPhone site like you’d normally get in Safari (above right). My site worked fine in either format (although the flash slideshow doesn’t render on iPhone, since the iPhone doesn’t support flash).

However, that’s just the beginning, you can download an apps for your iPhone that support Smugmug so you can actually upload photos directly from your phone to Smugmug (complete with GeoTagging)! Here’s a cool example of the awesome FREE Smugshot app for the iPhone available on AppStore:

When it comes to iPhone support, Smugmug not only embraces it – it extends it. This is REALLY cool stuff!

Key Customers

Photography Corner lists over 28 pros who call Smugmug home. In addition, there’s a few other big names you’ve probably heard of:

• Vincent Laforet - Canon Explorer of Light who became crazy famous after releasing the first cool video, Reverie filmed exclusively with a 5D Mark II.
• Mark Weisberg – Award winning Portrait/Wedding Photographer
• Robert Evans – Los Angeles Celebrity Photographer
• David Jay – Wedding Photographer and Adobe Evangelist
• Miguel Lasa – Wildlife and Nature Photographer
• Sherron Sheppard – 2003 California PPC “Photographer of the Year” - Journalistic Wedding & 2006 PPA “Platinum Photographer of the Year”
• Brian Valentine - (a.k.a., LordV) – AMAZING Macro Photographer

There’s also a couple good pro photographers using flash on their Smugmug site:

• Alicia Hartfield (Flash site on Smugmug)
• Jaki Good (Flash site on Smugmug)

To see some other examples of cool Smugmug sites, click here.

Search Engine Performance

Like FolioSnap, Smugmug really doesn’t track their Search Engine Performance. However, like everyone in this series they do care a lot about the subject. In fact Andy offers a good article on the subject, but I hadn’t had time to follow his advice so my results are based on doing literally nothing!

As of the time I wrote this article a search for Ron Martinsen Photography on Google resulted in http://ronmartinsen.smugmug.com coming in just ahead of liveBooks and SiteWelder (ronmartphoto.com).

Cost

Cheap – dirt cheap. At the time of this writing, you can get all this cool customization for as little as $59.95 (Power), but you can get much more (like the fantastic shopping cart) for $149.95 (Pro). If you can live with the default themes, then its only $39.95 to host your photos (not recommend for pros).

Pros / Cons

What I love about Smugmug is:

1. Price – You’ve gotta be kidding me? Is that a typo? That’s value baby!!!!!
2. Shopping Cart – Setting prices is a bit cumbersome, and the lack of self-fulfillment is going to be a no-go for some pros. However, the addition of packages, coupons (both coming soon) and the option to use two great services for printing will mean a great way to generate revenue without dealing with the headache of self-printing.
3. iPhone Support – Not only is it good, it’s fun! Everybody else – here’s a model to follow!
4. Uploading Ease of Use & Share Links Features – From the time I’m done with my photos (excluding Internet transmission speeds), it takes me less than a minute to have my photos online in a new gallery. What’s even better, is that my original and 8 other sizes are available to share with others right away.
5. Customization – 90% of what you see can be tweaked via CSS or in some tricky cases via JavaScript, but at least you can get to it – that’s not possible on any other site in this series.

Areas for Smugmug improvement:

1. Too much brute force customization required – Easy Customizer is a GREAT step in the right direction, but most great Photographers I know aren’t computer geeks (beyond Photoshop) so they’ll need a lot more than that to be successful using this service. For them, the other offerings in this line-up are much more compelling (despite the Themes support).
2. Flash Slide Show – This a great site that avoids flash, except here. Take a cue from FolioSnap, and get a non-flash slideshow.
3. Poor Gallery View choices for some Pros - The Default view is good for Wedding/Portrait Photographers, but for everyone else it’s too cluttered. The filmstrip view is the only real uncluttered option, but then that freakin filmstrip is a nasty little best. Note to Smugmug: SiteWelder’s scrollbars with CSS support are a WAY better option!
4. Favicon support is just broken for Internet Explorer – Apple and other browsers may be making headway, but the last I checked Internet Explorer still has a commanding dominance of the browser market. Not supporting this platform is a bad choice. FolioSnap solved this problem, so I’d like to see Smugmug step up and do the same.
5. Limited customization for galleries – For all the cool customizations available, you’re kinda stuck with what Smugmug gives you for the photo gallery itself. I wish that there was a lot more control over that process without having to resort to hard core JavaScript.
6. I don’t have one of those cool superhero pictures from Chris MacAskill!

Conclusion

The other sites in this series are definitely better for the hands-off pro, but Smugmug Pro will continue to get better so that advantage will get smaller with time. However, there’s a ton of great stuff here that no other host in this series offers. Big things like an amazing shopping cart and gallery management that is super fast and easy make it a must for wedding and portrait photographers. A book could be written about Smugmug because there’s just so much there (hum, I should do that), so I have no hesitation in making my highest recommendation for Smugmug.

Special Offer

Save 20% off your first year when you use the code SmugRon when you sign up! If my math is right, that’s less than $120 for a year – that’s crazy cheap!!!!

SmugmugDomains.com has domain name registration for less than $8 for your first year as of the time of this writing – top that!

Other articles in this series:

1. Professional Web Hosting Roundup: Intro
2. liveBooks Review
3. FolioSnap Review
4. SiteWelder Review
5. Smugmug Review
6. Conclusion – pending (and no, it won’t be another Smugmug article :-)