Do you have a photography business? Then you have an online presence, which means in all likelihood you’ve got an online portfolio. We’re spoilt for choice these days when it comes to choosing portfolio platforms, and just as each season brings a new clothing line, so does it bring a new slew of options. Generally speaking, however, there are a few that have been steady over time, simplifying, extending, and refining their services and Format, formerly 4ormat is one such. It is the one I’ve used for some time now.
If you’re looking for a complete client serving solution you’d be much better suited to look into something like Cloud Spot to be that all encompassing answer, because that’s not what Format is. Format is an attractive way with a simplified process of building a professional portfolio website without the need to be fluent in coding languages.
It has become more attractive over time with flexibility improvements, more templates, even more dynamic themes, and decent support. Furthermore, the company launched Kredo earlier this year as an iPad portfolio app that’s as easy to use and beautiful as its primary counterpart. Now, to streamline the process of updating their portfolio services even more with platform improvements and additions like blog commenting and social sharing and possibly most attractive, is the Lightroom Publisher.
The Lightroom Publisher is simply a free add-on plug-in for Lightroom that allows for images to be published directly to Format gallery pages, the creation of new gallery pages, editing of titles, etcetera, on those pages, and allowing to sync image edits.
The process of installation only requires an IQ in the double digits to do, and there’s a video on the process to walk you through in case you’re unfamiliar with updating these sorts of things in Lightroom. It should only take you 5 minutes. Once you’ve installed the plug-in, you would set up the Format Publishing service from within Lightroom which would then become your home for all things regarding updating your portfolio site. This has the potential to remove many a step, saving time, and the headache of tight organization.
[REWIND: Kredo | The New Shareable Digital Portfolio From 4ormat]
Actually, the entire point of these updates was to satisfy the need for time given the ever-growing burden of things a photographer needs to handle in business, and for us to use that time however we like. The team took a rather sizeable survey of over 500 photographers on the value of their time and where they could use help, what the free time would be spent on, and these updates were born.
Altogether this effort to streamline is a great push, and if you are a Format user, and a Lightroom user (likely), I see little reason for this not to be a boon to your business. If you’re not a Format user, maybe this is something worth checking out.
You can link to Format here, and here for instructions on downloading and installing, and using the new features here.
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