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Reviewed by J., 2004-12-11
Categories: Photography / studio, Amateur, Teens, Babes, Mega-sites, Videos, Movies
Visit ATK Galleria
| Review summary: ATK Galleria is an amateur mega-site with a photography/studio feel. With over 800,000 image files, full selection of MPEG's, RAM's, and AVI's in soft-core and hard-core niches. |
ATK Galleria has been reviewed again since this review was written - click here to read the newest review
ATK Galleria has been reviewed before - click here to read the first review
- Tons of Softcore and Hardcore niches
- Full selection of MPEGs, RAMs and AVIs
- Several updates per week- up to 5,000 photos added weekly, with over 800,000 files total
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About our ratings
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Not being my first time at an ATK site, I'm not surprised to find this one very simple visually. The white backgrounds are getting a bit old- it wouldn't take much to bring this place up a notch in the aesthetics category. Not to mention the "Enter your name and date of birth" thing at the beginning (members should be able to bypass this step). But that's not the only thing I'm looking at, so let's get to the real site.
ATK Galleria's main members' page is not flashy, but it's got all the links you need to navigate the site's content. From here you can go to the latest updates, photo and movie galleries, model index, search engine and everything else available on the site. You also get a sneak peak at what's being updated on other ATK sites. I'm a little disappointed to see some banner ads towards the bottom of this page. I can understand cross promoting the other ATK sites, but there are ads for sites not in the network as well. My theory is that, if you're paying for this site, you should be free of commercial interruption. To compare, this is a pay channel, not basic cable.
Checking out the latest updates, you get a full page length of ads for other ATK sites before you even see the updates on this one. This is pretty poor form in my opinion. Not to mention that the banners and whatnot make the page look cluttered and unprofessional.
The updates for the past month are listed chronologically only as text links to their respective galleries. So the only indication of what kinf of stuff you're going to look at is the name of the gallery. Advertisements get photos, but the updates don't even get a unique description? Moving on to take a look at the photo galleries, you choose first from hardcore or softcore galleries. Okay, fair enough. But then you get the joy of picking a gallery based solely on the number they've given it. "Oh, Gallery 45, that sounds nice!" Then you choose your content category (Blowjobs, Masturbation, Toys, Action or Foot Fetish). From here you can choose a photo set based on the thumbnail provided. Simple enough, though some dates would help so we knew what was newest on the site. You view 20 thumbs at a time in a set and, unfortunately, you have to go page by page (there's no list of the page numbers so you can hop around). There is, however, the nice option to download an entire set as a .zip. The photos are mostly professional shoots, though the lighting is sometimes not perfectly thought-out or inventive. But the images are crisp and look pretty nice at the 1024X684 resolution in the browser.
The real issue I have with the photo section is that guessing game you have to play to find a gallery with something you like. It makes much more sense to get rid of the gallery number system all together and simply list the stuff by content only? Maybe back when everyone was on modems, it made the site easier to browse. But now with high speed connections, one can browse a great deal and simple dates on the photo sets would provide a much more convenient method of sorting what one had yet to see on the site.
The movie galleries are set up much the same way, though without the option of separating the softcore and hardcore content. Clicking on a gallery number here brings you a page of thumbnails for the videos. Each vid gets one thumbnail and a description that includes file type and size, clip name and brief content desctiption (hardcore/softcore etc.). Unfortunately, you can't skip from gallery to gallery from a gallery page, so be prepared to press "Back" a lot and you may consider writing down the galleries you've visted just in case they don't turn the lovely hypertext purple after you click them.
Apart from the navigation, a little more description or a separate page for each clip with more thumbs on it would be pretty helpful. Even better, why not group the clips of the same video set somewhere and make a download of the entire video possible? As it stands, the newest clips are in MPEG format and run about 30MB a piece for about 3 minutes of video. For that filesize, they should be bigger than the 320x240 that they are, even though they look quite nice at that size and hold up pretty well to some expansion. Older clips are in different formats (some in RAM) and size and some don't even have unique thumbs for each clip, but the quality improves greatly on the more modern clips, so I won't judge them too harshly on crimes of their past.
One thing that is universally frustrating about the movie clips is that there's only one format available for each. A high and low resolution version would be extremely nice here (I would consider their current format an upper-middle res one) just to mix it up a bit. The production quality on the videos is about on par with the photos: semi-professional. Mostly indoor stuff with what appears to be incandescent lighting (love that orange tint!), but you can see everything you need to and at least there aren't flashbulbs popping off. The girls are pretty varied, though most seem to be of European origin (ATK Exotics has the more racially diverse stuff). I've noticed a trend in these girls to be kind of quiet though... I wonder why that is.
The search engine here appears pretty complete. You can search by all sorts of body type stuff, content specifics, model and even photographer if you find one you like. The search results page is just a list of models that have content that match your query, though. So if you're looking for something very specific, you'll have to go through all of each model's content to find what you're looking for. And, on top of that, the links to the content are only to the gallery page that includes that content... even more searching! The model index works in the same way in that clicking on a model brings up a list of links to the galleries on which her content appears. There are many better ways to organize this and, with the amount of content available on this site, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be interested in something more efficient.
Apart from these features, there's also a Lounge area that has some articles and random info- it's actually much more complete than it sounds, so it's definitely worth checking out. Why the content available on the sister sites is not also available on the Galleria is a mystery of business to me I guess. It would vastly improve the selection of models, not to mention the increase in quantity of content. But I suppose they've been around long enough to know who pays for what.
ATK Galleria has plenty of content and most of it is of decent quality. The problem is that it's not organized in such a way that makes it easy to find what you're looking for (and chances are they have it... somewhere). I can understand that sometimes searching for that perfect set is part of the fun. But not every time. And not when the amount of content that's available on ATK Galleria is put at your fingertips. A major overhaul of the navigation system would be required for me to consider the site worth the premium price. However, if you enjoy the hunt then, by all means, tally-ho!
Credit Card, Online Check, Snail Mail, Phone
One month: $29.99
Two months: $49.99
Three months: $64.99
Preview gallery: Check out the free preview pictures provided by ATK Galleria
Members area samples: See a selection of picture samples from ATK Galleria!
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