We have a new baby and therefore lots and lots of pictures to send. Emailing all these photos is very tedious and time consuming, but with friends and family all around the world we need a way to share the photos. So far I’ve checked out Flickr and Photobucket. They seem to be what I need and offer similar features. Can anybody offer an opinion on what they think is the best site? I’m looking for user friendly most of all, as I don’t have a lot of time to faff about figuring out how to upload and organise the photos.
For me - photobucket is streets ahead of the rest. Though flikr seems to be quite popular.
I like photobucket because I have more freedom to show the images independently of the UI of photobucket. I can include videos too. I don’t know much about flikr but it looks a bit restrictive for my tastes. I don’t like having to click on 3 or four links to show an image at full size.
I think Flickr is superior as a networking and sharing tool. It has an annoying restriction though – you’re not supposed to host photos on there and link only to your photo, they want their cool user interface to be seen. Sometimes I link the photo directly but then add a link to Flickr’s interface page for the same photo and name my link simply “This link required by Flickr’s Terms of Service.” So far that’s never gotten me in trouble.
Photobucket doesn’t seem to have that restriction, but looks sort of ad-saturated to me, and of course lacks Flickr’s cutting-edge tools. I keep an account on both – I use the Flickr one for art and family photos, and use the Photobucket one for pragmatic stuff like comparing how well my dog’s scar is healing over the course of several days, or shooting items we are selling on Craigslist.
Many of the more serious photographers on websites I visit seem to prefer Picasa. The DP Review site has a lot of Picasa and Flickr users.
edit: Flickr has nice tools for organizing your photos, but only allows three “folders” and 200 photos to a free account. 25 bucks/year buys you infinite of each. I don’t know if other sites have number-of-photos restrictions or other restrictions; they might.
I use SmugMug and for my purposes I like it better than any of the other mainstream options. I think there’s one really important point you need to understand when you’re evaluating options: “photo sharing” isn’t really a single concept. Different people have very different expectations for photo sharing sites, and which site is best for you depends on what you are looking for. Flickr is hard to beat from a social standpoint, but I personally don’t need that most of the time (in fact, I find it annoying). Photobucket offers free non-social sharing, but I want a better visual presentation and interface. SmugMug does that very well for me. It’s not free, and that obviously is a showstopper for a lot of people, but I find it to be worth every penny.
Picasa is so much better than Flicker or photobucket, at least from the perspective of someone actually looking at your stuff. Every time someone posts a link to a Flicker account, it drives me nuts going through it. Plus, Picasa is a great way to organize and e-mail photos on your computer, and it’s a cinch to upload them.
Seems ok. But it doesn’t have built in feature to show the image without the UI (as I have done above) to achieve that I had to right click on the image to get the source. in photobucket I just get the url from the ‘direct link’ box.
edit: Hotlinking doesn’t seem to work. so another downside.
I like Flickr because it doesn’t “resize” your photos to where your original hi-res photo isn’t available to anyone. But yeah, I have a paid account, too.
Thirding SmugMug; good timing because I just went through my selection process last week. I evaluated them all, but SmugMug is the only one I actually tried. I’m on their 14-day free trial, and unless something goes bonkers, I’ll sign up.
The features important to me, that SmugMug fills perfectly:
ability to share photos with family/friends without requiring them to sign up/create an account
a simple URL to give out, one easily understood over-the-phone (mine is [initials].smugmug.com)
an option for viewers to download the full-res picture
ability to hotlink directly to a single image of a size I choose.
Some things I didn’t require, but I find nice at SmugMug:
nice, simple-to-use UI
ability to order prints/other items from the site
completely ad-free
you can choose to make some albums “open” (no password), but require passwords for others
$40/year is not trivial to me, but as the “official” family photographer, I think it will be worth it for me. And I lease several Web servers that I could use to host the photos, but the SmugMug features are worth it to me.
Many of these services ask you to sign in or something, or may require you to register. Flickr (depending on the user’s settings) does not. Flickr also has a great community, which, even if it’s not important to you, it may be to your friends. Flickr has a built-in “fave” system which many users use a lot (I have 1288 at the moment). Getting a link to Photobucket or Picasa is annoying because 99% of people I know are on Flickr.
I love Flickr so much that I’m happy to pay for a Pro account even thought I loathe their parent Yahoo with a burning passion.
And, OP, for the love of god, don’t use Myspace or Facebook as your photo site. That’s insanely frustrating.
I could write this exact post with the services switched. I can’t stand Picasa’s interface. Flickr’s (no E) is pretty good by itself, and fantastic if the user puts even an extra minute to tag & organize their stuff.
Sailboat- this guy has been linking directly to Flickr images for as long as I’ve been reading him. If an ESPN columnist can get away with it, I think you can. That said, for the reasons I mentioned above, I like going to the Flickr page so I can Fave (or tag) the photo.
People actually buy prints of other peoples pictures from Flicker & Photobucket and such places… ??? Well I swan…
I am proposing a constitutional amendment to make it legal to for a person on dial-up to kill anyone who links to a full 500+KB, 3000+ pixel X 2000+ pixel picture with no warning first to the person who tries to open / download it… Grrrrrrrr
A friend uses Kodakgallery.com to post pics of her son because she says it allows you set it up so that people have to have a log-in to see her pics and she knows when someone has looked at the pics and from the log-in who it is. It gives her a feeling of security that she has some control over who is looking at the pics. I don’t know whether she can block people she doesn’t know but it is worth looking into if you are concerned about strangers viewing your kids…
She sends an email that comes from the Kodak site that alerts her friends and family when there are new pics.
Additonal info on posting pics. Remember to stay safe.
I think you should be a little careful that your pics that open to the general public don’t identify your child or where you live too fully. There are nuts out there, folks–not to make everyone paranoid, just careful. For instance, if you take a pic of your house and there is a street number on it; you take a pic in a place you regularly go that is very recognizable; your kid is on a team and they’re wearing a jersey with their name on the back or their number; or a pic of their school with it’s name… Or you’re getting way too descriptive with your captions. Just saying…
