Online photo sharing recommendations

[pierces]

One of the questions that shows up on a regular basis is, "which online service do you use?" I thought I would fire up a new thread so people could say a few words about their favorite service and why they prefer it. Some things to mention would be:

 

Price - how much for what and if there is a free or trial offer, what are the limitations.

 

Favorite features - Things like unlimited storage, ease of linking, etc.

 

Display - post a link to your online galleries so people can see how the photos are presented

 

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Zenfolio is my current choice for online storage and display.

 

Price - $5/mo (annual billing) for unlimited storage and a wide range of customization options. $20/mo gets you Zenfolio logo-free pages and a full range of sales features to market your images including shipping finished products directly from several popular online printers.

 

Free 14 day trial.

 

Favorite features - If you process your images in Lightroom or another program that allows you to title or comment on the images, the title and comment are automatically extracted and displayed if you choose. Options for display are easy to use and very customizable. There is an option in the galleries for a full-screen slide show that scales to your display. Custom gallery URLs and a wide variety of linking options.

 

Dispaly - http://galleries.pptphoto.com/

 

 

Dave

 

Note:

I just said goodbye to PBase. After fourteen years, I am letting my account lapse. having moved my main online presence to Zenfolio a few years ago, I haven't been updating it as often and the limited storage just doesn't cut it anymore. It is a good service for $23/yr but rather than maintaining two accounts, I'm simply choosing the one with more flexibility and features.

[xlxo]

I've been a long time user of flickr. There's also an active forum on photography topics.

 

Should I mention it's FREE for most users.

[sunshine100]

I have been using smugmug for about 2 years now. I have tons of pictures--the plan I have has unlimited storage and is 60.00/year. I have a network at my house with 2 drives (the first is the original and then I have a backup of the other one) For me to know that I have my pictures offsite, I feel this is so well worth it. There are many options and choices on how to display the pictures. I do believe smugmug comes with a trial version. You can take a look at how I have chosen to set up my pictures-- cruisejanet.smugmug.com

 

I just love how easy it is to upload and overall ease of use of smugmug. They also have a great support team! I just completed a huge project--I have a fijitsu scanner (self-feeding) that has scanned years of my old pictures, then I uploaded them into my smugmug account. (Glad that project is done!!)

[havoc315]

For professional work, zenfolio. Great features, great partners for ordering prints.

For my personal stuff, flickr. FREE. Nearly unlimited high resolution storage. Really easy photo sharing.

[boopsahoy]

For personal pictures Shutterfly-FREE

Edited June 9, 2016 by boopsahoy

[Stevi]

Another Flickr user here (https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevid/). I used to pay for Flickr Pro ($25/US year), but money got tight and I let it lapse and I can't say I noticed the difference so I haven't reinstated it.

[Emperor Norton]

I'll second SmugMug. ( )

 

They have a 14 day free trial and plans go from $3.34 - $35 per month depending upon features and if you pay monthly or annually.

 

I find it's a relatively easy site to use and moving images around doesn't break old display URLs (Say I link an image from SmugMug to Cruise Critic in 2012. In 2015 redo where my images are stored on the site. On some sites this would either not be possible or result in a new URL for the photo thus breaking the display on Cruise Critic. - you can see this here: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1690076 all the pictures that I hosted on SmugMug are still there:D).

 

A very good IMO benefit of SmugMug is that you can download archives of your galleries post and then burn those archives to disc or put them on a USB key or something (great for spreading backups as well as if you later want to move to a new hosting site - you have all your images in the same groupings).

 

SmugMug also has a plugin for Lightroom to make importing files a drag and click process. Further SmugMug has apps for both iOS and Android.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Emperor Norton

[jenZ]

Thanks for the insight about constant URLs on SmugMug, Emperor Norton. I have not seen that feature as a benefit or a negative in any online photo storage site comparisons. I have not been an active online photo sharer but want to start, plus my hard drive is full so I am looking for that easy back up solution as well.

 

I can well imagine that my initial organization of my trip photos could easily change over the years. So I will add your insight to my criteria and investigate SmugMug more. Thanks again!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

Edited June 11, 2016 by JenZ