Which Photo Sharing Service Would You Recommend?

pole asks: "Perhaps my Google skills aren't up to snuff, but I could not find a decent review of various photo sharing and printing services (for amateur photographers) such as Fotki and Ofoto. What services have you been using and what do you recommend? What do your family and friends prefer?"

PCMag

[MattCohn.com]

PC Magazine did one a while ago...

It's on their website at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,28639,00.asp [pcmag.com]

The results were:
3 - Ofoto

3 - PhotoPoint

2 - PhotoWorks

4 - Shutterfly (Editor's Choice)

3 - Snapfish

Re:PCMag

[mike_mgo]

In Soviet Russia, spelling corrects you.

deviantart.com

[shdragon]

You should take a look at deviant art [deviantart.com]. I know of a couple semi-pro (side jobs ya know) that reguarly post work there. It's not just photos though, but there is a rather large userbase.

webshots.

[BenTheDewpendent]

Webshots [webshots.com] Offers photosharing and print services...

if your just looking to put a gallery oneline what about something like blrop [blorp.com] script. and roll your own.

depends on what you want

[elmegil]

If you want a gallery online, personally, I really like gallery [menalto.com] which has a very easy user interface, easy to upload photos to, etc. It does require PHP on your hosting server.

If you want to share photos with family, I like the ceiva [ceiva.com] picture frame, because my mom doesn't have to use a computer to enjoy it. She has a very strong tremor in her hands, and so surfing the web is really not an option for her. Again, the ceiva web page makes it easy to upload photos to send to their frame.

Note about Gallery; I use Coppermine instead

[slashd'oh]

I wanted to install Gallery on my site, but alas, my host runs their Apache server in safe mode, and I was unable to find (or build) a cgi version of PHP as a work-around of safe mode (as suggested by the Gallery crew).

So, I use Coppermine [chezgreg.net] instead, and I've been happy with it, mainly because it is easy to use and it has a slideshow feature. Plus, the set-up was a snap! Also, I think my basic php skills could modify it to fit my needs. FYI, it doesn't support multiple users' albums and, of course, it d

Re:Note about Gallery; I use Coppermine instead

[robo45h]

FYI, Gallery does have a Slideshow mode like Coppermine, though perhaps the "button" is not quite as obvious as in Coppermine. But it's there in the upper right.

Re:depends on what you want

[silvwolf]

Another vote for Gallery if you can. I have it installed on my domain and just love it. No real space restrictions (I get 200MB on my host..), images aren't resized, great organization of different galleries, you can add comments to the pictures, etc etc etc.

It's made my life much easier. I used to make thumbnails and HTML pages by hand until I found Gallery. It's made sharing my photos a rather enjoyable experience.. click, click, done!

Ofoto Doesn't Let You Opt Out Of Spam

[szyzyg]

They didn't give me an option when I registered, then when they spammed me and asked to be removed to the mailing lists they also disabled my account.

Now I just use yahoo groups.

think different

[BortQ]

i have some friends who say that you can print out digital pictures at costco for 25-cents each. They seemed pleased, but I never saw any of them.

Also this is in Canada, eh.

Re:think different

[dave_f1m]

Try Sams Club: 19-cents each. They print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, not that Kodak junk (check out Wilhelm Imaging Research for how pathetic Kodak paper is). They monitor the printers well, so the color should be right. The Frontier expects sRGB color space.

- dave f.

Re:think different

[balamw]

It's US$0.19 at my local Costco. So looks like you Canadians get them cheaper than us.

I LOVE this service, even if I can only get my prints the next day ...

On topic, I've used both Yahoo and *cough* MSN Groups to share photos, and prefer MSN in terms of the overall ease and flexibility of the site. Yahoo is a PITA for uploading many pictures since they still don't have a decent upload tool, and selecting files one-by-one is a pain.

Balam

try ImageStation and/or Snapfish

[mvance]

I used Yahoo's photo sharing features until I got fed up with constantly using up my disk space quota. I did some google searching and found an article (can't remember where) comparing the features of various photo sharing sites which recommended Image Station [imagestation.com]. At the time (and still, as far as I can tell) they had no quota. That feature alone was enough to sell me on using it. However, it is also quite fast in my experience, as well as user friendly. There is one minor pain that I've run across though. Other people have to register and accept a cookie before they can view any of your shared albums beyond the first shot in the album.

I have not ordered any prints from ImageStation. For that, I use Snapfish [snapfish.com]. I've been very pleased with their service, though I'm not particularly picky about my prints.

I've tried around some of those

[prostoalex]

Shutterfly [shutterfly.com] - great if you plan to use Internet Explorer to communicate with the site, they have an ActiveX plug-in, where you can select multiple files to upload. Warning though, you will not be able to download your photos in original resolution once you upload them. The only way to get back a high-res photo is to buy a CD from Shutterfly.

Epson Photo Center [epson.com] - one of the few services where you can download exactly the same resolution as you uploaded, so great for storing large pictures. Except that they require Web forms for the photos to be uploaded, and the Web forms they have accept a single photo at a time (maximum of 10-20 per page, if I recall). Might spend your whole evening clicking and selecting, when downloading 1000 new images off your flash card.

Ofoto [ofoto.com] - nothing too thrilling, pretty much the same offering as Shuttefly without the ActiveX plug in for multiple uploads. Has connections with Amazon, so it's possible to get some promotinal free photos with them if you buy some related items at Amazon. I got 25 free photos with the software I bought at Amazon site.

Yahoo! Photos [yahoo.com] - 30 megs is a bummer, but if you use other Yahoo! services regularly, might find the site easier to navigate and play with. Although all other guys mentioned above allow unlimited (well, supposedly) hosting and sharing.

Shutterfly works with Linux

[nixman99]

Shutterfly [shutterfly.com] works great with Netscape 7, although I haven't tried uploading files through the browser. I use their Linux file-upload program [shutterfly.com] instead.

Re:Shutterfly works with Linux

[prostoalex]

Right, missed the fact they have special software besides the Web site upload forms.

Shutterfly!

[galaxy300]

I don't have a list of other services available (and I think they've been mentioned here already) but I can vouch for myself that Shutterfly [shutterfly.com] not only produces great photographs from your digital prints, but can create online photo albums from the images that you upload. You can also password protect your albums for privacy. A pretty cool service.

Silver-pixel

[xWeston]

Small userbase but great photographers:
Silver-pixel.net [silver-pixel.net]

my webhost and album.pl

[starfighter_org]

I just use album.pl - a handy free web script that uses imagemagick to make thumbnails. I post em on my web host, phpwebhosing.com who doesn't give you limits on space as long as it's not a bunch of huge videos or mp3s, etc. They do specifically say you can have webhosts. you can see an example of how I use a modified album.pl at www.haskellobrien.com my (egocentric) site for pics I'm willing to sell.

i love fotopic

[linuxghoul]

try Fotopic [fotopic.net]. No ads, 250MB storage, FTP access, can be used with your own domain...the interface leaves a bit to be desired, but still is better than all others i have used. Very geek oriented. I don't understand why so few people know about it, although i think i just took care of that problem ;)

am not paid anything by them for this "promotion", just a very satisfied user.

Ghoul2

Re:i love fotopic

[Joel Rowbottom]

Well, it's good to see we have some happy users \o/

Cheers for the support,

Joel & Nicky.

ClubPhoto

[e271828]

Take a look at Club Photo [clubphoto.com]. They have limited but decent free services, and also some pay services. You have to subscribe to be able to download at high resolutions. But somehow I have more faith in the longevity of a service that charges something than in the free ones!

I've used them once by mailing in film; the prints were decent and I also got a CD of the hi-res scans.

Want a list?

[zhiwenchong]

Google has a whole list of them here [google.com].
As far as free services go, Photobase [pbase.com] is pretty good. Phil Greenspun's Photo.net [photo.net] gives you some space plus a community of amateur to pro photographers to boot.

I think I need to start getting more sleep...

[GimmeFuel]

Did anyone else's brain parse that as "What Potato Sharing Service Would You Recommend?"?

$ cd ~/kitchen/fridge
$ more caffeine

One I like.

[/dev/trash]

Photos and Discussion [photographica.org]

For the UK

[fireshipjohn]

May I recommend Photobox [photobox.co.uk]
200Mb store, public gallery and excellent prints, good prices, fast delivery, ftp and zip uploads.
Just a satisfied customer....

reviews

[rakerman]

See my site at Digital Photography - Resources [chebucto.ns.ca]. It has lots of links to reviews and such.

Heh.

[Black Parrot]

Photo sharing service? You can get as many photos as you want at alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*

Pbase if you don't need printing service

[remou]

Pbase is a volunteer effort that was free until
recently. They don't have ads, reasonably fast,
use linux....

no printing service though...

PhotoASA.com

[Majin Bubu]

I use PhotoASA. 50 MB, no limits on image size, you can define codes for access to different parts of your db of photos, nice, no spam. I'd recommmend it.

I use and like Shutterfly

[dpbsmith]

I chose it very scientfically: my son's girlfriend used it and recommended it. I like Shutterfly so well that I've never been tempted to switch, so I can't compare it to other services.

It's a Mac-friendly site; their "Shutterfly Smart Upload" application for multiple uploads has a Mac version and it works well.

I love their Snapbooks (six to thirty photoprints that are spiral-bound).

The quality of the pictures seems very satisfactory to me. I've ordered quite a few 8x10's (made from 1600x1200 digital came

Prosumer Review of Photo Printing Sites

[rekreisler]

In depth review of Printroom, Photo Time, Ofoto, Shutterfly and Club Photo: http://rachael.kreisler.org/print.php [kreisler.org]

Check out Preclick.com

[Jseiple]

Preclick.com gives out free software where you can edit and view your pics and then upload to dotphoto to get them printed....pretty cool stuff.

PrintRoom if you want prints

[g4dget]

I've been really happy with printroom.com [printroom.com]. Their gallery seems fine and their prints were the best of a bunch of companies that I tried.