Posted by
Cliff
on from the 21st-century-picture-albums dept.
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?"
You should take a look at deviant art. 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.
-- "...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
If you want a gallery online, personally, I really like gallery
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 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.
-- 7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Re:depends on what you want
by
silvwolf
·
· Score: 1
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
by
szyzyg
·
· Score: 3, Informative
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.
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.
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.
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. 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. I've been very pleased with their service, though I'm not particularly picky about my prints.
I've tried around some of those
by
prostoalex
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Shutterfly - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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.
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 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.
Get a DSL line and a website. Let your friends look at the photos online, or give them a zip to download at their leisure. Tell them about wget, and you're all set.
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
by
linuxghoul
·
· Score: 3, Informative
try Fotopic. 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
-- Sigura Non Grata
Re:i love fotopic
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I use fotopic.net too. The site is techy-orientated to some extent so it would suit/.ers. The site and images which you upload can cope with a slashdotting too - a few fotopic.net hosted urls have found their ways onto the board.
I'm just a happy user, not someone who works for them. The community feel to the site is good too, the owners take care of the site as a personal project, and are quick to reply if you ask for help.
Take a look at Club Photo. 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.
Google has a whole list of them here.
As far as free services go, Photobase is pretty good. Phil Greenspun's 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...
by
GimmeFuel
·
· Score: 1
Did anyone else's brain parse that as "What Potato Sharing Service Would You Recommend?"?
For nudes: Hegre-Archives... still there?!?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Until a few months ago, H-A offered cost-free
Photo-Forum to host users' "simple nude" photos
Then they went off for a month or so "to upgrade
their server(s)"
When the -rest- of the H-A website returned,
the Photo-Forum was no longer available,
except [possibly] to members
Does anyone who -had- access still have it?
(Was joining as a paying member required?)
For the UK
by
fireshipjohn
·
· Score: 2, Informative
May I recommend Photobox 200Mb store, public gallery and excellent prints, good prices, fast delivery, ftp and zip uploads. Just a satisfied customer....
Note about Gallery; I use Coppermine instead
by
slashd'oh
·
· Score: 1
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 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 doesn't offer print services.:)
Re:Note about Gallery; I use Coppermine instead
by
robo45h
·
· Score: 1
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.
Photo sharing service? You can get as many photos as you want at alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*
-- Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Pbase if you don't need printing service
by
remou
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Pbase is a volunteer effort that was free until recently. They don't have ads, reasonably fast, use linux....
no printing service though...
Re:Pbase if you don't need printing service
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
They're certainly not cheap now. They charge for basic service.
Shutterfly works with Linux
by
nixman99
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Shutterfly works great with Netscape 7, although I haven't tried uploading files through the browser. I use their Linux file-upload program instead.
Re:Shutterfly works with Linux
by
prostoalex
·
· Score: 1
Right, missed the fact they have special software besides the Web site upload forms.
Neptune
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Mediashare ( neptune.com ) has a photo, video and music sharing service. There's a free trial. Everything is in Flash though.
PhotoASA.com
by
Majin+Bubu
·
· Score: 3, Informative
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.
-- Ander
@=
Arles is the best
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Arles from digital dutch is excellent. Make ur own Albums from a folder of pics and keep them locally, write on CD or upload on ur website. All u need to view is a browser. simple as it can get
It's powered by the open source Gallery project, found at http://gallery.sourceforge.com.
I use and like Shutterfly
by
dpbsmith
·
· Score: 1
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 camera pictures) and they all have looked fine.
Shutterfly seems reliable and predictable, the web site is pretty usable and well-designed. The Web-based tools for selecting and organizing pictures work surprisingly well. (I have DSL. I think it might be a little slow on a dialup, though my son's fiancee--things have progressed since she told me about Shutterfly--uses it on a dialup and hasn't complained).
I'm sure this is true of all the digital services, but for gifts to friends, I love being able to select scattered pictures from many rolls of film and being able to combine them (and arrange them, if I'm making a Snapbook) and I love being able to have Shutterfly mail them for me. I order far more reprints and enlargements than in the days when I had to find the negative and circle the number and try to figure out whether the misaligned frame was "5" or "5A"
All my experience so far is with uploaded material: scans and digital camera pictures. These days I take about 80% of my pictures with my digital camera. For my conventional 35mm film snapshots I continue to use a local one-hour photo because they do good work and I want them to stay in business; I haven't tried mailing film to Shutterfly yet.
Three gripes: 1) it's hard to tell WHAT their real prices are because they seem to be continually offering specials (typically 25% off on orders over $50 and things like that). 2) You can't download pictures from them. 3) There is no technical information on how they do color management--no step-by-step on how to set up colorsync or what have you so that you can make what you see on your screen match the print you'll get. I'm not saying this is a problem. I haven't gotten a single print from them that I didn't like. But I just wish they had a technical section on their website where they'd give you step-by-step on how to get a precise screen view of how the print will look.
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.
Re:Check out Preclick.com
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I'll second the endorsement for checking out Preclick (http://www.preclick.com)
You can get 30 free prints just for downloading the free application and registering.
There's a Welcome email and a regular newsletter (some pretty cool tutorials). You can easily unsubscribe if that's what you want.
PrintRoom if you want prints
by
g4dget
·
· Score: 1
I've been really happy with printroom.com. Their gallery seems fine and their prints were the best of a bunch of companies that I tried.
Slashdot Mirror
PC Magazine did one a while ago...
It's on their website at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,28639,00.asp
The results were:
3 - Ofoto
3 - PhotoPoint
2 - PhotoWorks
4 - Shutterfly (Editor's Choice)
3 - Snapfish
You should take a look at deviant art. 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.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Webshots Offers photosharing and print services...
if your just looking to put a gallery oneline what about something like blrop script. and roll your own.
If you want to share photos with family, I like the ceiva 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.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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.
Also this is in Canada, eh.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
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. 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. I've been very pleased with their service, though I'm not particularly picky about my prints.
Shutterfly - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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.
seriouslyexcited.net
Small userbase but great photographers:
Silver-pixel.net
Get a DSL line and a website. Let your friends look at the photos online, or give them a zip to download at their leisure. Tell them about wget, and you're all set.
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.
try Fotopic. 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
Sigura Non Grata
I've used them once by mailing in film; the prints were decent and I also got a CD of the hi-res scans.
Google has a whole list of them here.
As far as free services go, Photobase is pretty good. Phil Greenspun's Photo.net gives you some space plus a community of amateur to pro photographers to boot.
$ cd ~/kitchen/fridge
$ more caffeine
live(free) || die;
Photos and Discussion
Until a few months ago, H-A offered cost-free
Photo-Forum to host users' "simple nude" photos
Then they went off for a month or so "to upgrade
their server(s)"
When the -rest- of the H-A website returned,
the Photo-Forum was no longer available,
except [possibly] to members
Does anyone who -had- access still have it?
(Was joining as a paying member required?)
May I recommend Photobox
200Mb store, public gallery and excellent prints, good prices, fast delivery, ftp and zip uploads.
Just a satisfied customer....
www.pixory.org
See my site at Digital Photography - Resources. It has lots of links to reviews and such.
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 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 doesn't offer print services.
Photo sharing service? You can get as many photos as you want at alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Pbase is a volunteer effort that was free until
recently. They don't have ads, reasonably fast,
use linux....
no printing service though...
Shutterfly works great with Netscape 7, although I haven't tried uploading files through the browser. I use their Linux file-upload program instead.
Mediashare ( neptune.com ) has a photo, video and music sharing service. There's a free trial. Everything is in Flash though.
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.
Ander
@=
Arles from digital dutch is excellent.
Make ur own Albums from a folder of pics and keep them locally, write on CD or upload on ur website.
All u need to view is a browser.
simple as it can get
Arles: http://www.digitaldutch/arles/
Website Gallery: http://www.amitkulkarni.com/pics/
There's free gallery hosting at http://photonavy.com .
.
It's powered by the open source Gallery project, found at http://gallery.sourceforge.com
Chekc it out!
There's free gallery hosting at http://photonavy.com .
.
It's powered by the open source Gallery project, found at http://gallery.sourceforge.com
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 camera pictures) and they all have looked fine.
Shutterfly seems reliable and predictable, the web site is pretty usable and well-designed. The Web-based tools for selecting and organizing pictures work surprisingly well. (I have DSL. I think it might be a little slow on a dialup, though my son's fiancee--things have progressed since she told me about Shutterfly--uses it on a dialup and hasn't complained).
I'm sure this is true of all the digital services, but for gifts to friends, I love being able to select scattered pictures from many rolls of film and being able to combine them (and arrange them, if I'm making a Snapbook) and I love being able to have Shutterfly mail them for me. I order far more reprints and enlargements than in the days when I had to find the negative and circle the number and try to figure out whether the misaligned frame was "5" or "5A"
All my experience so far is with uploaded material: scans and digital camera pictures. These days I take about 80% of my pictures with my digital camera. For my conventional 35mm film snapshots I continue to use a local one-hour photo because they do good work and I want them to stay in business; I haven't tried mailing film to Shutterfly yet.
Three gripes: 1) it's hard to tell WHAT their real prices are because they seem to be continually offering specials (typically 25% off on orders over $50 and things like that). 2) You can't download pictures from them. 3) There is no technical information on how they do color management--no step-by-step on how to set up colorsync or what have you so that you can make what you see on your screen match the print you'll get. I'm not saying this is a problem. I haven't gotten a single print from them that I didn't like. But I just wish they had a technical section on their website where they'd give you step-by-step on how to get a precise screen view of how the print will look.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
In depth review of Printroom, Photo Time, Ofoto, Shutterfly and Club Photo: http://rachael.kreisler.org/print.php
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.
I've been really happy with printroom.com. Their gallery seems fine and their prints were the best of a bunch of companies that I tried.