Good Gallery alternative?

[george-brooks]

One of my favorite features of MobileMe was the gallery. I used it to show clients proofs and to send final edits. I liked that it was clean, simple, and offered great security options. It was a fantastic service for professional photographers. Does anyone know of a good alternative? I want something that is preferably free, displays images in a nice gallery, offers password protection, and gives the person on the other end to download all or some of the full res files. Any suggestions?

 

[ugahairydawgs]

Not sure if Picasa does password protection or not, but you can definitely set it up so that only those with a direct link can access specific albums. And the ability to d/l full res versions of the pictures is there too.

Depending on how much you are uploading it could fill up kinda quick. If that happens though additional space is dirt cheap ($20/year will get you 80GB).

 

[george-brooks]

Cool, thanks. I checked out Picasa a while ago and wasn't too impressed but I'll give it another look. I think I have a buddy that works there, maybe I'll ask him to give me a little demo or something. Any other suggestions?

 

[r0k]

I've done some extensive work trying to find a replacement for mobile me galleries and I'm pretty frustrated. For one thing, I'm trying to combine 2 features. I'd like to back up all my photos which comes to over 200 gig and I'd like the galleries hidden. Secondly I'd like to "republish" my mobile me galleries on a new provider.

1 Flicr - Flickr has the best integration with iPhoto and the pro level only costs $25 a year. I have been unable to get customer support at yahoo to help me find a payment method that actually works for 60 days now. The last time I paid my pro bill was 2009. Since then the credit card expired. Now flickr refuses to allow me to update the expiration date and have the card actually work. I've also tried paypal to no avail. The only way I could use flickr is if they began offering payment methods that work with less effort than this.

2 Picasa - I've been uploading to Picasa. Behind flickr, this is the second most promising gallery replacement. The issue is that photos are automatically downsampled to 2048 pixels on the largest dimension. I might decide to just grin and bear it so I have something that actually works.

3 - Smugmug - This was the most promising candidate to replace mobile me galleries. Sadly they don't support many file formats and their upload process is badly broken. The OS X uploader is unreliable. The flash, html5 and java uploaders are unreliable as well. They offer a 14 day trial but during my 14 days I was unable to get my uploads done and I will probably have to walk away. If I decide to keep smugmug, I'll still be looking for a service to back up my videos since smugmug fails miserably at uploading video.

4 - dotphoto - terrible upload software. I will probably skip this option.

5 - snapfish - This free service requires users to create an account just to view your photos.

6 - photobucket - This one is somewhat promising but you have to pay for pro in advance to avoid automatic downsampling to 1024x768. I will probably skip this option.

During the 6 months I've spent trying to replace mobile me, I've found some promising solutions but I haven't been able to settle on a final answer. For this reason, I went to Apple's mobile me feedback today and suggested they continue to offer galleries and idisk as optional features of icloud. I suggest other users who appreciate the way mobile me galleries work do the same.

 

[george-brooks]

I've done some extensive work trying to find a replacement for mobile me galleries and I'm pretty frustrated. For one thing, I'm trying to combine 2 features. I'd like to back up all my photos which comes to over 200 gig and I'd like the galleries hidden. Secondly I'd like to "republish" my mobile me galleries on a new provider.

1 Flicr - Flickr has the best integration with iPhoto and the pro level only costs $25 a year. I have been unable to get customer support at yahoo to help me find a payment method that actually works for 60 days now. The last time I paid my pro bill was 2009. Since then the credit card expired. Now flickr refuses to allow me to update the expiration date and have the card actually work. I've also tried paypal to no avail. The only way I could use flickr is if they began offering payment methods that work with less effort than this.

2 Picasa - I've been uploading to Picasa. Behind flickr, this is the second most promising gallery replacement. The issue is that photos are automatically downsampled to 2048 pixels on the largest dimension. I might decide to just grin and bear it so I have something that actually works.

3 - Smugmug - This was the most promising candidate to replace mobile me galleries. Sadly they don't support many file formats and their upload process is badly broken. The OS X uploader is unreliable. The flash, html5 and java uploaders are unreliable as well. They offer a 14 day trial but during my 14 days I was unable to get my uploads done and I will probably have to walk away. If I decide to keep smugmug, I'll still be looking for a service to back up my videos since smugmug fails miserably at uploading video.

4 - dotphoto - terrible upload software. I will probably skip this option.

5 - snapfish - This free service requires users to create an account just to view your photos.

6 - photobucket - This one is somewhat promising but you have to pay for pro in advance to avoid automatic downsampling to 1024x768. I will probably skip this option.

During the 6 months I've spent trying to replace mobile me, I've found some promising solutions but I haven't been able to settle on a final answer. For this reason, I went to Apple's mobile me feedback today and suggested they continue to offer galleries and idisk as optional features of icloud. I suggest other users who appreciate the way mobile me galleries work do the same.

I use flickr a lot but it doesnt work at all for my purposes, as there arent really any good privacy tools. I have to upload the photos I want to share to my photostream publicly to put them into a gallery unless my client happens to have a flickr account, but then ALL of my friends and family can still see them. Flickr is a no go for what I'm looking for here (though definitely my favorite photo sharing website). I had a freind that uses smugmug and it looks alright, I'll check it out. You say it isnt free though?

 

[r0k]

I use flickr a lot but it doesnt work at all for my purposes, as there arent really any good privacy tools. I have to upload the photos I want to share to my photostream publicly to put them into a gallery unless my client happens to have a flickr account, but then ALL of my friends and family can still see them. Flickr is a no go for what I'm looking for here (though definitely my favorite photo sharing website). I had a freind that uses smugmug and it looks alright, I'll check it out. You say it isnt free though?

Smugmug costs $40 a year and up. Smugmug's uploader feels somewhat buggy. Smugmug's uploader doesn't behave gracefully if it hits a file it can't handle, it goes into an infinite loop wasting time and bandwidth! I've just got flickr to finally accept my payment. You say there's no privacy settings? I think there are. If I make something visible, everybody can see it. If I hide it, only I can see it. That's good enough. Of course smugmug's privacy settings are better but I just thought you bailed too quickly on flickr.

In the end, I think I may end up with smugmug's basic service since their video uploader pukes on 3/4 of my video files. I like the way their gallery organizer works. If they supported all the video formats I need, it would be a done deal by now.

Photobucket pro is another one to consider. It costs the same as flickr pro but supports longer videos.

Picasaweb is worth considering if you have a google+ account since it's mostly free (though it does downsample your images to 2048 pixels on the longest edge).

I've written an article comparing these photo services. All of them have flaws and none of them will do everything I want. This is why I think I'll end up paying for flickr and smugmug this year just to tide me over until I can pick my long term choice.

 

[jolton]

If anyone wants to save $5 on a subscription here is my referral link:

https://secure.smugmug.com/signup.mg?Coupon=KtrkhMRpDG8p0

I'm pretty sure you can still do a free 30 day trial, if anyone wants to try it out.

 

[Weaselboy]

It does not have the PW protection you want, but I use the Dropbox photo gallery for my meager needs. Free and simple.

 

[george-brooks]

Smugmug costs $40 a year and up. Smugmug's uploader feels somewhat buggy. Smugmug's uploader doesn't behave gracefully if it hits a file it can't handle, it goes into an infinite loop wasting time and bandwidth! I've just got flickr to finally accept my payment. You say there's no privacy settings? I think there are. If I make something visible, everybody can see it. If I hide it, only I can see it. That's good enough. Of course smugmug's privacy settings are better but I just thought you bailed too quickly on flickr.

In the end, I think I may end up with smugmug's basic service since their video uploader pukes on 3/4 of my video files. I like the way their gallery organizer works. If they supported all the video formats I need, it would be a done deal by now.

Photobucket pro is another one to consider. It costs the same as flickr pro but supports longer videos.

Picasaweb is worth considering if you have a google+ account since it's mostly free (though it does downsample your images to 2048 pixels on the longest edge).

I've written an article comparing these photo services. All of them have flaws and none of them will do everything I want. This is why I think I'll end up paying for flickr and smugmug this year just to tide me over until I can pick my long term choice.

flickr DOES have privacy settings, but they're binary. Either everyone can see it or just I can see it. Again, I'm strictly talking about showing and distributing photos to clients, so I need to be able to have a password protected album. Smugmug seems like the best choice right now, but I would also be interested in services that aren't huge like Flickr and Smugmug and Photobucket. Anyone know any smaller companies that are strictly geared towards professionals?

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It does not have the PW protection you want, but I use the Dropbox photo gallery for my meager needs. Free and simple.

Dropbox is another good choice too, and I use it a lot, but I have found that with clients, many of them are hesitant to download the software if they don't already have it. Is there a way to share dropbox folders without the person at the other end downloading the actual program, sort of like Mediafire or something where you can click a direct link to download the files? Mediafire would actually probably work pretty well for me except for its lack of a gallery and ability to batch upload unless you buy a pro account, and I don't really use it enough to justify that since I have dropbox.

 

[Weaselboy]

Dropbox is another good choice too, and I use it a lot, but I have found that with clients, many of them are hesitant to download the software if they don't already have it. Is there a way to share dropbox folders without the person at the other end downloading the actual program, sort of like Mediafire or something where you can click a direct link to download the files? Mediafire would actually probably work pretty well for me except for its lack of a gallery and ability to batch upload unless you buy a pro account, and I don't really use it enough to justify that since I have dropbox.

The client does not need to DL or install anything to view Dropbox photos. You just send them a "shareable link" and they can view and DL from any web browser.

Here is a screen cap from my Dropbox account in Safari.

 

[george-brooks]

The client does not need to DL or install anything to view Dropbox photos. You just send them a "shareable link" and they can view and DL from any web browser.

Here is a screen cap from my Dropbox account in Safari.

Awesome! Thanks! I think this is probably the best fit for my needs. Thanks everyone!