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Most popular photo sharing sites suck... what are the alternatives?
- Thread starter VirtualRain
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I looked at PBase a while back but was never satisfied with it. They strip the ICC profiles out of the thumbnail images, so if your viewers look at the image in anything other than "original" size, the color rendition will possibly be off (particularly if they are using Safari). I did not see where it was worth it to pay for that. Also just from casual browsing experience I find their servers to be a little slow. Maybe it's just geographical realities between their servers and my computer, but I think other sites perform better.
I admit I stumbled upon a great alternative because I am a student and have free webspace offered to me via my university. But I found it dead easy to generate a gallery in LR (I'm sure Aperture does this too) and have it automatically uploaded to the web. I just use the standard lightroom HTML preset. It gives me an IMO very clean look with an image quality I can control. No flash or anything too gaudy, just a clean fast HTML interface.
Anyway, I don't know the specifics but I think that buying your own webspace somewhere and simply generating your own gallery via a program like LR or Aperture, probably is cost competitive with a hosting site, and gives you the most control over your image quality/presentation.
I will say too though that I don't sell any of my work. I have my pictures on my webspace just so myself and family/friends can view them easier than if I were to email everyone pictures, etc. I'm sure if I wanted to set up some kind of online store, that I would probably need to change it up.
Ruahrc
P.S. I had a brief discussion about this with someone I know recently, they told me that if you upload things to Google, that somewhere in their TOS is a clause saying that they are allowed to use any photo that is uploaded to their site if they want. I'm not sure if it's actually true, but if so that would be a personal detriment to using it. I'd be interested to know if anyone has compiled that kind of data, if places like Google or Flickr or Smugmug have any of those types of wording in their TOS indicating that you may be giving up at least some of the rights to the photo by uploading it to their servers.
I admit I stumbled upon a great alternative because I am a student and have free webspace offered to me via my university. But I found it dead easy to generate a gallery in LR (I'm sure Aperture does this too) and have it automatically uploaded to the web. I just use the standard lightroom HTML preset. It gives me an IMO very clean look with an image quality I can control. No flash or anything too gaudy, just a clean fast HTML interface.
Anyway, I don't know the specifics but I think that buying your own webspace somewhere and simply generating your own gallery via a program like LR or Aperture, probably is cost competitive with a hosting site, and gives you the most control over your image quality/presentation.
I will say too though that I don't sell any of my work. I have my pictures on my webspace just so myself and family/friends can view them easier than if I were to email everyone pictures, etc. I'm sure if I wanted to set up some kind of online store, that I would probably need to change it up.
Ruahrc
P.S. I had a brief discussion about this with someone I know recently, they told me that if you upload things to Google, that somewhere in their TOS is a clause saying that they are allowed to use any photo that is uploaded to their site if they want. I'm not sure if it's actually true, but if so that would be a personal detriment to using it. I'd be interested to know if anyone has compiled that kind of data, if places like Google or Flickr or Smugmug have any of those types of wording in their TOS indicating that you may be giving up at least some of the rights to the photo by uploading it to their servers.
Excellent news. I haven't uploaded anything to FB in a while, and I wasn't aware of this.
Still, I'd rather do the downsizing and colour management myself than rely on FB to do it for me.
My site is a custom coded Wordpress install. Basically, wordpress with a fancy CSS skin and some other little trinkets thrown in for good measure. We decided on the wordpress framework because it makes editing the text on the site super simple and I can make changes/post blogs from my iPhone as well.
I'm considering pursuing this avenue as well... Do you have any good Wordpress theme recommendations for an album/gallery site? All of the ones I've seen rely on categories to organize photos and lack a "gallery" or "album" concept.
I prefer to use the web gallery options built into Lightroom. The main site links to the galleries, which then pop up in a new window. This way I can optimize the gallery backgrounds and interfaces for the images in the event I have a set that looks better on a non-black background.
if you don't like flickr, then perhaps you should start your own photoblog or something..
Wordpress gives you free file hosting...
Wordpress gives you free file hosting...
This is what I've done. Allows me to incorporate a blog with little difficulty. The site is still a work in progress, since I've moved over from using Smugmug exclusively. But having my own site that is this easily managed is quite nice, indeed.
I use the Photocrati Emulsion theme. Highly recommended.
Best photo video sharing site
I just signed up with http://www.mejuba.com. Unlimited storage for both videos and pictures and it's completly free.
No monthly limits or qoutas.
Photos and videos are stored in their original formats and sizes and are kept unmodified for backup.
I also like that you can geo-tag your stuff so it shows up on a map. And you can search for stuff on the map - that's cool!.
As the only site i know of it uses a Windows Explorer like navigation with folders - super eacy to use - even has drag and drop!.
I can highly recommend it.
I just signed up with http://www.mejuba.com. Unlimited storage for both videos and pictures and it's completly free.
No monthly limits or qoutas.
Photos and videos are stored in their original formats and sizes and are kept unmodified for backup.
I also like that you can geo-tag your stuff so it shows up on a map. And you can search for stuff on the map - that's cool!.
As the only site i know of it uses a Windows Explorer like navigation with folders - super eacy to use - even has drag and drop!.
I can highly recommend it.