Best Online Photo Sharing/Storage Sites?

[aliwolly]

Who do you use?

I've been using Picasa to organize my photos and quickly produce web galleries of my pics which I upload to my own website, but my server space is limited so I've only been uploading web sized images. I've unfortunately been a victim of an apartment fire and lost all of my original sized images, so cannot produce any reprints of my photos from before the fire. I'm interested in finding a photo sharing/storage site that:

1. Allows me to upload full size images with unlimited storage capacity,
2. Produces a sleek and easy to use web gallery (one that even my mom will be able to easily click through), and
3. Allows me to upload and share video clips as well.

I don't mind paying for the service as I really would like a non-local backup of my files just in case I suffer any further home-based disasters (hopefully not!!!).

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Ali

 

[Yellow_Stitch]

Look at photobucket.com, it does video now and with a premium ($25/year) account file size is 2MB, max storage is 5 GB. Not sure if that's enough, but ya gotta admit it's not bad for 25 bucks!

 

[txtxyeha]

www.smugmug.com

Video storage is limited, image storage is unlimited.

 

[JR6ooo4]

I also use smugmug. Unlimited picture storage.
If you are interested, enter EDfLfDAAygNVM you will recieve a discount on the price. And so will I for refering you. another option is pbase but they have had some problems lately. Probably fixed by now.
Mikeeee

 

[Zoesmama03]

I use Photobucket for sharing and web stuff.

I try to put all my photos on shutterfly.

I believe its still free for unlimted space.

 

[phinz]

I use Flickr and am happy with it.

 

[aliwolly]

I just wanted to thank everyone for your responses and let you know of the site that I found that I think I'm going with...

I really wanted to be able to use SmugMug because I liked the sleekness of the site and the availability of all of the hacks and forums out there. I also really think their referall program is awesome - if I end up using them in the end, I will certainly use your discount/referral code. BUT... I'd have to pay for a Power User account in order to host any video clips there and they make you convert your video clips to MPEG files - which would be an extra step and a slight pain in the toe. I also am kind of veering away from that site because while I found it gorgeous and easy to use, I know that my mom and other "average" computer users would probably have a slightly hard time navigating the site and playing any video clips.

SO... I kept up the search and I found Phanfare. They're a pay service and they charge about the same as a SmugMug does for their Power User accounts, but the albums that it produces are much easier to use and they can accept just about any type of video file. They store all of your original sized images on their servers, but only disply websized ones in your albums so that everything loads very quickly. Same goes for the video files - converts your clip to a flash file that you can imbed right into a webpage and view without any external programs. Very cool. The program itself gets downloaded to your desktop and works like this: you drag and drop pictures into the application to create albums (you can add captions, etc). As you're working, the program works in the background to upload your pictures - so you're never stuck waiting for the upload to finish. VERY COOL. I was able to upload just about ALL the pics that I had on my computer in about a 2 hour session. You can check out my albums here.

They give you a full 30 day trial, so I'm checking it out for now, but I think I'll go ahead and buy at the end of the 30 days, since I'm pretty happy with it so far. They've got a referral program as well, so if you check it out and want to sign up, you can put my username in as a referall (aliwolly). Oh, and I found some promotion codes for the site as well (these will get you $5 off): ESSENTIALMOM or BIGCITYMOMS.

Anyway... I'm just geekily excited about my new toy.

Ali

 

[Cyrano]

SO... I kept up the search and I found Phanfare.

Can you copy your photos from here into posts on DIS

 

[aliwolly]

Can you copy your photos from here into posts on DIS

Yep.

You just go to your Phanfare desktop application, right click on the picture that you want to link to and select "Link to Image". A window pops up with the url to the image and all you have to do is copy and paste.

You can also buy prints of your pictures through the Kodak gallery, Shutterfly, and Snapfish. Cool stuff.

Ali

 

[txtxyeha]

Ali -

Thanks for the update. I have enjoyed SmugMug, but like all things in like it is not perfect. Can Phanfare give my mom the capability to surf our pictures then order what she wants but off of my credit card? Admittedly smugmug does not allow for this, and the work-around is not worth it.

- Woody

 

[aliwolly]

Ali -

Thanks for the update. I have enjoyed SmugMug, but like all things in like it is not perfect. Can Phanfare give my mom the capability to surf our pictures then order what she wants but off of my credit card? Admittedly smugmug does not allow for this, and the work-around is not worth it.

- Woody

I was just playing around with the site and I tried ordering prints off of my Phanfare account at the Kodak Gallery (where I also have an account). After I selected the Kodak Gallery from the drop down of available print vendors, I was asked to provide an email address and password to log in to my Kodak account. I selected the pictures that I wanted to order prints of and when I hit the "continue" button, Phanfare transferred my photos from my Phanfare account to my Kodak account and logged me into my account at the Kodak site. SO... If you have a pre-established account at Kodak, Snapfish, or Shutterfly with your credit card information stored in it, you could just provide your mom the username and password to use for when she wants to order prints. That's not a bad idea... I could create another account at Kodak or Shutterfly called AliFamily or something like that and link a card to it and give the password to my folks and they could order prints at their leisure...

Ali

PS - I just noticed that you can also order prints through Shutterfly without having to have an account there... That doesn't help your mother to order prints on your card, but it would allow anyone to quickly order prints of your pics without having to have a pre-established account anywhere. That's kind of neat...

 

[jfulcer]

Ok, voice of semi-reason here. Having an online photo storage site is really awesome for sharing, but I would NOT consider it a primary location for archiving your photos. I would continue to use it, but I would also look into other off-site (not at home) local storage options. You have no control whatsoever if that site goes out of business and the company sells off their equipment pretty quick. You have NO way to get those photos back. It HAS happened before.

Every single picture I take is saved to a CD or DVD and a copy is saved on my shelf and a copy goes into my safe deposit box. I look at it this way - a tornado might destroy my house and bank (which are pretty close), but it's unlikely it can get all three locations.

 

[aliwolly]

Ok, voice of semi-reason here. Having an online photo storage site is really awesome for sharing, but I would NOT consider it a primary location for archiving your photos. I would continue to use it, but I would also look into other off-site (not at home) local storage options. You have no control whatsoever if that site goes out of business and the company sells off their equipment pretty quick. You have NO way to get those photos back. It HAS happened before.

Every single picture I take is saved to a CD or DVD and a copy is saved on my shelf and a copy goes into my safe deposit box. I look at it this way - a tornado might destroy my house and bank (which are pretty close), but it's unlikely it can get all three locations.

Jeff -

You've got a good point - you're right, this site could go under someday and disappear. I do keep copies of my pics on my hard drive and archived to DVD as well and I use my Phanfare account every day, so I'm pretty sure that I'll be aware right away when/if they go away. I'll be able to switch to a different service at that point. I know that after the fire - even having lost everything - I had a new laptop and was back "online" within a few weeks. So I'm just counting on whatever service I'm using to not go down within the few weeks that I'm offline if (God forbid) something like that ever happens again.

Ali

 

[barrie]

oops - double post!

 

[barrie]

aliwolly - thanks for the phanfare info. I'm going to give it a test drive. I was in the market for a better place. I have a few photos on imagestation, just for the purpose of posting them here, but it's kind of crappy. Phanfare looks like a pretty good service to me.

I am going to Disney next week on a solo trip and am planning to take zillions of photos on my new camera. I have two 1 gig photo cards and I take all my photos at the highest resolution possible so I have to download often. My problem is that my laptop cannot hold all the photos that I'll be taking so I am going to upload them to phanfare from my room. I am a bit worried about losing them before I get home to download them again - so I may have my partner download them for me each day from home. I'll let you all know how it all goes.

Barrie

ps - This code is no longer good: ESSENTIALMOM
This one is still good: BIGCITYMOMS

 

[erlichson]

Hi all,
We noticed this thread on Phanfare and I figured I would chime in and give you some color on backup procedures that protect your images and videos when you are a Phanfare customer.

The front-end servers that serve images and videos have RAID disks with a hot spare, pretty much the standard in the industry for data protection. We also keep a second backup copy of every image and video on a different server. The backup servers also employ RAID 5 with a hot spare.

All servers are monitored 24x7 and located in a secure backup facility with diesel generators on the roof. The center ran on diesel for 5 days within the last year with barely a hiccup.

In terms of images, we keep the original fullsize image as well as any transformed versions (cropped, sharpened, etc). That way, you can always revert to your original image.

For videos we have a more elaborate scheme. We keep two versions of every video, one DVD quality and one web-streaming quality. For our purposes, we consider DVD quality to be 3 megabits/second given that our compression algorithm is more efficient than what DVDs really use (we use Flash 8, vp6 today, DVDs use MPEG2). We also keep a web streaming version at 768 kilobits/second. We keep two versions of your video because we want to allow for future improvements in internet bandwidth.

If the video you upload is below 3 megabits/second, we keep the uploaded version as your DVD quality original (no degradation). If you send us a highly uncompressed video (for example, my Canon Powershot produces 13 megabits/second of data) then we compress down to 3 Megabits/second with no obvious loss in quality.

Note that versions are different than backup copies. we keep a backup copy of the higher quality version.

I hope this gives you a sense of how seriously we take data retention at Phanfare. While nothing is ever 100% guaranteed, your data is significantly safer on our servers than on your local non-redundant hard drive within your house.

Generally, just having them with us, and with you on your own hard drive gives you an order of magnitude more fault tolerance than just having them locally. What's the probability that both our copies and your copy is lost?

When customers have lost their local hard drive, we have sent them DVD replacement of their media. We don't advertise that service since it is somewhat manual for us today, but we do it for around $25/disk when the need arises.

Andrew
--
Andrew Erlichson
Founder & CEO
Phanfare, Inc.

 

[CelebrationKim]

I am also an avid Phanfare user and have been for a while. Love the music that I can add to my slideshows, and the fact that I can create an album during a commercial break.

 

[barrie]

Well - I installed phanfare this morning and have been playing with it for a couple of hours. I gotta say, it's pretty darn nice! I'm fairly certain I'll be purchasing the service.

And I like that I came on and found a post by Andrew. That tells me they are conscientious - I like that. Barrie

 

[barrie]

This is a test - one of the reasons I wanted a new photo storage place was because my photos show up so small when I post them here. Here's one I'm posting from phanfare to see how big it shows...

OK - I'm sold!

 

[campinggal]

This is a test - one of the reasons I wanted a new photo storage place was because my photos show up so small when I post them here. Here's one I'm posting from phanfare to see how big it shows...


OK - I'm sold!

I think I'll be sold too! My photos always show up small too so thanks for the test! I'll just add this to my list of 'Things I Learned on the DIS!!!'

Too bad I'm at work and can't start playing with Phanfare and my photos right away!