Help me start fresh/web photo hosting review post # 16

[Pea-n-Me]

My laptop died a few days ago. I'd put a lot of my pictures to disc, but probably lost a fair amount of recent ones as I was still working on them. I'd spent many hours recently sorting through and editing pictures, and making folders for different people I wanted to send them to, many of family events, and my kids' sports and outdoor fun with friends. Later today we're going to try doing a recovery of my CF card (using the recovery software that came with the card), which hopefully might have many of my more recent pictures on it. If not, we might try to do a hard drive recovery, but a friend who's computer savvy thinks this may not work since the problem seems to be that the fan died and the hard drive fried. (It's still under warranty so I think they'll repair it, just mainly concerned about the pictures.)

Uggh.

Anyway, bought a new computer last night and thought now might be a good time to "start over". Wanted to tell you what I'd like to accomplish, and would appreciate any opinions on what might work best for me. I'm not especially savvy with all this stuff (nor do I want to spend an inordinate amount of time on it) so would to keep it as simple as possible.

A) Would like to link my pictures on a hosting site so that I could email friends the link and they could use what they want from there, rather than emailing people pictures individually.

B) Would obviously want the ability to link to individual photos for posting here.

C) Want to watermark and be able to retrieve EXIF data of my photos via the site.

D) Would like to use whatever site I choose as a storage site for all of my photos (and of course would back them up to disc also).

E) It would be helpful if the site had a basic editing program as well. (I have editing programs at home, but I think it would simplify if I could upload and then edit, rather than vice versa.)

Those are my main requirements. I currently have Photobucket but it moves extremely slowly, the editing program is new but lacking, I can't watermark that I'm aware of, nor can I retrieve EXIF data.

I've been thinking about smugmug. Will this be a good choice for me? Other possiblities?

Thanks so much for any information.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

You can get almost everything you asked for at several different sites. The most popular two here are Smugmug and Zenfolio. The one piece missing is the photo editing part. I'm not sure that either has tools for that.

One caveat is that both accept only JPG files and not RAW files. If you are shooting RAW, you won't be able to use any online photo site (that I'm aware of) for archiving those files.

I think you should consider an at-home backup solution in addition to a file sharing site. We all get busy sometimes and don't get everything uploaded to our photo site as often as we should. In those cases, you are still at risk.

I have my machine set up so that when I load pictures from my camera, it copies them to my computer and to an external hard drive. So from the moment the picture leaves my camera, I have two copies of it. There are lots of ways to do that, and I'd be happy to help you work out a method that works for you.

If you are interested in learning more about Smugmug or Zenfolio, try visiting their sites or other member's sites. My Smugmug site is at http://photos.barbierifamily.org, but I've tarted it up a bit and so it is not very representative of a typical Smugmug site. You should also get a referral code from someone here before joining either site. Using a referral code will net you and the referrer a small discount. When you pick a site, just ask for a referral code and you'll have lots of people happy to offer you one.

 

[thomas998]

Not sure what type of laptop you have that died... but before you give up all hope of getting anything off the hard drive... have you considered taking the hard drive out of your laptop and trying to recover photos from it.

You could pull the hard drive and install it in a external enclosure that connects to your other computer via USB... if the drive is acting funny you could start by putting it in your freezer over night to get it super cold (sometimes works just make sure when you put it in you have it enclosed in a plastic bag and keep it in the bag when you take it out or you'll get condensation which isn't good)...

But I haven't seen a laptop where the hard drive died because a fan on the lap top had died... Most hard drives can take more heat than you would think... now if someone spilled a coke on the lap top then lord knows what got fried... but I wouldn't assume you lost the hard drive just because the computer died.

 

[Code]

If there was a fan that died, it's more likely that your CPU, motherboard chipset, or power supply fried. You may very well be able to take out the hard drive, hook it up elsewhere and get all your data.

 

[MICKEY88]

you've already gotten great advice on your hard drive..so I'll address the cf recovery instead,

I recently had to recover pics from 2 cf cards, I tried several programs with varied results...

then I discovered ZAR zero assumption recovery,

it is free to download, to rcover most files you have to pay for a license, but they have it set up so you can recover picture files without the license, apparently they used to have 2 programs , a free one for pictures and a paid one for other files, they decided the picture recovery software would be stronger if they incorporated it into the other program, but they chose to keep the picture recovery part free..

it not only recovered the pics I needed, but also pics from 2 prior shoots, I had formatted the card after each of those shoots, so it's pretty awesome stuff, the downside was that it took over 5 hours to run on a 16 gig card..

 

[handicap18]

I used photobucket for a while, but its not good to keep as an additional backup . I was also using flickr. You can download up to a 5MB image and make groups pretty easily. Not as easy as photobucket for linking though.

I recently started using smugmug. I went with the basic plan. Unlimited downloads, no limit on image size, easy to use interface, easy to link different size images to different forum boards like this one, EXIF is easy to see, but it is stripped from the smaller linked images for boards like this (easily found on your smugmug site). You also have the ability to password protect certain galleries (which was a big plus for me). Its pretty easy (depending on how YOU set up your galleries) for friends and family to download the images to their own computer. With the next account level up you also have the option to protect it from anyone uploaded it (I believe its called copywrite protection).

Overall I'm very happy with smugmug. In the last 2 months I've uploaded around 2,000 images and still have more to go.

Feel free to use my coupon to save $5, eeWMM89aMx1lc

 

[boBQuincy]

One possibility is to get your own web site and store your files there. That way there is no restriction on what type of files you store. Many hosting sites have a lot of storage for little $, HostGator offers 350 GB for $5/month.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Thank you all for your responses and PMs.

I will be looking more into the photo hosting sites over the coming days. Thanks for the info and for the coupon code. Someone mentioned Picasa as well.

Mickey88, thanks for the CF recovery info. Will let you know how that works out.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Update on laptop: extended warranty is expired. It's a 2004 HP. It's making a clicking noise on startup, then reading

Intel UNDI, PXE - 2.0 (build 082)
C 1997-2000 Intel Corp.
For Realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.13 (020326)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.

We're not sure whether to buy additional warranty time ($200) or forget it and at some point buy a new notebook. (I take it to work once a month for meetings in different locations.) Thoughts?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

The more immediate problem is the hard drive recovery of photos. Best Buy will do it for $100 (up to 9GB) but if we can do it at home, we'd rather, seeing as we're buying at least one, maybe two computers this week already. We need a little help trying to figure this out.

You could pull the hard drive and install it in a external enclosure that connects to your other computer via USB...

You may very well be able to take out the hard drive, hook it up elsewhere and get all your data.

So far we've tried to put the hard drive from the laptop in our external hard drive and in an older laptop and it won't fit. Other options include son's desktop or our new desktop, but how to connect exactly, with a double USB cord?

Thanks for bearing with me.

ETA we do use the external hard drive for pictures now but I like the idea of setting it up so that when downloading it will go to both places at once. Would like to find out more about how to do that.

 

[Quicklabs]

Mark, how have you set up your computer so that your picture files copy to an external hard drive as well as to your primary hard drive? Having just dealt with a hard drive crash, I'm trying to get better about this (I lost two months worth of photos, could have been worse...)

 

[MICKEY88]

Thank you all for your responses and PMs.

I will be looking more into the photo hosting sites over the coming days. Thanks for the info and for the coupon code. Someone mentioned Picasa as well.

Mickey88, thanks for the CF recovery info. Will let you know how that works out.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Update on laptop: extended warranty is expired. It's a 2004 HP. It's making a clicking noise on startup, then reading

Intel UNDI, PXE - 2.0 (build 082)
C 1997-2000 Intel Corp.
For Realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.13 (020326)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.

We're not sure whether to buy additional warranty time ($200) or forget it and at some point buy a new notebook. (I take it to work once a month for meetings in different locations.) Thoughts?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

The more immediate problem is the hard drive recovery of photos. Best Buy will do it for $100 (up to 9GB) but if we can do it at home, we'd rather, seeing as we're buying at least one, maybe two computers this week already. We need a little help trying to figure this out.





So far we've tried to put the hard drive from the laptop in our external hard drive and in an older laptop and it won't fit. Other options include son's desktop or our new desktop, but how to connect exactly, with a double USB cord?

Thanks for bearing with me.

ETA we do use the external hard drive for pictures now but I like the idea of setting it up so that when downloading it will go to both places at once. Would like to find out more about how to do that.

best buy and radio shack carry enclosures to turn your drive into an external drive that will then conect to your desktop via usb or firewire, they cost about 20-40 depending on what you get..

for hard drive recovery I've used a program called recover my files..

it did just that for me on a hard drive that had been formatted and had windows reinstalled...


if you decide to try zenfolio I can give you a discount code if you pm me..

 

[DueyDooDah]

An eternal enclosure is your best bet. They are little more than a little box that the hard drive goes into. The box then gets plugged into a USB ort and you then have access to your hard drive, much like a memory stick or thumb drive, which ever name you want to give it.

Here is a picture of one. They are only about $24 bucks and can be purchased at your local Best Buy/computer store.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I am in the process of picking out an online storage place and on Smugmug found an option called Smugvault that says you can store Raw files as well. I didn't get as far as calculating out what the cost would be but there does seem to be an option to do that now. It's in collaboration with Amazon. Has anybody looked at this?

 

[thomas998]

just make sure that you get an external enclosure for a laptop size hard drive... they make them for both the laptop size hard drive and the desk top size... also because its a 2004 model I'm betting it is a IDE hard drive... you need to tell the guys at the store that because they make enclosures for IDE hard drives as well as SATA drives and the two are not compatible.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Got it.

Will work on it and let you know how we make out.

Appreciate the time everyone took to post.

(In a way I'm kind of excited about starting over.)

 

[MICKEY88]

I am in the process of picking out an online storage place and on Smugmug found an option called Smugvault that says you can store Raw files as well. I didn't get as far as calculating out what the cost would be but there does seem to be an option to do that now. It's in collaboration with Amazon. Has anybody looked at this?

I'd hate to think of the time involved for uploading raw files...it takes forever to upload a large shoot of jpegs...

if you should decide to go with zenfolio let me know I'll give you a discount code...

2 key differences between zenfolio and smugmug...

zenfolio uses MPIX as their lab, and smugmug uses ezprints...

I chose zenfolio since I've used mpix printing for years and love their quality, and turnaround time..

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Putting the computer issues aside for a moment, I found this 2008 review of web photo hosting sites. (There are other review sites as well, but I liked this one's format.)

They rank dotphoto as #1. Wondering if there are any users here and what your experiences are?

Still looking at all the options.

 

[MICKEY88]

Putting the computer issues aside for a moment, I found this 2008 review of web photo hosting sites. (There are other review sites as well, but I liked this one's format.)

They rank dotphoto as #1. Wondering if there are any users here and what your experiences are?

Still looking at all the options.

I would recommend checking out each site for yourself, and reading the reviews..


I see they have Fotki listed as number 3.

I've had a fotki account for years..it's OK...

I personally think smugmug and zenfolio are much better at least for the features I need...

I tried fotki's printing ONCE... never again.. at the time I ordered from fotki and mpix at the same time...there was a major difference in print quality

that is why I have a Zenfolio premium account, they use mpix as their lab....

the negatives they give for some sites,, are features I wouldn't want.. such as email storage,blogs..etc..

they also give smugmug negative credit because of the price, it's my belief as well as that of some people I've talked to, that paid services will be around longer than free ones.

it all comes down to what features you want, whether you want to be able to order prints directly, sell prints, customize your site..etc..

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I'm nervous about any type of "ranking" in reviews. The problem, as MICKEY88 has pointed out, is that we all value features differently. In fact, I'd say that the purpose of photo hosting sites varies. Some people want a site for sharing photos with friends and relatives. Some people want a place to sell prints to customers or strangers. Others want a place to share photos for critiquing. There are so many different missions for photo hosting sites that it is impossible to declare one the "best."

Pick the few that look good to you and try them. I know people that love Smugmug (me), Zenfolio, FlickR, etc. I know some people that have multiple accounts for different purposes (Smugmug for primary storage and sharing, FlickR for more "photo community" stuff).

 

[jann1033]

in picking a photosite i put most of the stake on what print processor they were using ad who let you set your own prices... i chose zenfolio since it was a little cheaper than smugmug and mostly cause i love mpix, i literally get my photos within 2 days from order( no idea where they are located) and am always shocked they came already. they are wrapped really well, much better than any other place i have ever ordered from which might seem insignificant but i would hate to have prints ruined since my postman leaves everything sitting outside, rain or shine, and the prints are really nice...someone ordered gifts once from ezprints( zen. used to use them for gifts) and they came pretty fast, the gifts were nice quality and the one that was messed up they redid but never ordered prints from them.
one thing is you might want to check what color profile you save stuff in...maybe i am just picky but i originally downloaded in rgb, mpix( and i would guess ezprints) processes in srgb and the colors were not what i wanted so now i make sure and save/download in srgb so the colors will match when they print.

 

[SplshMtn99]

My laptop died a few days ago. I'd put a lot of my pictures to disc, but probably lost a fair amount of recent ones as I was still working on them. I'd spent many hours recently sorting through and editing pictures, and making folders for different people I wanted to send them to, many of family events, and my kids' sports and outdoor fun with friends. Later today we're going to try doing a recovery of my CF card (using the recovery software that came with the card), which hopefully might have many of my more recent pictures on it. If not, we might try to do a hard drive recovery, but a friend who's computer savvy thinks this may not work since the problem seems to be that the fan died and the hard drive fried. (It's still under warranty so I think they'll repair it, just mainly concerned about the pictures.)

Uggh.

Anyway, bought a new computer last night and thought now might be a good time to "start over". Wanted to tell you what I'd like to accomplish, and would appreciate any opinions on what might work best for me. I'm not especially savvy with all this stuff (nor do I want to spend an inordinate amount of time on it) so would to keep it as simple as possible.

A) Would like to link my pictures on a hosting site so that I could email friends the link and they could use what they want from there, rather than emailing people pictures individually.

B) Would obviously want the ability to link to individual photos for posting here.

C) Want to watermark and be able to retrieve EXIF data of my photos via the site.

D) Would like to use whatever site I choose as a storage site for all of my photos (and of course would back them up to disc also).

E) It would be helpful if the site had a basic editing program as well. (I have editing programs at home, but I think it would simplify if I could upload and then edit, rather than vice versa.)

Those are my main requirements. I currently have Photobucket but it moves extremely slowly, the editing program is new but lacking, I can't watermark that I'm aware of, nor can I retrieve EXIF data.

I've been thinking about smugmug. Will this be a good choice for me? Other possiblities?

Thanks so much for any information.

WOW, I could have almost written that post with a few exceptions. We backup weekly automatically at home, so I don't use online for storage, just for sharing. This weekend we are moving everything from old still working computer to new computer. I too want to start fresh in my organizing. New computer came with PSE6. I had been using PSE5 but never completely finished organizing since my old computer really needed more memory to be able to handle having PSE5 & other things open. New computer should be fine, but not sure if I want to use PSE6 or Picasa for organizing.

ALSO, I use Photobucket & was using Epson's online site also. Epson was good for my dad to view since he's on slow dialup. Epson recently closed down. Photobucket is just painful for him to use / view on dialup.

So I'm also looking for a new hosting site that is dialup friendly. Free would be nice. And something I can add "text narrative" of photo to. Thanks.

Oh & minor thing, but a site that doesn't have my account name in the URL. I use different names for different boards & I don't always want people being able to learn who I am on a different hobby board. KWIM?