Newest ideas on photo hosting

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oleander
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Newest ideas on photo hosting

Post by oleander »

Hi,

I've read through the threads here on photo hosting, but the posts are really old, and I know there are new options out there - hence my new query.

To post photos/trip reports here, I've been compressing them to get them down below the mb limit for uploading - which has the result of making each photo both smaller, and more pixelated.

I'd like to switch to a photo hosting site that might allow the following...

1. Copying and pasting directly from the given photo-hosting site to this website, without compressing or compromising the quality of the photos. And I want the photo to show up directly on this site, inline on my trip reports...I don't want each photo to require a link from here to another site.

2. Easy download for friends. Let's say I post 200 photos for a given trip on my chosen photo hosting site. A friend on the trip might want to download and save 20 of those photos for him/herself. I'd like for that download to be easy for that person.

3. No resizing or particular difficulty required for the upload from my computer to that photo-hosting site, either.

4. Password-protected, although to be honest I'm not super-concerned about copyright issues, etc.

5. Lots of space, I'm thinking that I'll need 5gig to start, maybe more as trip reports add up?

6. Free or low-cost. Some sites (Snapfish) require an annual purchase such as prints; that I don't mind.

Has anyone used basic cloud storage that is not necessarily meant just for photos, but that works well for this purpose? My Google Drive has 15 gig of free space, so it's tempting to use that.

- Elizabeth
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Jimr
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Re: Newest ideas on photo hosting

Post by Jimr »

If you create a yahoo account, you can use Flickr. It will give you everything you asked about + 1 TB of space for free. They're having some technical difficulties at the moment, but what website doesn't. There are several options for pasting links into forum posts and sharing options.
If you don't know where you're going, then any path will get you there.
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maverick
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Re: Newest ideas on photo hosting

Post by maverick »

I agree with Jim, go with Flickr Lisa, the best, free hosting site.
They're having some technical difficulties at the moment, but what website doesn't.
Exactly, and you can put up with some of the issues, they are free.
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I don't give out specific route information, my belief is that it takes away from the whole adventure spirit of a trip, if you need every inch planned out, you'll have to get that from someone else.

Have a safer backcountry experience by using the HST ReConn Form 2.0, named after Larry Conn, a HST member: http://reconn.org
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richlong8
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Re: Newest ideas on photo hosting

Post by richlong8 »

This is somewhat related. I used to put my photos on Picasa, but it is harder to work with now that it is a Google acquisition, and I don't bother anymore. I tried to use Flickr awhile back, created an acct, but it seemed to have some technical issues at that time. My ? is this: I only use and own Photoshop Elements Version 11. I have a Sony a6000 which I used,shooting raw pics at on the Meetup last week. Photoshop Elements Version 11 does not support this newer camera, and the raw updates for version 11 don't either. I have run into this issue before, and ended using Adobe DNG, free. But I find it very cumbersome to use DNG, and to get the photos from the SD card to my computer, where I can use them. Then of course, picking a few decent ones out of a 1000 bracketed exposures, and shrinking them down for HST. I am thinking that maybe I will try this Adobe Creative Cloud for $9.99. I don't want to pay $ again to upgrade Elements. Anybody have experience with Adobe Cloud? ....which states it makes Photoshop and Lightroom available for $9.99 a month. It seems must cheaper, at least to start with, than buying Photoshop. And I assume they would store the photos on their Cloud instead of my hard drive.
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LightRanger
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Re: Newest ideas on photo hosting

Post by LightRanger »

I like the new Google Photos (all former Picasa photos migrated over there, as well as Google+). YMMV.
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fishmonger
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Re: Newest ideas on photo hosting

Post by fishmonger »

richlong8 wrote: Anybody have experience with Adobe Cloud? ....which states it makes Photoshop and Lightroom available for $9.99 a month. It seems must cheaper, at least to start with, than buying Photoshop. And I assume they would store the photos on their Cloud instead of my hard drive.
as far as I know, there is no way to "buy" Photoshop any longer CS6 was the last version I have a perpetual license for. After that it's been all cloud-only (rental) versions.

I never used Elements, so can't tell you anything about that. It sucked years ago, probably still does, otherwise why would anyone need Photoshop?

Adobe makes you upgrade to newer versions if you want support for new cameras. For example, if I wanted to edit Nikon D810 images in my old CS6 version, I'd have to do the RAW to DNG conversion first.

Other than that - Creative Cloud has been much better than I anticipated. They actually update the product, even though once they went to the rental model, they really lost all reason to improve the product in order to create a reason for buying the upgrade version.

As for hosting, to get back to the original thread, I have my own web server, but I still use Flickr, as it adds exposure and is free. Their "Pro" version buys you nothing more than a few more statistics and more space, but if you actually run out of a Terabyte with JPEGs it's probably time to go and edit, or open a second account. Flickr is a bit underdeveloped when it comes to organizing your images. Facing the public, all you can do is create albums, you can't nest albums into categories, etc. That's not really how the site is structured - it's more tag based, and timeline oriented, but once I got used to those limitations, I still stuck with the site. It also takes a while to understand their privacy settings and how you can utilize them best to keep some things more restricted than others, but it actually works quite well (like restricting the higher resolution images from public download.

If you want hosting with the ability to generate revenue, I'd look into Smumug Pro. They handle all the printing and billing, all you need to do is set a price and find the buyers. If you just want to post stuff online, this is not worth paying for either.
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