Where do you share your photos?

Hi all,

I've been using the Apple Mobileme gallery feature to share my pics since it's easy and free. However, as I'm getting pickier, I notice that the quality just isn't really there - the pics look a tad out of focus, just enough to bug me. If I'm really trying to impress friends (or heaven forbid might actually want to try and sell an image someday), I'd like to find a service whose quality duplicates what I see on my monitor. I know lots of folks have Flickr pages and I've seen others using Smugmug. Sill others have created their own pages. What do you use and why?

Thanks!

Phil

I've used Mobile Me Galleries, Flickr, Picassa and Smugmug. If you're just wanting to share the first 3 are fine and are free.

If you're thinking of a better presentation and selling, Smugmug is a better option. Websites can be customised on Smugmug as well and they are set up for sales.

If you want to Blog, Picassa is integrated with Blogger which is convenient and easy.

If i was not as lazy as i am I would be doing the following:

Flickr, for general and almost all photo uploads. also for embedding photos on other sites like this or my own.

Personal gallery and hosting (not being done) for a kinda rolling portfolio of images ie. the best of my stuff.

I tried smugmug and really liked it, but didnt at the time want to pay for flickr and smugmug pro accounts.

advantage of flickr, simple easy and quick

smugmug is a bit more advanced and has some great templates and such to show off your photos.

I started on Flickr because originally the "pro" account (I'm not a professional photographer, that's just their account grade with more space, larger individual file size and bandwidth allowances, etc.) came free with my "Yahoo" branded AT&T DSL account. Then of course after I'd put pretty much everything I wanted up there, they yanked that perk so I had to pay to keep access to it. (sigh)

The one thing I don't like about Flickr is that all the 'thumbnails' are square. But otherwise their tagging, organization, etc. is pretty nice. I kinda like Smugmug's black background vs. Flickr's white, but not enough to change at this time.

Panaramio is a nother nice freebie in that it geotags and your shots scan show up on Google Earth.

I've got a flickr pro account but I dont really use it. It just seems like hard work to keep it all keyworded and put into groups etc. Plus, I cant see the photos at work. I've got a pbase account. I'm really happy with it. Its easy to get up and running with a simple nice looking gallery and when you're feeling brave you can delve into the css for some serious customisation (or use one of the provided themes). Its $23 per year for 500mb of space which I think its pretty cheap. The other great thing about it is you can upload via a zip file and it unzips it for you into your gallery which is great if you have an annoying internet provider that compresses jpgs on sight! Also, there is a nice community feel to the PAD forums if you go in for all that sort of thing.

Mine front page is customised but I havent really gotten around to finishing it and picking a style to back fit across all the older of my galleries. Here are some example of the various styles:

custom front page: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/

custom gallery style with custom headers: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/reefbeasties

off the peg gallery style (one of the many): http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/travel

using someone else's css: http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/macro_mystery

You can do slideshows or tree views on galleries too. I guess I'm just used to it now but I really like the navigation. A friend of mine was on Zenfolio and I really couldn't get on with that navigation.

I started using red bubble for a while too (I liked the idea of designing my own teeshirts and selling photos etc). This is free and there's a nice community feel here too but the prices (to sell and buy art at) are not in your favour if you are based in the UK. They do allow you to create a nice website as well as your profile which is a nice feature.

mine is here but I dont check it too often :

profile: http://www.redbubble.com/people/muzy

bubblesite: http://muzy.redbubble.com/

I'm going to try photobox next, when you sign up they give you free prints but I havent ordered mine yet. I dont think much of the layout so far though.

I used to host my own website but not many people came to see it (its difficult to get a large google rating if you don't have loads of links to you). I might go back to that one day but I like the community feel too much, lots of people get to see and comment on your images and its really interesting to hear what people think (good and bad).

I dont know if thats useful to you at all?

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I knew there'd be folks here to steer me in the right direction!

Phil

Hi Phil,

I have Flickr pro and smugmug accounts.

I use Flickr as a catch all-most of my pictures go on there, wheras my Sugmug site is my "proper" showcase. Smugmug allows for some really nifty customisation, wheras Flickr doesn't.

Using Lightroom with export plug ins for both makes the process really simple and quick.

Adam