Which photo-hosting website do you use, and why?

[Dave C]

I have been using Pbase for over two years now (Dave_Clausen's Photo Galleries at pbase.com). I am reasonably happy with it - cost is $23 per year, and I very much like the presentation. I also like the fact that the photos are posted in several different sizes that the viewer can choose from. The free photo-hosting sites seem to have only one or two sizes for your photos, and of course you have to put up with all the distracting ads. Despite my satisfaction with Pbase, I feel as though I may be missing out by not being on Flickr. Flickr just seems to be so dominant now that I would get many more hits on my photos. Also, given the interactive aspect of flickr, you definitely will meet a lot of people on-line that have similar interests to yours. I'm not getting this from Pbase. Flickr's presentation of photos isn't as good as Pbase's, but it also posts pictures in various sizes, which is good. I'll probably stick with Pbase because it would be too much trouble to switch this late in the game, but I may post some of my better photos on Flickr so I can start participating in all the interaction that goes on there.

What does everyone think?

 

[diveborg]

Why change a thing that works for you?

Flickr is free, right? In that case, go ahead and put some of your better work there so you can participate in the interaction.

 

[clgsamson]

Flickr is free, for 3 sets and 200 pix total.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

The reason flicker is so popular is because the free yahoo photos site terminated into flicker, not necessarily because flicker is so good. I'm not sure I see the point of getting hits on your photo's unless you are selling them, and do flicker members actually buy photo's off flicker? Does any photo hosting member buy photo's? To sell them we need to drive outside people to our photo pages; my next step will probably be myspace.

I am moving towards etailing my photo's, and like what's going on at smugmug. I'm on the first year special for flicker/yahoo refugees; $29, normally $49 (I think). Your personal photo pages are customizable so mine looks like my web site. With the sets linked on my home page, my web server now only hosts a few pics, smugmug handles the majority.

Take a look at my home page; the prints for sale link goes to my web pages, the photo galleries link goes to my smugmug home page. I am going to make some changes but mostly to use smugmug more. They also handle retail for you if you chose to let them. It's worth the $50 to me (their cheapest level).

 

[RTRski]

With an AT&T/Yahoo DSL account the "pro" account at Flickr is free, so I just use that. Of course I'm still learning and have zero intention of selling my pictures. I still put big (c) text on the better ones...just because I don't plan to sell them doesn't mean I don't want credit! If I ever did think I wanted to sell, I'd try and set up my own album/webspace and then perhaps use derezzed, watermark versions elsewhere to try for traffic.

Except MySpace. I refuse to use MySpace. It is from the debbil. The home of all that is unholy, abysmally formatted, and inane on the web.

 

[DesertEagle]

Pbase is my preference. They layout is just right. No square thumbnails, no advertisements and no one-picture-at-a-time nonsense. What Pbase lacks are decent search capabilities and photo tagging. My site is DesertEagle's Pbase Page

Flickr has a far more sophisticated file system. But the layout is not very pleasing to me. I don't care for white backgrounds, nor do I like the site navigation. Even after using flickr for a while, I still get frustrated when I want to see the gallery that a photo came from. You have to remember that photos can be under sets or photostreams.

One of my friends uses Snapfish or some Kodak gallery. You have to remember a password every time. The default setting is slide show. Just give me a good, simple gallery and let me decide which photos to view.

 

[JSharp13]

I've been very happy with SmugMug. Relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and looks nice to outsiders.

 

[Larry C]

I use Photobucket. It's free, it's easy and it has multiple sharing options marked with each picture. You just click on the link for whichever format you want to use, and you can just drop your picture onto a website, forum, e-mail, etc. I'm not that fond of the indexing format, as you have to go to a printed subcategory to find a particular picture set. I haven't explored the various slideshows and remixes, though, so there may be some nice display options that I haven't discovered.

 

[-Phoenix-]

I have my own webserver (10€ a year). I then use Lightroom (my professional photo album software) to generate a gallery and its automatically uploaded.

Example (This is what Lightroom makes and uploads)

If you go to my site and press the "close-up" link in on the menu in the right side of the screen, you will see how it really looks ^_^

It looks good and its not that expensive.

ps. Dont mind the example, I just set this up and I havent made any new UW pictures lately to upload

Yours,
Rob

 

[ScubaGil]

I use Picassa, and I love it...just look at my signature.