Notes On Online Photo Sharing / Storage / Hosting Sites

Applies to all 6 sites we’re comparing:

• It is not necessary to download a photo editing / organizing software program to use any of these sites, though this type of software is available to download and use with all but ImageShack & Flickr.
• If you want to do massive uploads you will need to download utilities for this. Most are free, See chart.
• You can download a small copy of any photo from all of these sites, but even if you’ve uploaded at original size you may have to download the album / folder as a zip file to access your photos at original size (some of these sites only allow you to download at original size if you’re a paying customer—see chart.) Windows Live Photo and Picasa allow you to download any photo at original size if you bring up the photo and click Download above the photo. (Right clicking & choosing Save Image As will give you a small 600x400 photo.) The opposite is true with ImageShack. Right clicking, choosing Save Image As will give you a full sized photo.

Windows Live Skydrive / Photos

Noteworthy Features: Most attractive slideshow of all, 25GB free storage. 480 albums w/unlimited sub-folders.

You can upload up to 50mb worth of photos at a time w/upload tool. If you want to nest your albums by date or subject, create your folders under Documents instead of under Photos! You can view slideshows from nested sub-folders, too. (Ambient slideshow background means the background color is detected from the photo & highlighted—then fades to dark around the edges.)

Picasa

Noteworthy features: Nice large thumbnails w/captions, Slideshow photos shown full screen size actually do cover the entire screen if they were uploaded at original size as transferred from your camera. Free accounts allow maximum of 250 albums with 500 photos each. Not limited to 5-at-a-time uploads if you download Active X and use IE browser for uploading. NOTE: If using online help, be sure to choose help for Picasa Web Albums as opposed to Picasa. The latter is their desktop software and the “how-to” info is different.

ImageShack

Noteworthy features: You don’t even have to register to upload photos! (But then you’d have to bookmark each photo to be able to find it again.) Unlimited # of photos may be stored, and if you register for a free account your photos will never be deleted—no sign in requirements. Install their toolbar to get the mass upload tool. What does their premium account give you that you don’t already get free? Unlimited bandwidth, and individual photos may be as large as 10mb (instead of 5mb), You also get dedicated upload & download speeds. If you create a slideshow from the toolbar or from the link on the side panel you get a zoomed slideshow. Not great for objects in a collection—you’ll be seeing only a piece of the object by the time of transition to the next photo, the colored background doesn’t always show up—and there’s ads on the page. Best bet, create an album then click the link above the album to view it as a slideshow. No ads, solid color background that you chose earlier when you set preferences, and you control the speed.

Photobucket

Free accounts get 10mb bandwith each month and there is no file size limit for images with a display size up to 1024x768 pixels. There is no pixel limit if a file size limit is chosen. You can create collages, strips, & stamps with your free account to showcase your images but this not an online feature.

Flickr

This is the only one of these six sites that has online photo editing capabilities, and their online photo organizing features are more extensive than most other sites. Yahoo acquired Flickr in March 2005 and 18 months later shut down Yahoo! Photos. This is a popular site, but you can’t do much for free.

Webshots

Before the days of the now popular social networking sites, Webshots, in a way, filled that niche—at least for photo buffs. It was (and is) a community with literally millions of photos and used to be the go-to place to find beautiful, free desktop wallpaper. Now, unless you’re a member or have been allowed by invitation of a member, you can’t download even a small free photo. Early on, unlike the other sites we’re comparing, the Webshots community was more like a photography club. While this is largely still true today, there are various categories for family photos and it is used this way, also.

--Ann Finley May 2010