From a basic “Point and Shoot” camera to a Professional brand SLR, your pictures are not just worth more than a thousand words, they could be worth a thousand views by using an online photo gallery to host your pictures. There are many to choose from: some are free, and some can cost an arm and a lens, whichever one you want to give up.
At any rate, here are 5 popular photo hosting websites – all used by casual photographers to professional ones as well.
1. SmugMug
2. ZenFolio
3. Flickr
4. Picasa
5. ImageShack
Using a free service limits what you can and cannot do on a photo hosting website. But some free services offer users quite a bit of functionality. Some of the listed websites also offer a trial service for you to experience before ‘jumping in’ and committing to a plan.
1. Smugmug (http://www.smugmug.com)
“The ultimate in photo & video sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print.” is there slogan. You can also purchase prints you upload! Smugmug is one of the choices of many professional photographers because of the many price plans and functions.
The key features are: Unlimited Photos, No ads or spam, Gorgeous Galleries and Stunning HD Video.
There are 3 pricing plans:
Standard $39.95/year
Power $59.95/year
Pro $149.95/year
The maximum photo size for jpg, gif, or png is 12MB.
As a standard user you can add passwords to your galleries, have a ‘private site’ and as a Pro user you can have right click protection and watermarks on your photos.
Smugmug is an excellent service if you are into customizing the look of your gallery and it makes a Point and Shoot photographer’s presentation look like a professional’s gallery! Try SmugMug for free for 14 days.
2. ZenFolio (http://www.zenfolio.com)
Professional and amateur photographers also use ZenFolio to organize, protect, print and sell photos on this pay per year photo hosting website.
The 3 price plans are:
Basic $25/year
Unlimited $40/year
Premium $100/year
As a basic user you are limited to 1 GB of storage for every year. Stepping up to Unlimited allows you to have unlimited storage. For $40 a year this is a great way to store and organize your photos which can take up hard drive space on your computer quite fast.
The maximum picture size is 12MB for jpg, tiff, png and gif. Your home page is a custom URL: username.zenfolio.com, and organizing is easy with auto and manual sorting and with the Premium subscription you can watermark images and customize your own pricing on pictures you sell.
ZenFolio is always trying to make their galleries user friendly with more customization. It is top notch for the price you pay! Try ZenFolio for free for 14 days.
3. Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/)
Flickr is one of the best online photo galleries and sharing application in the world. Why? Its tied to people’s Yahoo accounts!
To create a Flickr account you sign up for a Yahoo account. If you already have a Yahoo account you are ready to go! Many of your friends may also be using Flickr and you can easily find friends and share your photos in this photo hosting community.
As a free user you are limited to the amount of uploads you are given every single month, but upgrading to Pro for $24.95/ year or $47.95 for a 2 year subscription, you’ll get:
Unlimited uploads and storage
Unlimited sets and collections
Access to you original files
Stats on your account
Ad-free browsing and sharing
HD playback for high-definition video uploads.
The drawback to Flickr, although convenient, navigating in comparison to Smugmug and ZenFolio is not as user friendly and your galleries are not customizable. It is an excellent service tied to your Yahoo account which makes this photo hosting website a great way to share photos and purchase them if you want. Try it free with your Yahoo account!
4. Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/)
Picasa, like Yahoo, is tied to your Google/gmail account. And just as google is tied to blogger, so is Picasa. Which makes creating a blog and having a picture hosting site along with it very user friendly. As a blogger, it is easier to link a picture straight from your photo album versus pulling urls from another webhosting site.
You can upload a picture through email, which comes in handy with your smart phone, visitors can order prints, and you can geotag photos with their location.
The free service allows 1 GB of storage, but you can upgrade to different price plans:
20 GB $5/year
80 GB $20/year
200 GB $50/year
400 GB $100/year
1 TB $256/year
The Picasa photo hosting is convenient as it is tied to your whole Google community. Blogger, Analytics, Docs, Reader, etc. It is a world on it’s own. Try it free first with your Google account!
5. ImageShack (http://imageshack.us/)
This is truly an online media hosting website. From iPhone Apps, to ImageShack Toolbars for Firefox and Explorer, ImageShack makes it clearly a user friendly, ease of use photo hosting website.
ImageShack is absolutely free and you can use it without even registering! It is a quick way to upload a picture in order to create a link for posting on a forum or sharing in an email. By registering, you can save these images and upload more as well as resizing them for different viewing formats.
Is not a great gallery photo hosting websites, but it is a quick and easy way to upload a picture, image or media file and share it with friends, family or on a blog or forum. Try it free!
Before you choose what site is right for you, make sure you test each out. It does not hurt by signing up for free and uploading a few of the same pictures. Check the ease of use, the user friendliness, the sharing and gather input from friends and family or professional colleagues.
There are no ‘best’ websites – what is best is usually up to the individual photographer. But again, experience them before you start uploading in mass because this could be the home for your photographs for a long time. Making a change may be tedious and time consuming – so ‘buy into’ the hosting service of choice and make it your own!
