Best photo sharing site?

[Jim Kuo]

I have been using picasaweb for years. While its album oriented photo organisation worked well for sharing separate batches of photos (e.g. an album per trip), I am starting to find the amount of pictures/albums unmanageable, and the workflow doesn't work too well for posting standalone photos that don't fit into specific categories.

For this reason, I have been looking at Flickr and more recently 500px. I find their stream based approach on the other extreme of spectrum (good for individual photos, not so good for collections), and they are not free. Although the cost is manageable, it does make you want to assess their merits carefully before signing up to their paid services.

I am looking for some thoughts and experiences on these (and other suggested) photo sharing sites. Thanks for sharing your opinions.

Jim

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I'm on Flickr, but I do not really like the look of the site, even though I have paid membership, there is almost no way of changing how the pages look. I wish I had more control over that. So, I use it as a dumping place, and then embed the code from there in places like this forum, or Facebook, etc. so, it is useful for that kind of thing. One day I might make a dedicated website which I would have control over. It might be just me, but there doesn't seem to be much of a social side to Flickr at all.

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Rob. That is my impression of Flickr as well, currently I am also using Flickr as a dumping site due to its ugliness and inflexibility.

500px caught my attention, it looks like a beautified Flickr. But its free service is severely limited, also its photo management is not designed to handle albums too well (worse than Flickr's set), which is problematic for me, as I often post pictures in separate sets when I go on trips.

Still looking for that illusive perfect solution .

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I just joined 500px to have a look, but I was unable to upload photos from my iPad, as they use a flash uploader. Flickr does too, but I use the flickstackr app for that, and it works really well.

 

[Jim Kuo]

ic. I almost always upload via the lightroom plugins, which work well for Picasaweb + Flickr + 500px.

By the way, this is my 500px site 500px / Jim Kuo / Photos, just to play around. I am still trying to figure out how to navigate to the collection (album) I've created...

 

[Hamish Gill]

Im quite happy with flickr, but that's mainly because I was using photobucket which I found annoying!
Pete says photobucket without the adds ie the paid account is quite good...
What I miss about photobucket is the ability to upload from my phone and then get the link to post images in forums which the Flickr app doesn't do...

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Hamish for suggesting it, I will give it a try .

 

[Pete Askew]

True, I'm happy with Photobucket Pro but then I only share images via it using the forum (all the albums are private). I use my Babelsberg site as a main 'showcase'.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

So, here's my shiny new 500px site 500px / Rob MacKillop / Photos

Yes, I think it looks nicer than Flickr, but I haven't had time to create sets and stuff. Maybe tomorrow.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Jim, I'm using ZangZing and love it - it's currently free, but will be going to a pay model in the summer.

I will be staying and paying - it's easy to use, saves the original res image and displays a nice large version for web use, and allows group sharing, album access by password etc etc.

Photo Sharing - ZangZing

It also has bulk import to collect all your images from other photo websites and transplant them to ZangZing - very handy!

 

[Hamish Gill]

Does it have an iPhone app Chris?

 

[Jim Kuo]

Thanks Chris, I just joined and it looks promising. Is there a lightroom plugin that allows me to export directly from LR to ZangZing?

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Does it have an iPhone app Chris?

ZangZing generates an Email address for each album, so you just Email a picture from your iphone to that email address, and it appears in that album automatically.

You can create a new album by sending an email to new@YOURUSERNAME.zangzing.com and setting the Album Name in the email subject line. You can also include your first photos. So you can build a new album whilst mobile.

You can invite people as contributors to that album by cc’ing them on the email to create an album.

When you receive the email that your album has been created, it includes an attached vcard. Add the card to your contacts to easily find the email address of the album later.

Then, when you take a photo on your smartphone and share the photo via email just type ZangZing in the To: field.

You should will see all the album email addresses you saved.

Add a caption for the photo in the subject line and then send to YOUR-ALBUM-NAME@YOURUSERNAME.zangzing.com.

Very neat

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Thanks Chris, I just joined and it looks promising. Is there a lightroom plugin that allows me to export directly from LR to ZangZing?

Believe they are working on a plug in to do that.

For now, using Photoshop, I save a JPEG version of the finished image, and import that to ZangZing

 

[Jim Kuo]

From my assessments so far, 500px seems to fit what I need the best, however it has two killer faults.

Its LR plugin doesn't support photo replacement, so once you uploaded an image, you are unable to make more edit locally and republish the changes.

Also, navigation (moving between pictures) in collections (albums) is surprisingly slow. It takes a few seconds to load the next image from the current one. This is weird as navigation on your main stream is quite snappy.

I have contacted their support, will see what they say.

 

[Hamish Gill]

ZangZing generates an Email address for each album, so you just Email a picture from your iphone to that email address, and it appears in that album automatically.

You can create a new album by sending an email to new@YOURUSERNAME.zangzing.com and setting the Album Name in the email subject line. You can also include your first photos. So you can build a new album whilst mobile.

You can invite people as contributors to that album by cc’ing them on the email to create an album.

When you receive the email that your album has been created, it includes an attached vcard. Add the card to your contacts to easily find the email address of the album later.

Then, when you take a photo on your smartphone and share the photo via email just type ZangZing in the To: field.

You should will see all the album email addresses you saved.

Add a caption for the photo in the subject line and then send to YOUR-ALBUM-NAME@YOURUSERNAME.zangzing.com.

Very neat

Sounds interesting!
What about linking images into forum posts whilst using an iPhone ... Is that doable via any sort of app or if not how easy is it to do from a browser?

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Yep - just go to your image in the ZZ gallery using the browser - click and hold on the iPhone over the image - select COPY from the pop up menu.

Paste the captured URL into the usual IMG tags on the forum

Done

 

[Hamish Gill]

I'll look into it tomorrow I think!