Quick Comparision of Flickr/ipernity/PicassaWeb

[tomos]

Quick Comparision of 3 photo collection hosting sites:

this is probably not very objective - my requirement listed below the urls. I've tried out the three sites now but dont know any very well yet, so if I've missed anything plese let me know ;-)

http://picasaweb.google.com
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.ipernity.com

What I was looking for was a site I could upload a few photos each day. Want to add some comments about editing etc.
So basically I want it to look good and be easy to read the comments...

Red highlight = con
Red Underlined highlight = dealbreaker for me


Google

Storage:

• 1GB (20GB is $5 per year)

Upload:

• *Not* using Picassa: browse to photos - you can only upload 5 photos at a time
• by email (havent tried)
• Photos lose their names on upload (maybe I missed something?=>) [file names are available with click on more information - ur1sn00per, reply #9 below]

Display:

• very nice. Best of the lot really.
• Unfortunately it sorts from oldest *down* to newest, i.e. visitors will have to scroll down through all photos to see what is new at the bottom of the page.
• Nice slideshow - only accessible from overview page (same as Flickr/ipernity) with the option to show/hide captions (unclear if "Captions" are supposed to be the photo name, or related info). Personally I'd prefer if the slideshow had some sort of manual setting (it shows the photos as large as possible with black background)

Flickr

Storage:

• 100MB per month *NB* [Only your latest 200 photos are displayed- ur1sn00per, reply #9 below]

Upload:

• browse to photos
• Flickr Uploadr software (havent tried)

Display:

• Best display/interface IMO - space for the photos
• Going from overview to individual photo -> larger image: now the image shows on black background, is the best view IMO, but unfortunately you cannot see the author's comments
• Nice Slideshow: can show comments - sometimes they overlap the image though, also if the thumbnails show bottom of page, they overlap image too (but they fade out if you dont use the mouse)

Editor

• very easy to edit comments on each photo
  

ipernity

Storage:

• 200MB per month *NB* Only your latest 1000 docs are displayed

Upload:

• browse to photos (up to 10) *or*
• allow a jave browser to read your harddrive in an explorer type interface. Slow to get going but good.
• upload a ZIP archive (havent tried)
• All medias from a Web page
• iperUpload software (havent tried)
• by email or from your mobile phone (havent tried)
• Share big files with BitTorrent (havent tried)

Display:

• Very similar to Flickr (the same framework/engine [?dont know the right word] is used) but desnt look half as good as there are grey panels to left & right - photos dont have space to 'breath'
• not so intuitive (e.g. clicking on image doesnt enlarge)
• Nice Slideshow: [same as Flickr] can show comments - sometimes they overlap the image though, also if the thumbnails show bottom of page, they overlap image too (but they fade out if you dont use the mouse)

Editor

• very easy to edit comments on each photo (same a Flickr again)
• good editor "All in one Edition" for changing name/date(s)/author-comment/tag - but you have to work threough photos in sequence they uploaded
• 'Doc Manager' - for moving photos from one album to another etc) not much help to me (yet anyway)

My ideal would be with:

• decent slideshow style view but where one moves manaully from one image to the next
• manually sortable display - i.e. move this foto up/down forwards/backwards in the display - all sites seem to sort only by upload

Here's roughly the same gallery in each site.
Note: because google lost the names I didnt even bother with adding comments or tags

http://picasaweb.google.com/102899458473700503910
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38013677@N05/ [I'm continuing to use this one for the moment]
http://www.tomos.ipernity.com



Edit: I also tried to join Zoomr http://www.zooomr.com but they not taking any new members:

In anticipation of our next release called Zooomr Zest, we will be temporarily closing registration and Pro Account registrations.

We look forward to reopening registrations in the first quarter of 2010 and hope to see you back at Zooomr in the near future. Thank-you for your cooperation.

so they a little behind schedule...


edits/ 2010.11.01 - minor
edits/ 2010.11.03 - added info from reply #9 below

[mouser]

Excellent!

Someone recommended smugmug.com to me -- have you checked them out yet?

[tomos]

smugmug.com

lol
I'm new to all this and tiring rapidly of trying new sites out - if I get a second wind at some stage I'll give it a go -
it does look good. Uses flash which I'm not crazy about (but not sure why exactly)

[J-Mac]

I've looked at many - SmugMug is the best IMO. FWIW, I have accounts at SmugMug (Power), Flickr (Pro), PicasaWeb (Free), Photobucket (Pro).

Jim

[tomos]

I've looked at many - SmugMug is the best IMO. FWIW, I have accounts at SmugMug (Power), Flickr (Pro), PicasaWeb (Free), Photobucket (Pro).

what made you choose the 'Power' plan over the Basic one Jim?

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/photo-sharing-features/

[Jibz]

I think my main problem with smugmug back when I last looked at it was that it seemed like access control was at the album level.

What I like about flickr is that I can take 200 photos on a trip and then while uploading as a set, say "Holiday 2010", I can mark all the ones with family members on as private and the rest as public. That way, I get the one set in my photostream, and people who have a guestpass (access) see all the photos, while everybody else only sees the non-personal shots.

If I understood smugmug right, I would have to create separate albums to be able to do this.

[J-Mac]

Tom,

I use the Power plan mainly so that I can create custom pages, (using templates or HTML & CSS, etc.) and also so I could create a custom URL instead of the standard SmugMug+username. My pages have my own banner and are laid out as I like them.

Jibz, I do set privacy by the album; personally I don’t see the benefit of having different privacy settings photo by photo within an album. I plan and organize my albums accordingly - but that's just me. 

Thanks!

Jim

[tomos]

Well,
I had a better look at SmugMug and it is very nice.

I'm uploading minimum three pics per day on Flickr at the moment, as a sort of self-learning kind of thing. If I actually continue to do this, I'd consider getting a paid account...

[tomos]

Re Flickr:
Someones trying to censor but I wonder who exactly:

Why can’t I view some member’s profile pages?

If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, India or Korea, due to your local Terms of Service, only “safe” or “safe” + “moderate” content is visible to you. This applies to people's profiles too.

If you see the “This profile is unavailable to you” message, it means that you’re attempting to view an account that has been flagged as "moderate" or "restricted."

I wonder whose 'Terms of Service' that is they're talking about (Yahoo, Flickr, is it government regulated, ?) - seems pretty extreme to me.

[ur1sn00per]

Flickr free version - only 200 photos visible
Picasa - file names available with click on more information

[tomos]

Flickr free version - only 200 photos visible
Picasa - file names available with click on more information

wow, I didnt come across that anywhere about Flickr, definitely a thumbs down

I'll edit the first post with the info about Picassa.
The inability to sort was a problem for me in all the sites, but Picassa's default sort from old to new just doesnt make any sense to me...

[ur1sn00per]

just remembered too ...
Flickr free was restricted to 3 Sets maximum for a long time. I've just found out this restriction has now been removed. This is a BIG PLUS 

[JavaJones]

Flickr's recent (as in over the past year) photo display changes have improved its standing in my mind, but Smugmug still rules the roost for quality of presentation. Flickr always makes me feel like the photos being shown are crappier than they are somehow, just by nature of my dislike of their UI. Can't quite put my finger on it. But I guess it's (mostly) just me since it's so damn popular.

Picasa I like well enough, the features and integration with the desktop apps is great. The photo presentation is not the greatest, but IMO better than Flickr. The zoom function is not my favorite, but it's workable. Face recognition is nice. The social aspects aren't nearly as well developed as Flickr, I'll grant. For the moment I do use Picasa as my primary photo sharing tool.

Permissions are not so much a concern for me, but Jibz your use-case is rather interesting and inspires me to consider working that way in the future. I will look at whether Smugmug allows that.

- Oshyan

[city_zen]

I know I'm late with this reply (hopefully not late enough to be accused of necroposting ), but I wanted to add some information that may be useful if someone finds this thread through a search.
I've been looking for a while for a good Flickr alternative that doesn't suffer from Flickr's shortcomings (censorship, only 200 pictures visible for free accounts, etc.), and I've reached a conclusion: while feature-wise there are indeed good, even better, alternatives to Flickr, community-wise there are none.
So, if sharing your pics with as many people as possible and participating in active discussion groups and commenting other people's work is important to you, you'll just have to put up with Flickr.

BUT, if those aspects are not essential to you, there are some great alternative, both free and paid. In the "paid" category, smugmug, phanfare and a few other sites are reportedly very good, but I didn't research them exhaustively because I was looking for a free alternative to Flickr.
In the "free" category, there are quite a lot of websites. Unfortunately, most of them lack features present in Flickr and/or are almost inactive. Here's a non-exhaustive list of photo sharing website from wikipedia: List of photo sharing websites

Let me quicky point out that I'm ignoring websites like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Webshots, etc. in this comparison because, although they are very popular, they have a different target audience.

Zooomr seemed to be a good site, but it looks like it's closed and won't reopen.
Ipernity, which was one of the websites evaluated by Tomos, is particularly good and would be one of my top 2 choices if it weren't for the fact that it seems to have been abandoned at some point during 2010. No new developments have been announced and the developer team's blog has no new posts since September 2010.

There are some other alternatives, but I wouldn't like to make this post too long, so I'll just jump to what I consider the best free photo sharing website: 23
Yes, that's the name: 23
It has basically all the features Flickr does, and probably some more (albums, slideshows, groups, tags, comments, calendar, etc.). The only restriction for free accounts is that you can only upload 30 pictures per month, but they allow you to upload 300 the first week after you sign up, so you can transfer your pics from somewhere else. Although it too doesn't seem to be in very active development, it looks in a better state than Ipernity and Zooomr.
In particular, I think it does fulfill Tomos' ideal requirements:

My ideal would be with:

• decent slideshow style view but where one moves manaully from one image to the next
• manually sortable display - i.e. move this foto up/down forwards/backwards in the display - all sites seem to sort only by upload

If you're looking for a good alternative to Flickr, 23 is definitely worth checking out.

[JavaJones]

Thanks for the recommendation city_zen. This continues to be an area of interest for me as well. I agree that Flickr is best for the community aspect, which is a bit frustrating as I still really dislike its whole system and approach. I think SmugMug being pay-only really limits its general community participation. Would be nice if they had a free, albeit very limited, option. Or maybe even something where they interface with other systems for storage (Picasa, for example) while presenting photos through their interface (Picasa, Flickr, and others have APIs that would allow this, although there may be legal restrictions). If they had free accounts at least you could get more people participating and commenting, even if they weren't particularly active uploaders. The lack of good social feedback on other systems besides Flickr is a real source of frustration for me. Even on Flickr none of my actual (real life) friends are active, so I've taken to just posting on Facebook for general comment/feedback/sharing, and then posting in Picasa for archival. I plan to remove my photos from Facebook regularly due to their evil, evil Terms of Service (which basically claims a non-exclusive right to use your photos for whatever they want!). I really wish there were a better, unified alternative. Maybe something with Facebook Connect so my FB friends could easily comment, but with better ToS than FB itself. Hmm...

I'm planning to move to a self-hosted gallery for archival soon. Looking at this: http://piwigo.org/ Just noticed it has some Facebook plugins too: http://fr.piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=481 http://piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=469
Have any of you considered self-hosting vs. the big hosted sites discussed here? If so, why did you decide against it?

- Oshyan

[city_zen]

I'm glad you found the information useful, JavaJones
I agree with your views about Facebook's Terms of Service regarding pictures. I also don't feel comfortable leaving my pics on facebook, but I don't go as far as deleting them regularly. I guess I'll just take my chances and hope they never choose one of my wild party pics for one of their ads

I really wish there were a better, unified alternative. Maybe something with Facebook Connect so my FB friends could easily comment, but with better ToS than FB itself. Hmm...

A couple of alternatives, using 23, that are not exactly what you want but come pretty close, I think:

• When you post a photograph on www.23hq.com, you have a "Post to facebook" button on each page so you can easily transfer that pic to your facebook wall and have your friends see it and comment. Afterwards, you can delete that posting from you wall and the original pic stays in 23
• You could use a facebook RSS app, such as the popular RSS Grafitti, to automatically read your RSS feed at 23 (they do provide an RSS feed for each user) and publish those pictures to your facebook wall. Everything should be automatic. Every time you upload a pic to 23, that photograph would show up on your facebook wall. Of course, you can later delete that post from facebook if so you wish.

I haven't tried any of those alternatives myself but they should work without much trouble.

Have any of you considered self-hosting vs. the big hosted sites discussed here? If so, why did you decide against it?

It did cross my mind for a moment but I thought it'd be too much trouble to set up a full gallery application, on top of the required database, just to post pictures. Plus, I'd have to keep it secure and updated. Maybe I'm wrong and it's simpler than it looks, but I decided against it.
Anyway, here's a link to a comparison chart of photo gallery software at Wikipedia: Comparison of photo gallery software

[JavaJones]

Thanks for the further info. I've hosted galleries on a number of platforms before. If you're not familiar with hosting your own web apps then it'd be more complicated but I'm fairly experienced with Joomla, SMF forum, and a number of other web systems, so a gallery is not particularly more complicated. That being said again it's the social element that I'd miss with a self-hosting approach. While I love Wikipedia's extensive app comparison lists for jumping off points, they sometimes make the decision harder, not easier, since there are so many options.

The 23-based options seem interesting, but what I really want is people to be able to comment on my photos on *my* site with a Facebook account, and just notify people of a new *gallery* being posted (or new single image optionally, but I tend to upload in batches and wouldn't want to see 70 individual image posts show up on my wall!). I'll look into the options with 23 and see if it can somehow do what I want. The 30 picture per month limit is somewhat frustrating though. If I'm going to pay, I might as well put in slightly more for SmugMug (20 Euro for 23 vs. $40 a year for Smug). SmugMug's presentation and gallery style is still unbeaten as far as I'm concerned (23 is actually somewhat lackluster in this area for picture enlarging in particular).

If I do end up setting up Piwigo or another locally hosted solution I'll let you all know how that goes, hehe.

- Oshyan

[city_zen]

what I really want is people to be able to comment on my photos on *my* site with a Facebook account

Maybe you already know this, but just in case.
Apparently you can do what you want with Smugmug: Contact a Hero and Bug Fixes – February 12, 2009 « The SmugMug Blog

We took advantage of Facebook Connect so you can now login to your Facebook account when leaving a comment at SmugMug

[JavaJones]

Yeah SmugMug seems like the best overall option, I'm just hoping for something that is free, or at least more customizable without paying a lot (the more customizable versions of SmugMug are pricier than I'd like).

- Oshyan

[Renegade]

I use a paid Flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryansmyth/

I'm happy with it, but I don't do a lot with it either.

There was a thread a while back about protecting photos, and Flickr does a reasonable job of that. I need to login to easily hotlink to them. (Sure, I could get around it, but whatever. Logging in is easy enough.)

[Lutz_]

Hi,
you might want to try JAlbum which comes in two flavors: as an online picture album ( http://jalbum.net/en/create/photo-album/ )  and a as a free desktop software (Win, Mac, Linux) to create album websites on the server of your choice ( http://jalbum.net/en/this-is-jalbum?ref=footer ) or on theirs.
The quality and the choice of skins for the albums are spectacular ( http://jalbum.net/en/skins ) and many skins have plenty of customization options including user comments, shopping cart etc.  .
They have easy and straightforward stuff. Some ambitious examples are at:
http://kaya.jalbum.net/LightFlow/v3/samples.html
http://www.fotoplayer.com/demo.html