Computers and digital cameras have made photo sharing big business these days. It is cheaper than ever to collect a massive volume of snapshots, and everyone loves to see new pictures from their family and friends. This begs the question: what is the best way to share photos online?
There are quite a few web sites vying for your attention when it comes to online photo sharing. Which one you choose depends on what you intend to do with your digital photos, and who you want to share them with. Luckily for you, we have done the dirty work of running through the essential features of six major photo sharing services: Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Shutterfly, SmugMug, Webshots, and Zooomr.
Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing site owned by Yahoo!. Every Flickr user has a photo stream displaying their photos in the order in which they were uploaded. Photos can then be organized in sets and collections. A “Set” equates to an album, and a “collection” can contain both sets and individual photos.
In addition to basic photo organization, Flickr has many interesting supplementary features for sharing and describing photos. Photos can be placed on a map, submitted to member groups, and “tagged” with keywords. Flickr members can leave comments on your photos, however you can choose to limit who is allowed to do so.
Flickr has a number of privacy options designed to give you control over the photos you share using the service. Public photos can be seen by anyone, and private photos can be seen only by your family and friends. In order for someone to see your private photos, they must first open their own Flickr account. Once they are on Flickr, you must add them as one of your contacts and designate them as “family” or “friend”.
Flickr has two types of memberships: limited free accounts and paid “Pro” accounts. Free accounts are limited to uploading 100 megabytes of photos per month, display only the 200 most recently added photos, and can only share downsized versions of photos. Free accounts can organize photos with up to 3 sets (albums).
Pro accounts can upload an unlimited number of photos (at up to 10 megabytes per photo), organize an unlimited number of photosets, and can archive the high-resolution original versions of their photos. A Flickr Pro account costs $25 per year.
Zooomr
Zooomr is a competitor to Flickr, similar in many ways but setting itself apart with its concept of “unlimited photo sharing”. Zooomr allows free account holders to upload an unlimited amount of photos, and implements many different features meant to appeal to potential photo sharers.
Zooomr bills itself as “unlimited photo sharing”. The site does not place limits on the quantity or frequency of photos that can be uploaded by free account holders. Everyone can create an unlimited number of sets (albums), and there are no limits on downloads or file sizes. Zooomr also offers paid “Pro” accounts, which come with access to Zooomr’s supplementary features. Pro accounts can access a multiple-page Zipline (similar to a Facebook or Twitter feed), see who in the Zooomr community is interacting with their photos, and receive preference when submitting support tickets.
Like Flickr, Zooomr allows you to set the privacy options for your photos. Photos can be publicly available to everyone, or marked private and shared with only family and friends. In order for family and friends to see your private photos they must join Zooomr, become your contact, and wait for you to designate them as “family” or “friend”.
Picasa Web Albums
Picasa Web Albums is a photo sharing offering from Google that marries web-based photo sharing with desktop photo organization. Photo libraries organized by Google’s Picasa software can be shared online through the Picasa Web Albums service.
Picasa Web Albums has two privacy options: “Public” and “Unlisted”. Public photo galleries are advertised through your homepage on Picasa Web Albums, while links to unlisted galleries do not appear anywhere. Google describes unlisted galleries as behaving like unlisted phone numbers - the information is not provided to the public, but someone who knows or is able to guess the exact address to a public album of yours will be able to download its contents.
Picasa’s concept of “unlisted” galleries makes it easy to share private photos with family and friends who do not spend much time using a computer. You can e-mail an unlisted album’s link to your family and friends, and they will see its contents the moment they click through. No one will be required to fill out forms or join the service. The rest of the world will be unaware of the album’s existence, since it will not be published on your account’s home page.
Picasa Web Albums provides 1 gigabytes of free space, and charges a yearly fee for additional storage. According to Google, their initial 1 gb is enough space for 4,000 standard resolution photos.
Shutterfly
Shutterfly is one of the more traditional photo sharing sites; online since 1999, Shutterfly focuses on digital photo sharing without the community aspects of sites like Flickr and Zooomr.
Shutterfly is a photo sharing site without all the bells and whistles found elsewhere. You join Shutterfly, upload your photos, and enter the e-mail addresses of your friends and family. Shutterfly will send everyone an e-mail containing a link to the photos you have chosen to share. Anyone who receives that e-mail and clicks that link will see your photos immediately, without having to join the site. Ordering prints, however, does require the person to log in.
Since Shutterfly doesn’t focus on building a community around shared photos, the ones you upload are not really published for the world to see. That is not to say they are 100% private however — just like with Picasa Web Albums, anyone who is able to guess the exact address to your photos will be able to download them.
Shutterfly’s terms of service do no enforce a hard limit on how many photos a member may upload, but they recommend that you keep each file under 10 megabytes. This should not be a problem, as all but the more advanced digital cameras produce image files smaller than 10 MB.
SmugMug
SmugMug is another oldschool photo sharing site that bypasses focusing on the community features in favor of regular e-mail-based sharing. Upload some photos into a SmugMug album, enter the e-mail addresses of your family & friends, and send off your pics. Everyone will receive an e-mail with a click-able link to your photos.
Smugmug does not require people to log in before they can see your photos, nor does the site require a membership to order prints. Clicking the “Buy this Photo” link takes you straight to the SmugMug shopping cart.
SmugMug photo galleries are public by default, but the site offers the option to make them private. Each SmugMug member has a homepage that displays their photos. By marking content as private, it is withheld from your public homepage. Only those with whom you choose to share your photos will be able find your pics. SmugMug also offers password-protected galleries for an added layer of security.
While SmugMug doesn’t primarily focus on community features, they do have various photo communities that you can opt to join. Members can join existing communities, as well as start their own.
Unfortunately, even SmugMug’s most basic account comes with a price tag. Standard Accounts are free for the first 14 days, and cost $39.95 per year afterwards. Purchasing one entitles you to unlimited photo storage, personalized themes, basic image editing, and other such features.
Webshots
Webshots blends traditional e-mail photo sharing with community photo sharing. Photos uploaded to the Webshots service can be sent to family & friends, as well as shared with the Webshots online community.
Like Shutterfly and SmugMug, Webshots offers one-click photo sharing. You can e-mail any album to your friends & family, and they will receive a click-able link that leads to your photos.
Like Flickr and Zooomr, Webshots encourages community interaction based around the photos that are uploaded. Other members can see your photos, leave comments, and exchange messages. If you have pics that should not be shared with the rest of the world, you have the option to designate them as private when you perform the upload. These photos won’t be published for the Webshots community to see, but you can opt to share them via e-mail.
Webshots requires a person to log in before ordering prints, and the prints are processed through a partnership with QOOP. Webshots members may change their account settings to restrict friends from ordering prints, as well as restrict certain people from posting comments on public photos.
What to Choose?
Community-centric sites like Flickr and Zooomr are fantastic products for anyone who wishes to share their photography with the world. Both offer a fascinating set of features. Flickr has a much larger base of users and does much more traffic, while Zooomr is an up-and-coming site with a smaller, tight-knit community.
Community sites like Flickr and Zooomr get a little cumbersome when you only wish to share photos with certain people. I have found the process of persuading family & friends to sign up and become my contact in order to view private photos to be quite challenging. Perhaps those who are familiar with social networking sites like Facebook will follow through, but those who are not so computer-savvy are just not going to go through with this process unless you sit down and do it for them. In order to give family & friends one-click access to your photos on one of these community sites, you must be willing to make your pictures publicly available.
SmugMug advertises rave reviews from major tech publications, and ultimately provides a very nice set of features for the would-be photo sharer. Unfortunately its lack of a completely free standard account is a pretty high barrier, so you must decided if their custom themes and online image editing are worth the price tag. Casual users might want to look elsewhere.
For those who are more interested in sharing with family & friends than interacting with an online community, and do not want to pay for a service like SmugMug, Picasa Web Albums is an excellent choice. Google’s Picasa software is great at managing your personal photo library as well as uploading shots to your web albums. Sharing your web albums with family & friends is extremely convenient, as allowing others to browse your photos and order prints is very straightforward.
Unfortunately the Picasa Photo Mangement software is not yet available for the Mac. Mac users who wish to share their photos on Picasa Web Albums will have to install the Picasa iPhoto plug-in.
A Note About Privacy
While all of the online photo sharing services offer privacy options, there is really no such thing as 100% effective privacy online. Usually when a photo is marked as private, it is not published to public areas of the Web for others to find. The only way to find the photo is to know the exact address to its location. Sharing with family & friends works by sending them this private address.
Theoretically, someone could track down your private photos and view them. Realistically, this is an effective way to hide innocent photos that you would just rather not publicize. On the other hand, anything sensitive should not be trusted to the Internet, no matter what sharing site you choose, period. If you have a photo that you do not want found online, don’t put it online in the first place!
