Thursday, January 05, 2006

Posting Pictures

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things
Of ships and shoes and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings...

and what to do about posting photos for pattern reviews.

Since I started posting reviews in '02, I used Photoworks to host my photos. Load them to an album, select one or more photos from the album to link to a review, email them to myself and post the link. It was a little awkward, but it worked. Then in fall of 04, Photoworks decided to revamp their whole site. My photos were hostage to the conversion for something like 6 - 8 months, and of course all the old links no longer worked. (I'm still in process of re-linking the old reviews...previous to Nov. 04...it's a long and tedious business). But now I cannot link a single photo to the review, I can only link 'albums'. Consequently, I have a BUNCH of albums with one photo in them; and I can't put a 'see this HERE' type link in any review. It's cramping my style. It doesn't work for me anymore.

So I decided that, with the new year, I'd look around and see if there are any more review-friendly photo hosting sites out there. Um, maybe I'd better rephrase that: I'm looking for FREE review-friendly photo hosting sites. I've got access to Yahoo, and I may end up with that, but I know Yahoo gets aggravating from time to time, too. I am a 'Friend of PR' and have an album there, but at the rate I sew I'd fill it up in no time flat so I'm sort of using it for the backup. I've probably got a week or so before I get the First Review of the Year done, so I need to make up my mind pretty quick.

So I'm soliciting opinions...anybody got a favorite free photo hosting site? :D

11 comments:

  1. I think you can get more space at PR. It may cost a little bit, but shouldn't be too much.

    There is also image hosting available at http://www.knitblog.com/hosting.htm for $10/$20 a year. They cater more to the knitting community, but they promote themselves as being for "the fiber arts community"

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  2. Lisa, I am using Yahoo Photos with some success. I have them on my blog site for people to go and see. I too use PR but about at my limit. Flickr is one I recently read about, but it is beta site for Yahoo. So does that mean the Yahoo Photos will soon be Flickr.

    With Yahoo, once I got the private/public settings straightened out I have been able to share the photos better.

    Then there is Picasa2 from Google. Limitations with that is you can only post one picture at a time. I made a complaint about that. Sorry for lengthy reply but I had been seeking the same thing. When you get more info, please share.

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  3. Thanks, ladies. I know I can get more space at PR, but that just postpones the inevitable a little. I will fill it up.

    Linda, I'm leaning towards yahoo at the moment. I read a newspaper article about 6 months ago (I meant to keep it but I didn't) that ranked photo hosting sites; Yahoo was actually second. I'm thinking the first was photobucket, but I'm not sure and I haven't heard from anyone who uses that one....

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  4. Lisa,
    What is your ISP? Maybe you have space through them??
    --
    Debbie Cook

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  5. Yeah, we do have a homepage available with our ISP, but it's not much space. In fairness to the family, my goal is to one day put family news on it...not just fill it up with my sewing stuff. I'm about to turn it over to our HTML savvy youngsters, though, as it's been on my 'to do' list for something like 4 years... :eek:

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  6. Lisa,
    I use walagata.com for my ebay picture hosting. They have a free option which I am currently using, but I think there is a waiting list for it now. The "pay" version is only $9.99 for a year...not sure how much space that is.

    Thanks for commenting on my blog. I enjoy your blog and seeing the photos of your sewing nook.
    Ruth

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  7. I looked around a bit at Flickr; they have some nice options but the free accounts are a bit limited. Their 'unlimited' accounts are about 10 bucks a year, too...that seems to be the going rate for photo space.

    Still haven't sewn a stitch yet this year, though, so I've got a bit of time before I have to make up my mind ;)

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  8. i use photobucket. it works well, and i use it to link the main photo (the one that would end up on the scrolling queue on the side, kwim?). then i usually make an individual webpage with the rest of the photos.

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  9. Thanks, Linda. I (finally) went to the photobucket site and looked around. Got Really Confused by their bandwidth restrictions; sounds like if one had a really popular photo the bandwidth could max out on the photo and no one could see it for the rest of the month. I probably flatter myself overly much to think that could happen on my little reviews at PR, but it does sound a little discouraging. Have you had any bandwidth related problems?

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  10. Lisa, I really recommend http://www.Pbase.com. They cater to photographers, so their images are excellent. Your viewers can choose from 4 sizes to see your photos in. They charge around $25/year, and you get 300M for that, and all the galleries you want, and many ways to link to them. You can see mine here. http://www.pbase.com/lianasews You can also hotlink to your photos if you like. The quality is so much better than Yahoo. I know Yahoo is free, and many sewers use it, but I just hate feeling like I'm viewing their lovely detail photos from "way over there."

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  11. Yeah, that is the frustrating thing about photo posting and the one redeeming quality of Photoworks; you CAN 'view photo larger'. That's the only reason I've stuck with PW since the hijack, er, um, restructuring last year. But I'm just not ready to fork over bucks for photo hosting...yet.

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