Galleries, Blogs, Etc.

So I've used photobucket, wordpress, and coppermine to host/show photos.

I wanted to get a feel for what you guys use out there ... pros and cons ...

I've never used Flickr but I see a lot of you guys use it.

I've always browsed pbase.com for nice pictures and have thought about using them.

 

Mike how do you like Blogspot? I thought about joining ... but wanted to get some insight.

 

Hrrrmmm that sounds like some of my experiences with Wordpress.

 

I use nextproof.com for photo proofing- if I didn't already have a custom site I'd use bigfolio.com for hosting my site and they offer an amazing blog! So I use blogspot- not a huge fan but it'll do for now...

 

I have used Photobucket for years, mostly to host non-photography related images... stuff for boards and such.

When I got into Photography I discovered their system trashes images. The system compresses them, or otherwise modifies them so that pictures often look slightly off. Not horrible, but noticeable to me in many cases. The nice thing about Photobucket is that it's free up to a point. I paid $20 a year to have an unlimited account and I keep all of my junk images there. They also have a deal with Target so friends and family can print images and pick them up locally. Handy, but the print quality is marginal at best.

So I began a quest to find a photography oriented website. That, and I created my own site too (http://www.intempus.us).

The site I found with the best image quality and which allows you to control that image quality (you can set default sharpening, etc. or turn all modifications off) is SmugMug Photo Sharing. Your photos look better here..

Smugmug has three different subscription plans. One for personal use, one for heavy use and another for professional use. I really like this system because unlike Photobucket, Flickr, ImageShack, etc. you can fully customize your page and even point a custom URL to your directory (they are partnered with GoDaddy). Here's an example of my SmugMug system I just set-up: inTempus Photography- powered by SmugMug

SmugMug also has great printing services. They mail you the prints, but they look amazing. I think they have one of the best printers out there, or so far that I've found. Friends and family can order prints from your page. The site also works with the iPhone (special free app). You can geotag your images and have them appear on your home page. It's a very cool feature.

If you sign up for SmugMug, use this code KAMvZpioBsAvk and you'll save $5.

I hate Facebook, it completely trashes images. Black and White images are completely washed out as are the colors in color photos. Forget that option. MySpace is a joke too...

I haven't tried Picasa yet. I probably won't given my recent discovery of SmugMug.

Flickr pains me because I hate their menuing system. I think it's horribly laid out. But some folks like it. I have an account, but given the lack of customization I avoid the system.

YMMV

 

Yeah i use photobucket too.

 

I think Photobucket limits the size to 1024x768, that may vary depending on the free account vs. the paid... not sure. But I rarely export my images from Lightroom to that resolution. I export at a much higher resolution. That's when Photobucket decides to resize them for me I believe. Somewhere in that process my images don't look right to me, especially if I upload one image (full resolution) to Photobucket and another to SmugMug, then compare them side-by-side. The SmugMug image always looks better. But then I have all modifications turned off on my SmugMug site... what gets posted is exactly what I created.

I could be on crack.