Author Topic: Best Photo Storing Sites  (Read 1946 times)

Michael Erlewine

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Best Photo Storing Sites
« on: October 29, 2018, 18:30:40 »
I am considering putting a lot of my images online, with a couple of things in mind:

(1) Store them full-sized, etc.
(2) Show them in smaller size
(3) If possible, sell them in digital form to be printed and sent by other vendors. Or, better yet, have the storage site sell the image and print and send it to a customer.

Free or subscriptions sites are fine. Need unlimited storage and the ability to take large .TIF files, etc.

Any of you folks have any suggestions about this, please?
MichaelErlewine.smugmug.com, Daily Blog at https://www.facebook.com/MichaelErlewine. main site: SpiritGrooves.net, https://www.youtube.com/user/merlewine, Founder: MacroStop.com, All-Music Guide, All-Movie Guide, Classic Posters.com, Matrix Software, DharmaGrooves.com

CS

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Re: Best Photo Storing Sites
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2018, 21:41:13 »
I am considering putting a lot of my images online, with a couple of things in mind:

(1) Store them full-sized, etc.
(2) Show them in smaller size
(3) If possible, sell them in digital form to be printed and sent by other vendors. Or, better yet, have the storage site sell the image and print and send it to a customer.

Free or subscriptions sites are fine. Need unlimited storage and the ability to take large .TIF files, etc.

Any of you folks have any suggestions about this, please?

I think we have an entirely different opinion concerning how "high quality" images should be printed for sale. You would be placing all of your considerable effort in creating them at risk by entrusting them to others to be printed. OTOH, they're your images, and perhaps you are not concerned about how those prints look. Good luck.
Carl

Michael Erlewine

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Re: Best Photo Storing Sites
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2018, 22:17:09 »
I think we have an entirely different opinion concerning how "high quality" images should be printed for sale. You would be placing all of your considerable effort in creating them at risk by entrusting them to others to be printed. OTOH, they're your images, and perhaps you are not concerned about how those prints look. Good luck.

Of course I am interested. Some of these sites have a choice of many printers off-site. I get a lot of requests for my photos from people wanting to hang them in their homes. I would provide the digital-negatives, so to speak, they could choose their printer... And... I will research where there are good printers. I have never printed even one of my hundreds of thousands of images because i don't like the quality of the printing. LOL.
MichaelErlewine.smugmug.com, Daily Blog at https://www.facebook.com/MichaelErlewine. main site: SpiritGrooves.net, https://www.youtube.com/user/merlewine, Founder: MacroStop.com, All-Music Guide, All-Movie Guide, Classic Posters.com, Matrix Software, DharmaGrooves.com

HCS

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Re: Best Photo Storing Sites
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2018, 16:32:24 »
Michael, i know Zenfolio can do this. It allows for large file saving, including RAW. And it allows to setup file downloads as well as print options at various printers in US and EU.

Not sure it floats your boat, but an option none-the-less  :)

BTW, i'm using Zenfolio, but only as a gallery for some family related photo sharing. I don't use any of the other options.
Hans Cremers

Michael Erlewine

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Re: Best Photo Storing Sites
« Reply #4 on: November 01, 2018, 17:41:38 »
I was asking around various forums for suggestions about image-hosting sites that were worth considering. Well, I answered my own question by going out and seeing what photo sites are there. The perfect one for me, so far, is something called Smugmug.com. Perhaps they are smug because they just bought Flickr. It’s not a free site, but it is very reasonable for what it offers.

For one, you get unlimited uploads. As a software engineer who had built and overseen many enterprise-level websites built, I am impressed at how functional and well-built this site is – very well thought out.

It deals mostly with JPG or GIF, but also include lossless .PNG, which not too distant from the TIF in which I store my finished photos. There are limits on the size, but they are good enough (150 megabytes in size and 210 megapixels). I am busy putting up some of my photo collection (or at least the start of it).

They have a number of finished templates that you can just adapt to your material and I choose one. Functionally, this is a very well-made system, with great tools for putting things online. I have never seen any better, IMO.

My site took about a day to put together, not including preparing files to upload. But with hundreds of thousands of images, it took me a week or two just to massage out some 40,000 images that I am considering. From these, I will pick a few thousand to post on the site as I find time.

They offer four plans and monthly subscriptions for $3, $5, $14, and $29 if billed annually. The two more expensive plans include a shopping cart complete with about every way to monetize images I could imagine. They offer fulfillment automatically through several major print-shops, a cradle-to-the-grave experience. Having built many shopping cart systems over the years, this one is really well made. 

I am just starting to populate my site, but I have some 500 or so images up. Those of you interest in this sort of thing can check out what I’ve done here:

https://MichaelErlewine.smugmug.com
MichaelErlewine.smugmug.com, Daily Blog at https://www.facebook.com/MichaelErlewine. main site: SpiritGrooves.net, https://www.youtube.com/user/merlewine, Founder: MacroStop.com, All-Music Guide, All-Movie Guide, Classic Posters.com, Matrix Software, DharmaGrooves.com