Online Photo Services: a Comparison Review

This summer I have been looking for a sensible and affordable online service to store and display my photos. The replacement of my old, and always very wonky Canon S45 with a Nikon D40 has renewed my interest in taking more, and better, pictures, and therefore a logical need to share the best ones with friends and family. There are of course lots of online services like that, but once I made a list of features I wanted the service to have, finding something that would fit the bill turned out to be quite a challenge.

On the surface, my “list of desirable features” seems sort of obvious, and one would think that any company that sets out to make money this way would coincide with most of these ideas - so let’s have a look (I also ranked them on importance scale, from 10 = very to 1 = marginally / unimportant, really):

Features list 

1 - to be able to upload multiple photos at once (IMPORTANCE: 10)

2 - to have good looking slideshows - that is the main reason to post things online in the first place. If the slideshows do not look good (good colors, nice, clear and easy-to-navigate interface) then what’s the point? When I make an effort to take good looking pictures, II don’t want to have them displayed on a crummy-looking, cluttered screen with confusing interface; I want to be able to control the preferred background (I like dark grey or black); if my visitors want to change it - fine with me - let them (IMPORTANCE: 10);

3 - to be able to post slideshows or collections of photos (albums) with secret (private) URL addressees, so that I can send the location to my friends / family without the need to have all my photos accessible to just anyone. I like making my landscape, travel and flower pics public, but never make any of my “people” pictures available to random internet surfers (IMPORTANCE: 10);

4 - to allow (selectively) the visitors to download larger, printable versions of some photographs (i.e., in a size suitable for good quality 6x4 prints, i.e., at 1800x1200 pixels) (IMPORTANCE: 10);

5 - to be able to have the keywords from my photo processing application transfer (I use Adobe Lightroom, but it could be iPhoto or similar) with the upload, so photos do not all have to be re-tagged again (IMPORTANCE: 7);

6 - to be able to upload via web interface; I want to be able to upload photos from my USB stick at an internet café or airport somewhere out there in the big, big world, when I travel and do not have a laptop with me, or simply don’t want to let it promiscuously hook up with any unsecured network hotspot controlled by who-knows-whom (IMPORTANCE: 6);

7 - to allow visitors to upload their photos to my selected online albums (with a private password) or galleries; for example if, after an event I post pictures, and someone else has other interesting pictures of the same event, they could add them to open albums, so all those interested can share all their pictures without necessarily having to set up an account (IMPORTANCE: 6);

8 - to be able to sign up on a monthly subscription plan, not an annual one. Sometimes it takes longer than one week (the usual “free trial” period) to discover if the service is reliable, functional and workable. Some may seem great at first sight, but may turn out to be slow or buggy. I want to be able to cancel after a month or two, if I am not happy (IMPORTANCE: 5);

9 - community features: the ability for other people to comment on photographs directly on the pages. I understand the allure of this feature (flickr site is based on it) but it is not very important to me: people I know will send their comments via e-mail, if they want to; comments of the people I do not know, while flattering when nice, are sort of superfluous on most pictures, and undesirable on private photos from personal occasions or events. Hence, IMPORTANCE: 3

Here is how some of those services I tried stack up:

PICASA (aka: Google Photos); $ free, SCORE: 31 — I started with a free service from Google, called Picasa. It did OK on features # 1, 3, 6, and 8 (it’s free); but the slideshows are very poor, photos get mangled in the process of upload (colors get changed and resizing wrecks any sharpening), keywords and titles get lost. Bummer.

FLICKR free (limited) or $29 annualy; SCORE (for free version): 31 — flickr has unbeatable community features: other people can comment on your pictures; you can post your pictures to groups that share your interest (such as photo close-ups of flowers, or pictures of Madison), and see photos on the subject posted by other people; you can read and participate in discussions and submit your photos to competitions in smaller groups, etc. Flickr is a great, fun, learning machine too, since many people make their camera’s EXIF data (camera type, lens type, shutter speed, ISO setting, aperture, etc) publicly available, so it is easy to see what settings were used to take some impressive photographs, and learn from it. But flickr is for geeks -- its interface is complex and unwieldy, and using it to share photos with friends and family is very cumbersome since they all have to sign up for their own (although free) flickr accounts; if not, they will only be able see the photos that are public (and therefore are available to everyone, known or unknown). That just creeps me out - no, thank you. See my feature #3, above. Flickr slideshows, like Picasa’s, are extremely ugly, and the size of uploaded photos is limited on free accounts (as is monthly upload quota: 100 mb), so that posting a pic that will print nicely at 4x6 is not possible. Still, I use (and plan to continue to use) the free version of flickr for selected pictures and for some community features. For example, I follow several Nikon D40 interest groups too see what photos people get with the same camera I am using, and at what settings; I visit the flower close-up groups browsing for enjoyment of beatiful pics and new ideas; I also follow the Madison photo group, and if I lived closer, I would love to participate in their actual (not virtual) weekend “photo meets” when they get together and take photos on a given topic (e.g., the Square at night, or Monona Terrace, etc.), and then post them online and compare notes… What a great idea!  Storage limit: 100mb monthly upload

PHOTAGIOUS $3.99, monthly; SCORE: 50 — I had recently settled on a service called Photagious, but that has been a marriage of convenience since the beginning: the slideshows look really good, and the service (sort of) delivers on my feature list points # 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8. But the system has numerous very rough edges (even for a geek like me), and although going through the feature list produces a high score, the software is too buggy for a paid service (and for my taste). On the bright side, it has a very responsive tech support. I use it for now (July '07), but probably won’t stay with Photagious for long - the competition is quickly increasing. Unlimited storage.

ZENFOLIO, $40, annually; (no score yet - trying Zenfolio out); The search for a perfect photo-storage service continues - last week (early Aug. 07) I discovered Zenfolio, which looks like a much more capable variation on the Photagious theme: similar set of features (which I like) and, judging by sample slideshows posted online, a slightly more capable, and better designed software under the hood. Zenfolio also allows to obtain prints through MPIX and ezPrints.  I haven’t really given it a try, so I’ll reserve my opinion for now. Unlimited storage.

.Mac with Web Galllery $99 annually (for 10G), (no score yet) This also was the week when Apple announced and released their new iLife 08 software-suite update, and upgraded its formerly badly lagging online service, called .Mac. It opens another, and very tempting, possibility. It would work seamlessly with iPhoto (i.e., keep all the keywords and EXIF info). On paper (feature list, as announced by Apple), Apple’s WebGallery (a part of .Mac) it trully impressive and supports my wish-list of features very completely: #’s 1, 2, 3,  4, 5, 6, and 7 are fully covered (a whopping tentative score of 59 - the highest so far - but that’s only on paper). It also adds a few features I didn’t even think to include on my list (e.g., automatically synchronizing photos online and the ones on the computer, i.e., downloading new pictures uploaded by others; as well as sending pictures directly from iPhone, or via e-mail).

And, of course, it also includes 10G of web storage for ANYTHING (web pages, files, online backup of files, etc.). .Mac will work with iWeb (part of the new iLife suite) for quick, but beautifully designed web pages (based on provided templates), and it will talk to iWork (e.g., for posting podcasts or slideshow presentations made w/ Keynote, or handouts made with Pages).

Overall it’s VERY tempting. It also is the most expensive option ($99 for annual .Mac subscription; plus software cost of iLife and iWork). Something to think about over the weekend… Storage limit: 10G.

Update on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 9:01 by George

So, as of today (Aug. 28th, '07) the deed it done. I chose dotmac, and said good bye to Photagious. Still, for anyone on Windows, both Photagious and (perhaps more so) Zenfolio are good options.