Online photo libraries

innovate

Can anyone recommend a really good online library in which to store personal photos, for sharing with friends and families? I have a huge amount of photos that I need to be able to organise into different sets, and I need to be able to give different access rights to different sets.

Have played with Flickr for the last couple of hours but just cannot figure out how to make my photos available to friends and family. Don't seem to be on my own with those problems - - Flickr seems to be working fine if you are happy with public access, but loaded with issues if you want to limit access. Don't think I can stomach any more Flickr....are there any alternatives that work?

WhiteChristmas

Picasa is Google's photo management software; an absolutely excellent free program to keep track of the photos on your computer and perform basic edits like crops, red-eye removal, colour balance etc.

It merges seamlessly with Picasa Web Albums which gives you a gigabyte of storage for free with very simple sharing mechanisms.

http://picasa.google.com/

innovate

Thank you ever so much, WhiteChristmas - that desktop app looks superb! Not sure 1GB will be enough webspace for me, but I suppose I can get round that limitation somehow. Bigger issue is that Google seem to have a royalty-free licence on all the photos you upload - - - that's a complete no-no for me, so will have to find something different.

cgk1

innovate wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a really good online library in which to store personal photos, for sharing with friends and families? I have a huge amount of photos that I need to be able to organise into different sets, and I need to be able to give different access rights to different sets.

Have played with Flickr for the last couple of hours but just cannot figure out how to make my photos available to friends and family. Don't seem to be on my own with those problems - - Flickr seems to be working fine if you are happy with public access, but loaded with issues if you want to limit access. Don't think I can stomach any more Flickr....are there any alternatives that work?

It's relatively straight forward, either you set the permissions level with the uploader you are using (there is a flickr uploader available google it) or on the site, you go into "organise and create", then you drag the photos you want to be private into the middle, then select "permissions >>> Who can see" and then select permissions and change from all to Friends, Friends and family or whatever combination you like.

Then when you want to share them, you simply select the folder you want to share and select "share" and it gives you various options of how you want to share it with your friends and family, you can give them a guess pass to all of your material or simply a url (which is not searchable or findable from the web) which allows direct access.

Bigger issue is that Google seem to have a royalty-free licence on all the photos you upload - -

Are you sure?

http://picasa.google.com/legal_notices.html


The big problem for me with Picasa is that permissions have to be set at the folder level. So for example, I organise my photos by data, so will have a folder called "December 2010" (and then use tags on individual photos for subjects). On Picasa, either that folder is completely private or completely public, that's no use to me. Over at Flickr, I can have a folder and some of the pictures in it are private and some are public.

innovate

I can set the privacy levels ok in Flickr, that's not the problem. The issue is that none of my family can see anything other than public photos from me. It also says I have no contacts, and the invites I sent have apparently not been accepted, even though my family members all acted upon the invite emails they got. It's basically one almighty mess - - and there are reports on the Flickr forum from other people experiencing the exact same problems.

Regarding the privacy issue on Picasa Web Albums:

[SIZE=-1]11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.


[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.[/SIZE]

These are extracts from the Google Terms of Service. The bits in red are what is completely unacceptable to me. I have seen " We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service" in the Legal Notice - - but what applies, the Legal notice or the bumpf from the Terms of Service? I am erring on the safe side and think the Terms of Service apply. Not the first time, anyway, that Google have had questionable approaches to people's privacy.

jayme1

windows live skydrive 25GB size with a 50MB individual file size limit, you can set privicy to whatever you want, either public, private unless you have the secret link, or set it so they have to sign in with their live ID (hotmail account).

just upload individual sets to their respective albums, and you can use live photo gallery to upload the pictures easily, you can also set it to use the full res photos or it can scale them for you (whatevery you want)

I've used it many times and like it a lot.