Sharing and back-up photo storage

[jesshunt]

Hi all - I need your wisdom and advice

I've been using Snapfish for a long time to back up favorite photos each month and then I put links to the albums on my blog for family members to go look at and grab (download or have printed) as they would like. It's worked well up until now, but there have been some difficulties as of late for comcast users and snapfish and I'm getting so frustrated that I've decided to look for something bigger and better!

I'd welcome any suggestions you have....I use it as back-up storage for my fav pics, a way for my family to download or order pics (doesn't seem like you can do this with Flickr??), and it would be nice if family and friends could upload pictures there too so that I can download them to my computer.

Thanks!

[Scrapbird]

I'm not sure I'd use a photo-sharing site for backup. I use Carbonite for backup. This fall, when my laptop crashed, I was extraordinarily grateful that I had spent the money on Carbonite. Photo-sharing sites can't backup all the other stuff on your computer, and do not have the security and redundancy of backup websites like Carbonite. I highly recommend it!

[jesshunt]

Originally Posted by Scrapbird

I'm not sure I'd use a photo-sharing site for backup. I use Carbonite for backup. This fall, when my laptop crashed, I was extraordinarily grateful that I had spent the money on Carbonite. Photo-sharing sites can't backup all the other stuff on your computer, and do not have the security and redundancy of backup websites like Carbonite. I highly recommend it!

It's not back-up for everything - I have that well covered with my time machine It's kind of just a 3rd way that I keep some of my favorite pictures so that if all else fails I have some way to retrieve them. The primary use for it would be for sharing with family/friends and having albums all in one place to link to from my blog.

[DonnaNJ]

I use Shutterfly for sharing..

[digigrandma]

I use shutterfly for sharing too. I also use mobile me (Mac).

[maureenreynolds]

My son has used MobileMe to share their photos. Not sure how he'll deal with that when MM ends next year. We haven't got the photostream working as we want yet on the Cloud. The session we had at the Apple store got us halfway there but I have a lot of icons filling up my 1000 photo limit. It's another store visit for me when we get home.

In the past I've used private Flickr albums to share.

[Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle)]

I've never used it, but I know a lot of people like Picasa on Google.

[blhdvm]

I use Shutterfly the most as well, although I depend more on my EHDs for backups.

[sarahdg]

Picasa! That is what I use for backing up and sharing all my favorite photos. With the free service you only get about a gig of storage, so I pay for the unlimited service. It's about $20 a year for something like 80 gigs. You can pay more for more space if you need it. You can upload easily using the free Picasa software on your computer. Then you can share albums with whoever you choose. Friends and family can easily download full-size pictures to their own computer. (Just make sure you have your software default set to upload full-size images.) I've used the downloading myself when i went to scrap at a friend's house and forgot to load any pictures onto my laptop (duh!). They downloaded perfectly!

I find it to be a very easy to use streamlined service. Way better than Flickr, which confuses the heck out of me!

[jesshunt]

Thanks for the input/advice everyone - I think I'm going to look further into Picasa

[Lynn Grieveson]

Me too! Thanks for asking this Jess :-)

[Jen D]

I use Flickr Jesse. You can adjust the settings so that only family can see and download them straight from Flickr. I have everything uploaded and organized back to 2003 when I got my first digital camera. My family has access to all of that but no one else

Lots of options out there but Flickr works great for me. I also use it as my third backup option.

[blhdvm]

Picasa sounds like a great deal. I am comfortable with my EHDs, but I might hav to look into this! Thanks!

[janedee]

Picasa works really well! My dd is currently travelling in Asia and has been uploading her photos to Picasa albums then sharing them with family. Its so great to see all her pics so soon after the event, plus its also giving her peace of mind in case there's a problem later with her SD cards.

[DonnaNJ]

Not sure but I believe they strip the metadata off the photos.. If that is of concern to you, you might just want to double check with their customer service

[Jacqueline T]

I must check out Picasa too. So many people recommend it! Thanks for reminding me.
It is on my last month's to do list, which is where?????

[maureenreynolds]

Jane, your daughter must have found some fast connections. I had tried to do the daily upload to Flickr in the past (and yes, I did break the daily batch into smaller chunks) and found it was just taking much too long. I'll have to try that again sometime when I know we have a fairly good connection overseas.

[mariap]

I use Smugmug.

[thessh]

I'm a Flickr-addict!!!
Love it, will never leave it for anything else!
Uploads are fast for me. I love how I can organize things into folders and collections.
And how I can let certain people see certain things!
My entire family and most of my friends use Flickr too!