If You Don't Use Flickr, What Do You Use?

[brianwahl]

I use Zenfolio. It's a paid service, but I found their features to be the best for my needs when shopping around a while back.

Some features I really like:
Very (very) nice back-end user interface. You literally can see everything in one screen - very well laid out.
They automatically give you links to 5 or 6 different sized photos of what you upload.
Their upload service works pretty good, and if you use a PC (which I don't), they offer a "download all your originals" type service, so it works perfectly as an online back-up.
It looks pretty nice, in my opinion. You can customize the albums, etc, and most of their design is really nice.

http://brianwahl.zenfolio.com

[melanie2457]

I use Smugmug. It's a paid service, but it's pretty easy to use, the layouts are customizable, you can create as many galleries as you want. And I can even upload photos straight from my PC without having to go to their site and browse. Plus, if I want to share my photos they offer quick links to many different sizes. I can select whether or not I want to allow people to see my original files and people can comment and caption my photos as well. They also have a feature where people can order prints straight from your smugmug page so I imagine that could be handy (though I have yet to have to use it...)

[porterd2nz]

I started off using Webshots! simply because I was using their desktop wallpaper software on my laptop when I started looking for a photo hosting service.

Started using the DPS forums and saw everyone was using
flickr and went and looked at them and signed up there.

Now I hear about Zooomr and look at there service and I am very impressed by their "No Limits" style. So now I'm signed up there with a few placeholder images.

I like the direction Zooomr seem to be heading. The fact that everything works almost exactly like flickr is an added bonus!

[darel]

I've just started on Zooomr and I'm really loving it. Apart from certain issues I have here and there, which I'm sure are going to be ironed out soon, everything's just lovely there. As some of you have mentioned, I like the whole startup and how being a member now means you aren't just a statistic but rather an active individual in the community.

[Nicole]

I have a Zooomr account (and have had one since the early days), but I'm not using it much at the moment because the site is still lacking a lot of the features that I don't just want, but need (unless they've ironed out the whole uploading thing for using juploadr). Good in theory, I'm just waiting for the bugs to be ironed out more.

[mdwsta4]

fotki. i've been using it for about 3 or 4 years now. before that, i used pbase (but that was before they started charging). i honestly never would have signed up for flickr if it weren't for adding the 'groups' that a lot of websites i visit are part of. smughug and digrin are also much better alternatives compared to flickr.
not really sure what everyone loves so much about flickr. good marketing i guess.

[wulf]

Originally Posted by mdwsta4

smughug and digrin are also much better alternatives compared to flickr.

Can you quantify what makes them better?

Wulf

[brianwahl]

Originally Posted by brianwahl

I use Zenfolio. It's a paid service, but I found their features to be the best for my needs when shopping around a while back.

Some features I really like:
Very (very) nice back-end user interface. You literally can see everything in one screen - very well laid out.
They automatically give you links to 5 or 6 different sized photos of what you upload.
Their upload service works pretty good, and if you use a PC (which I don't), they offer a "download all your originals" type service, so it works perfectly as an online back-up.
It looks pretty nice, in my opinion. You can customize the albums, etc, and most of their design is really nice.

http://brianwahl.zenfolio.com

In light of this post I made last week - I took a good look at flickr. One thing that Zenfolio is missing is the community aspect - you can't even comment on photos - something they've said they will implement but they haven't.

Anyway, I payed the measly $25 for the pro flickr account and I'm in the process of uploading most of my stuff from Zenfolio. So far I like it. I noted that I really liked the layout of the back-end at zenfolio, but the Organizr over at flickr is really nice, too.

I'll see which one I like more when my memberships are up. So far flickr is pretty cool - hopefully I'll get into the community there.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwahl/

[mdwsta4]

personal preference.

although, both are argualby more professional looking as well as customizable. you can't tell me you'd take a pro seriously if he sent you to his flickr site, would you? not that a pro would have a smughug or digrin site either, but still.

Originally Posted by wulf

Can you quantify what makes them better?

Wulf

[wulf]

Originally Posted by mdwsta4

although, both are argualby more professional looking as well as customizable. you can't tell me you'd take a pro seriously if he sent you to his flickr site, would you? not that a pro would have a smughug or digrin site either, but still.

I'm not convinced

Smugmug is undeniably more black and makes a little more use of gradient background fills but I don't think it could be called more professional (and I'm judging this as a web design professional myself). Even if you prefer black as a background, I think it loses out to Flickr by having that childish "smug mug" grin as a repeated icon associated with the site.

What is the URL of digrin? I couldn't find a photo-sharing site of that name.

What areas can you customise that can't be customised under Flickr? Actually, the most compelling arguments that keep me using Flickr (apart from the fact I now have a lot of pictures up there) are that it is quick to share pictures (which I imagine is true for most or all of the sites mentioned), that it is easy to aggregate them together in various ways (tags, sets, collections, groups), that it has a strong social side and that it provides numerous RSS feeds and well documented API (allowing photos published on Flickr to be integrated with any site of your choice - complete customisation).

Wulf