View Full Version : Free Image Hosting sites?
Photobucket has changed and I don't want to pay what they want, in order to share pictures on forums like this one.
Anyone have a favorite one that's free.......or at least reasonable?
Thanks.
I used to use Picasa until Google broke it.
I switched to Imgur which seems to work, though it's not as handy as Picasa once was.
Amazon has photo hosting included with Prime, but I haven't explored it.
The key requirement for me was that you be able to get a direct link to your photo, so you could use it to embed the photo using the IMG tags in sites like this. Many of the free sites will no longer allow you to direct link the image, but instead give you a link to a more complex object, which is useless for this.
I run my own webserver at home and just upload images to an image directory there. Easy initial setup and little to no ongoing maintenance and you have complete control. The only drawback is dedicating a machine to the task.
Shoot. The only reason I have a photobucket account is for this site. Do they really expect that people will pay $399 for that service? I'm generally not price sensitive for anything under $100, especially for a one time expense, but at $400/year this is crazy pricey. They had a link at the top of the page to take a survey. I've voiced my displeasure...
Alan, how difficult is it to set up a home web server. I assume some tweaking of our router's firewall is necessary? Also, occasionally comcast seems to change our IP address. Is that an issue? And lastly, would a raspberry pi be up for the task? I bought one a while back and have messed around with it some but now it's just sitting on a shelf gathering dust.
Have you looked into Flickr. They used to be a popular free hosting site but things seem to have changed the last few years. I pay to use Smugmug, but they've increased their fees to where it's on the border of being cost effective.
Shoot. The only reason I have a photobucket account is for this site. Do they really expect that people will pay $399 for that service? I'm generally not price sensitive for anything under $100, especially for a one time expense, but at $400/year this is crazy pricey. They had a link at the top of the page to take a survey. I've voiced my displeasure...
Alan, how difficult is it to set up a home web server. I assume some tweaking of our router's firewall is necessary? Also, occasionally comcast seems to change our IP address. Is that an issue? And lastly, would a raspberry pi be up for the task? I bought one a while back and have messed around with it some but now it's just sitting on a shelf gathering dust.
It's not too difficult at all. If you're running Windows, simply activate IIS (Internet Information Services) and turn on Port Forwarding in your router (forwarding all Port 80, or whichever port you decide to use, to the internal IP of the server). Since you have a dynamic external IP through your ISP, set up an account with a Dynamic DNS service such as DYNDNS (dyn.com) to ensure you'll always be able to reach your server from the internet, and you're done. The one caveat to that is there is a small annual fee for the DNS service, not sure how much, I have several accounts but they're so old I was grandfathered in when they converted to a pay service.
You could also use an Apache web server on any operating system you choose, (apache.org).
I'm not familiar enough with the Raspberry PI to have an opinion, although I don't see why you couldn't use it as well.
ToomuchStuff
8-25-17, 10:00am
You could also use an Apache web server on any operating system you choose, (apache.org).
I'm not familiar enough with the Raspberry PI to have an opinion, although I don't see why you couldn't use it as well.
Your not familiar with the hardware, your certainly familiar with the software, as various Linux distro's are the main OS's for it.
The big trick for it is how many pictures as you would probably have to end up with a USB storage device for more then a few small ones, that would fit on an SD card. (other then a test, an SD card really isn't effective)
The big trick for it is how many pictures as you would probably have to end up with a USB storage device for more then a few small ones, that would fit on an SD card. (other then a test, an SD card really isn't effective)Don't they come with usb ports where you could easily add a portable drive?
Edited to add: Sorry, missed your reference to that in my initial read-through.
SteveinMN
8-25-17, 10:21am
The images I've included in posts here were hosted by tinypic (obvious url). It's free and simple and I don't have a problem if/when the link eventually ages off their server (what are the odds someone will dig back long enough to come across even the placeholder for it?). My professional images were on my Web site(s), so a rented version of the hosting Alan is talking about.
ToomuchStuff
8-25-17, 10:27am
The images I've included in posts here were hosted by tinypic (obvious url). It's free and simple and I don't have a problem if/when the link eventually ages off their server (what are the odds someone will dig back long enough to come across even the placeholder for it?). My professional images were on my Web site(s), so a rented version of the hosting Alan is talking about.
Odd's depend on subject and type of forum. I am on a forum, where there are both how to discussions as well as refinishing discussions and looking at old threads is common, there. The photobucket thing, has really screwed up that.
How long are tinypic's good for? Seen them age off in for sale sections as well, pretty quickly.
Thanks everyone. I need to figure this all out. I'm not very computer savvy. I just know that Photobucket made a huge, unreasonable change. And for them to remove my old pictures........well that doesn't seem right at all. No way will I stay with them.
How long are tinypic's good for? Seen them age off in for sale sections as well, pretty quickly. No idea. The most recent time I used it was mid-August; that image is still in the thread.
I went looking for an old thread of mine in which I'd posted a picture and I spent more than enough time on searching without finding. Since my posts rarely rely on pictures to illustrate my point, I'll just let it be a mystery. :~)
Bump.
I'm going to launch into a project to digitize my wife's parents' photo/slide archives, and I'd love to find an image-hosting site that:
a) allows for a large volume of data
b) allows direct links to the photos to be grabbed for use on other websites (like here)
c) is likely to be stable for some years to come, and/or offers easy import/export tools for your data
d) has reasonable tools for organizing/tagging photos
e) doesn't have to be free, but shouldn't be silly-expensive
I host my own on an old server in the basement. It's the only dependable means I know of.
I host my own on an old server in the basement. It's the only dependable means I know of.
+1. Add some gallery software (something like ZenPhoto (http://www.zenphoto.org/news/features/) or jAlbum (https://jalbum.net/en/), which I've investigated but chose not to use*) and you've got what you want. Your (c) is going to knock most commercial sites (SmugMug, flickr, etc.) out of the water, especially if "free" is particularly appealing.
* I had looked at gallery software early on for my business but figured that 1) no prospective customer would want to page through galleries of projects; and 2) I didn't want to put that much time into managing that Web-site content. A few well-chosen portfolio images illustrated my work just as well.
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