Well, last week was about Flickr and I decided that since I already have Yahoo! photos, photobucket, ringo, and kodak that I'll do a comparison of sorts.
First off, I know that PMCLC seems to think Flickr is best thing since sliced bread, but really I wasn't impressed with it. Now if I started with Flickr when it first came out, yes I would have been, but I found others more adaptable to what I want. One thing I learned a long time ago, when you're gonna say something negative, always say the negative first, that way you end on a positive note, so what I'm gonna do right now is list all the negative things about the various sites.
Flickr:
- Photos are toooooo small. It claims you can adjust the size, but every time I tried, it did not change one iota! Compare this photo at Ringo: Compare this photo at Ringo with the exact same one at Flickr. It is the exact same photo, upload first at Ringo, then the same file uploaded to Flickr. Ridiculous!
- Well, this is kinda both: positive: they have groups, negative: even if you group the photos into specific albums, the display page shows all the photos, so what the heck is the point of grouping? Here, take a look and see for yourself: my flickr album. I was going to include a link to my photobucket, which I really like, BUT I have some photos that are other folks and they may not like for me to share them with the world (a private wedding, retirement parties, etc) and I'll be commenting on that as a negative in a moment. Yahoo! photos does it the best.
- If you want to be able to share your photos, you have to make ALL of the public. You cannot "hide" any to keep them private. You do have an option to share each individual private album, but you have to also share your password in order to do so! Awful!!! It also appears that you can only share the album on mysapce. It could be that if you have an account you pay for, you might have more options, but a freebie account is very limited as far as that goes.
- You can't add a new album! If you upload pictures and then later decide you want to create an album for that type of picture, you have to re-upload them into that album! Stupid! Maybe there is a tool to move them, but if there is, I haven't found it yet.
- I really don't have any complaints here, but then again, I don't use them much.
- No complaints here really.
Now for the positives! Yeah!!
Flickr:
- Comments section for photos is a bit longer than the other programs
- more bells and whistles, although I haven't used them
- pretty straightfoward and easy to get around
- This is one of my favorites. The ONLY problem I have with this is when you upload photos, you have to make sure you say what album you want it uploaded to, but even if you don't (which I usually forget), you can very easily move them to the correct album. You can move individual photos or as a batch.
- Everything is viewed in albums and there are subalbums as well. So you can have an album of your parents and subalbum by date! I like that option, even though I haven't used it yet.
- Ringo is a pretty good one as well. It's more of a social networking via photos, so if that's what you're looking for, that's a good place for it.
- What I really like about Kodak is you can purchase prints right from the site. (and they're having a sale right now, $0.10 a print instead of $0.15, just FYI, not sure how long it will last).
- Not only can you buy photos for the same price as at Kodak for the tradition 3x5", but they are cheaper the bigger size you get. You can also buy gift items like mugs and stuff with the photos on them, even puzzles, luggage tags, and ceramic tiles! Also, you can choose to have the photos sent to you (so you pay shipping), or for a slightly higher price, but not shipping, you can pick them up at participating Target stores. Hmmm, I'm starting to sound like a peddler for Yahoo! Photos! LOL I swear I'm not!!! :o)
