Looking for a photo-sharing system

July 3rd, 2006Internet, Photography, Work 38 Comments

I’m looking for the simplest possible way to upload, organize, and share my photos. I’ve tried Gallery2 and it’s OK, but I’m wondering if there’s something better out there. I’ve looked at both Flickr and Smugmug, but their UI and visual design just annoy me enough that I’m not really interested in using them.

General requirements: bulk upload from a Mac (ideally with iPhoto integration), must be Firefox friendly, the less Flash the better, autogeneration of resized photos and customizable thumbnail sizes, no upload limit (either per picture or total), reasonable bandwidth limits are OK, pay-for-service is OK, customizable themes would be ideal, proven reliable service would be nice, solid customer service track record would also be good.

I get the feeling I’m going to just stick with Gallery2.

38 Responses to “Looking for a photo-sharing system”

  1. Jesse Andrews Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 12:50 am

    I’ve been looking for the same thing, although I was going to find one with a good API that I could then write an extension for flock that would use our uploader. (my personal goal is to have connect to at least 1″gpl” service for each web service we talk with).

    unfortunately I’ve not found anything else in my research, but will let you know if I find anything.

    regarding pay services I was debating putting together something based on amazon s3… it can be fast and cheap.

  2. Rafael Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 1:46 am

    I’m using Flickr, w/ the unofficial Flickr uploader tool for Mac OS X, and then FAlbum plugin for WordPress. Flickr’s been improved a bunch lately and all the other stuff around it (all the unofficial stuff) makes it more palatable.

  3. Jesse Andrews Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 1:50 am

    I’ve been looking for the same thing, although I was going to find one with a good API that I could then write an extension for flock that would use our uploader. (my personal goal is to have connect to at least 1″gpl” service for each web service we talk with).

    unfortunately I’ve not found anything else in my research, but will let you know if I find anything.

    regarding pay services I was debating putting together something based on amazon s3… it can be fast and cheap.

  4. Andrew Smith Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 2:29 am

    I ended up opting for Gallery2 too; I wasn’t really happy handing over my photos to a third party like Flickr.

    Gallery2 was fairly straightforward to install for a technical person and the UI is passable. What I really want is a solution to mass file upload from within a browser, something I think the WHATWG folks should address.

  5. Andrew Smith Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 2:40 am

    Okay, so multiple file upload is covered in Web Forms 2. I’ll shut up now.

  6. Rafael Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 2:46 am

    I’m using Flickr, w/ the unofficial Flickr uploader tool for Mac OS X, and then FAlbum plugin for WordPress. Flickr’s been improved a bunch lately and all the other stuff around it (all the unofficial stuff) makes it more palatable.

  7. Andrew Smith Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 3:29 am

    I ended up opting for Gallery2 too; I wasn’t really happy handing over my photos to a third party like Flickr.

    Gallery2 was fairly straightforward to install for a technical person and the UI is passable. What I really want is a solution to mass file upload from within a browser, something I think the WHATWG folks should address.

  8. Andrew Smith Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 3:40 am

    Okay, so multiple file upload is covered in Web Forms 2. I’ll shut up now.

  9. Martijn Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 3:56 am

    Maybe you would like http://www.zenphoto.org. Bulk upload by .zip files.

  10. pd Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 4:22 am

    http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php

  11. Martijn Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 4:56 am

    Maybe you would like http://www.zenphoto.org. Bulk upload by .zip files.

  12. Kiddo Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 5:20 am

    Hey, try http://www.zenphoto.org

    It’s a PHP gallery in AJAX. I love it, found it while I was looking for something “helluva lighter and easier to use than Gallery”. You can simply upload photos in a folder and off you go, gallery created.

  13. pd Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 5:22 am

    http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php

  14. jake Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 6:16 am

    picasa now has a web component that’s in beta w/integration to the picasa client. I don’t know if there’s Mac support yet, but its pretty stratighforward and sports the usual google-ish minimalist but effective UI

  15. Kiddo Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 6:20 am

    Hey, try http://www.zenphoto.org

    It’s a PHP gallery in AJAX. I love it, found it while I was looking for something “helluva lighter and easier to use than Gallery”. You can simply upload photos in a folder and off you go, gallery created.

  16. jake Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 7:16 am

    picasa now has a web component that’s in beta w/integration to the picasa client. I don’t know if there’s Mac support yet, but its pretty stratighforward and sports the usual google-ish minimalist but effective UI

  17. Tyrone Gomez Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 7:30 am

    Try 23. http://www.23hq.com. It’s a lot like flickr BUT the UI is not as annoying.

  18. Ludovic Hirlimann Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 7:56 am

    take a look at zoto.com.

  19. Tyrone Gomez Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 8:30 am

    Try 23. http://www.23hq.com. It’s a lot like flickr BUT the UI is not as annoying.

  20. Ludovic Hirlimann Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 8:56 am

    take a look at zoto.com.

  21. Eric Shepherd Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 9:21 am

    I use Realmac Software’s RapidWeaver to do my daughter’s web site, including a large number of photo gallery pages (one for each month). It lets you create a page that will automatically contain all the photos from a given iPhoto album, with customizable thumbnail and photo sizes, imports the comments from iPhoto, and so forth.

    http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

  22. Eric Shepherd Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 10:21 am

    I use Realmac Software’s RapidWeaver to do my daughter’s web site, including a large number of photo gallery pages (one for each month). It lets you create a page that will automatically contain all the photos from a given iPhoto album, with customizable thumbnail and photo sizes, imports the comments from iPhoto, and so forth.

    http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

  23. greggles Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    I think I was the one commenter way back when that suggested Gallery/Gallery2 and while I still like them I think that the Drupal photo album is a better way to go. The drawback of Gallery is that it is only a Gallery. Drupal you can have a relatively full featured gallery that is themable, but you also get a blog and comments and forums and…whatever you want (but only if you want/enable it). Using the Image Pub module (http://drupal.org/node/63154 ) there is support for the Gallery Remote API which allows you to use Gallery Remote (java mass uploading tool) among others including the iPhotoToGallery tool.

  24. greggles Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    I think I was the one commenter way back when that suggested Gallery/Gallery2 and while I still like them I think that the Drupal photo album is a better way to go. The drawback of Gallery is that it is only a Gallery. Drupal you can have a relatively full featured gallery that is themable, but you also get a blog and comments and forums and…whatever you want (but only if you want/enable it). Using the Image Pub module (http://drupal.org/node/63154 ) there is support for the Gallery Remote API which allows you to use Gallery Remote (java mass uploading tool) among others including the iPhotoToGallery tool.

  25. Dan Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 6:30 pm

    http://www.tabblo.com/studio/

  26. Dan Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 7:30 pm

    http://www.tabblo.com/studio/

  27. dosage Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 8:38 pm

    http://bubbleshare.com/upload

    Try this? You don’t need to sign up to use it. The bulk uploader for firefox uses flash 8 however but it has an iphoto plugin.

    http://bubbleshare.com/tools/

  28. dosage Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 9:38 pm

    http://bubbleshare.com/upload

    Try this? You don’t need to sign up to use it. The bulk uploader for firefox uses flash 8 however but it has an iphoto plugin.

    http://bubbleshare.com/tools/

  29. William Says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 12:35 am

    I’ve enjoyed using Picasa Web beta. You use the Google Picasa software to edit photos. You can also upload manually. It comes with 250mb of space you can upgrade to 6GB for $25 a year. It has RSS feeds and the whole shebang.

    http://picasaweb.google.com/

  30. William Says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 1:35 am

    I’ve enjoyed using Picasa Web beta. You use the Google Picasa software to edit photos. You can also upload manually. It comes with 250mb of space you can upgrade to 6GB for $25 a year. It has RSS feeds and the whole shebang.

    http://picasaweb.google.com/

  31. Rafael Says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 6:43 pm

    Can you let us know what you decide to use w/ a follow-up post?

  32. Rafael Says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 7:43 pm

    Can you let us know what you decide to use w/ a follow-up post?

  33. dria Says:
    July 6th, 2006 at 12:04 am

    Heh, sure. When I have something set up that I like and plan to keep, I’ll post a note :)

    Zenphoto looks pretty cool, but I really haven’t had much time to look into this more. Maybe over the weekend.

  34. dria Says:
    July 6th, 2006 at 1:04 am

    Heh, sure. When I have something set up that I like and plan to keep, I’ll post a note :)

    Zenphoto looks pretty cool, but I really haven’t had much time to look into this more. Maybe over the weekend.

  35. Rob Hutten Says:
    July 6th, 2006 at 8:41 pm

    Hey Deb,

    I like flikr fine for what it is. I mostly use a crappy eight-year-old homegrown ksh/ImageMagick hack that cranks out perfectly functional-if-unadorned pre-css html.

    I’m either lame or way oldschool. It’s a fine line.

  36. Rob Hutten Says:
    July 6th, 2006 at 9:41 pm

    Hey Deb,

    I like flikr fine for what it is. I mostly use a crappy eight-year-old homegrown ksh/ImageMagick hack that cranks out perfectly functional-if-unadorned pre-css html.

    I’m either lame or way oldschool. It’s a fine line.

  37. Shelby Noble Says:
    June 14th, 2007 at 4:22 am

    This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”

  38. Shelby Noble Says:
    June 14th, 2007 at 5:22 am

    This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”

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