Several major photo sharing sites review

Yahoo recently announced that it will shut down its Yahoo Photos on September 20, a move that forces users to decide what to do with their photos. Yahoo's photo storage and sharing service has been up and running for about seven years, but it has been eclipsed by its newer counterpart, Flickr.com. But Flickr.com is also owned by Yahoo.

Now, Yahoo Photos users will have to transfer their entire uploaded album to a new site, or choose a new site to start sharing digital photos. Faced with such a daunting task, they all worry that they have made the wrong choice.

This week, I compared profiles from five popular photo-sharing sites -- Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Flickr and Photobucket. There are plenty of other sites that offer such services, such as SmugMug and Webshots, but I focused on the top five photo sharing sites that Yahoo recommends.

I already have free accounts on four of these sites, and I had no trouble signing up on the fifth. In addition to using the site, I tested each company's services on privacy policies, community sharing, editing, storage restrictions, handling dormant accounts, creating photo projects like books, and uploading images via email or phone.

The number of features offered by each company is so numerous that it can be very confusing. Two of those sites, Kodak Gallery and Snapfish, require users to buy at least once a year or your photos will be deleted (after a warning via email). Each site offers free accounts, and if customers upgrade their accounts, they charge $25 a year, except Shutterfly. Photobucket and Flickr excel at creating shared communities for continuous sharing, while Kodak Gallery, Snapfish and Shutterfly focus more on storing uploaded images. Sites that can share have storage limits, others don't.

Below, I'll list the pros and cons of each image service, along with a brief comment on the overall feel and usefulness of each site.

Kodak Gallery

(www.kodakgallery.com)

This is a full-featured photo sharing site that is also very simple to use. Its photo editing options aren't easy to use, but they're probably the best of the five. Most sites expect users to edit photos before sharing them. Earlier this year, Kodak introduced a new version of its EasyShare desktop software program with richer editing features, such as the ability to enlarge images to a full screen.

In addition to the $25 annual Gallery Premier account, users can choose a $50 annual account and receive a discount on Kodak color prints (10 cents each instead of the usual 15 cents). With a paid account, users will not only be able to download high-resolution photos, but will also get a dedicated photo sharing URL with password protection. However, the other four sites offer personal addresses for free, not just for paid accounts.

Shutterfly

(www.shutterfly.com)

Shutterfly may seem like the simplest of the big five photo sharing sites, but it's not the most attractive or user-friendly. All of its features are free. Unlike Kodak Gallery and Snapfish, Shutterfly users do not need to purchase any related products to retain an account; And users' friends can browse shared albums without logging in.

There is a downside to Shutterfly's simplicity, though. Users can't upload audio, download high-resolution photos, or send photos to websites via email or mobile devices. The other four sites offer such features either for free or through paid accounts.

Snapfish

(www.snapfish.com)

Snapfish, Hewlett-Packard Co. 's photo-sharing site, stands out for having the most restrictions. In addition to requiring users to purchase products at least once a year to retain their account, visitors who want to view your album must also log in each time; Users cannot change this setting as they would on other websites. To get around this, Snapfish is focusing on its Group Rooms, a personalized sharing site that users can browse with a specific Web address (URL) and, optionally, a password.

In my opinion, the photos on Snapfish and Shutterfly's sites are too small, but Snapfish's photo slideshores are quite large -- a plus. I wish the site itself showed bigger photos in other situations. Users can download high-resolution photos for 25 cents for the first photo and 5 cents for each additional photo.

Flickr

(www.flickr.com)

Photobucket.com

(www.photobucket.com)

Of the two community sharing sites, I prefer Flickr. The site feels cleaner, with few distractions and one fewer AD than Photobucket. For those who aren't used to "trendy" sites, Photobucket and Flickr may seem extreme. They provide functions such as labeling and use a variety of fresh terminology that is often confusing. On Flickr, common albums are replaced by "sets" and photos are assembled in "batches". Photobucket allows users to organize albums so that they can create sub-albums within an album.

Both sites don't require users to buy anything, and both allow free downloads of high-resolution photos. Instead of one-time sharing, both sites will update the photo blog constantly for users' friends to check out at any time.

With Flickr and Photobucket, users can easily post photos to blogs such as Blogger and Typepad. Photobucket also allows users to post photos to MySpace and Facebook.

On Flickr, users can search Groups to find people with similar interests. I joined a group that shared photos of tennis courts around the world. Without having to chat or leave overused messages for strangers, digital photos suddenly gave us a new way to socialize online.

Among other things, Photobucket allows users to create a Remix -- a presentation of a user's photos and audio with a storyline, music, transitions and some graphics. It only takes a few seconds to create the Remix, but the final "work" is very interesting and looks like the thing.

In addition, as you recommend is the domestic picture sharing website

ikaca

(www.ikaca.sh.cn)

ikaca allows you to: record your life at the moment with a lens, and share it with netizens around the world, feel the changes around you every minute through ikaca, you just need to wait and see what happens, not only provides free mass photo storage services, but also a network community platform for photography lovers, sharing and display at the same time, your privacy will be carefully protected!"

This is the official definition of ikaca.

Nowadays, the trend of SLR has become a fashion trend, and sns has been a hot topic in recent years, ikaca is a combination of these two, and the theme of photography community and lifestyle, bringing together a website for photography enthusiasts at home and abroad.

The main advantages of ikaca in China are free, massive, support for external links, no advertising, and a relatively positive atmosphere of the whole site. Among the several free online photo albums in China, ikaca users have more professional photography skills. Another point is that IKACA users have relatively mature photography skills, and the website management is relatively strict, and advertisements and non-photographic pictures seem to be more likely to be deleted. I think ikaca in addition to the network photo album, its function is slightly biased to the sns mode, emphasizing the "viscosity" between users.

ikaca has strong hardware guarantee, technical support, good browsing experience and user interface, and its application and maintenance have almost no technical threshold for users. ikaca emphasizes the concept of sharing and community, and has the function of "drawing friends" or communicating with each other and expanding social networks.

The advantage of ikaca is that it emphasizes the direct "viscosity" of the user, which can drive the enthusiasm of the photographer. In addition, the photos are not watermarked and support the external chain. The disadvantage is that when visiting the photos, there is no page turning function, and the design is not humanized, and there is no image editing function like flickr.

After testing these sites, I decided that it would be ideal to combine some of the great features of all of them together to recreate a great photo sharing site. In fact, all of these sites have shortcomings. However, Kodak Gallery and its EasyShare software program do a good job of combining editing and sharing. Flickr, my favorite photo community site, and Photobucket offer fresh ways to share digital photos, while ikaca offers photo sharing for the purpose of "connecting people with photos."