Flickr or Google+

SiHH · 3 Dec 2011 at 15:39

At the moment I store my pics on my laptop and an external drive as backup. Am thinking I want a FREE solution to back up some of them online as a 3rd option.

Flickr has been around for yonks and is good but Google+ has some nice features.

What do you guys use?

Scam · 3 Dec 2011 at 16:32

I didn't think Flickr's free account really has much to offer in the way of backing up originals? That said I'm not sure how well Flickr Pro works? Can anyone shed any light on it? What does Google+ offer? I'm also interested in setting up some online vault of my pics (although don't mind paying a bit).

/watches thread with interest

asim18 · 3 Dec 2011 at 19:42

If you don't mind paying a bit then web hosting is the way to go! Prices start from about £15 per year depending on how much storage you need.

I assume sites like Flickr will compress your photos to save bandwidth. You don't get that with your own personal web hosting, you can upload whatever you like; JPGs, RAWs, Zip files, anything.

Vidahost and Tsohost are often recommended.

Amp34 · 3 Dec 2011 at 21:04

If it's just for backing up original files then why not use something like skydrive?

http://www.windowslive.co.uk/skydrive

You should be able to sync it with a folder as well so auto backup.

Clown · 3 Dec 2011 at 21:37

asim18 said:
If you don't mind paying a bit then web hosting is the way to go! Prices start from about £15 per year depending on how much storage you need.

I assume sites like Flickr will compress your photos to save bandwidth. You don't get that with your own personal web hosting, you can upload whatever you like; JPGs, RAWs, Zip files, anything.

Vidahost and Tsohost are often recommended.

Do you know of any software/scripts that will resize your images for you, spit out HTML and PHPBB code, give you a slideshow, track stats with options for the social networking side of the internet?

asim18 · 3 Dec 2011 at 22:57

Clown said:
Do you know of any software/scripts that will resize your images for you, spit out HTML and PHPBB code, give you a slideshow, track stats with options for the social networking side of the internet?

Hmm... Pixelpost is a pretty good photography website script. Does most of what you said.

I used to use it, though I gave it up ages ago in favour of a completely bespoke/custom website which I manually update myself.

Clown · 3 Dec 2011 at 23:24

I don't have the skills to do my own backend (oo-er). If I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to steal codes!

Nexus · 3 Dec 2011 at 23:27

asim18 said:
I assume sites like Flickr will compress your photos to save bandwidth. You don't get that with your own personal web hosting, you can upload whatever you like; JPGs, RAWs, Zip files, anything.

Flickr allows a Pro user to upload full resolution pictures from which it then generates the versions displayed in your Photostream. Regardless of what sizes you make available for people to view, your full originals will be saved on their servers so only you can download them again, the only caveat is they must be Jpegs.

Actually came in handy for me recently when I had a hard drive failure and I'd not made a backup yet of the day's work, but all the images I'd processed were on Flickr. So I was able to just download them and reimport them into my library.

I have personal hosting as well, but part of me trusts Yahoo's Flickr servers to be more reliable than a small web hosting company if it goes **** up.

Devrij · 4 Dec 2011 at 09:15

Not sure about its value as a backup, but G+ is definitely a great site for photographers and keeps exif data on your pics etc.

I may have to look into this web space lark, wouldn't mind a bit of off site backup action.

K.C. Leblanc · 4 Dec 2011 at 09:32

You could also consider something like Mozy or Crashplan.

BinnsY · 4 Dec 2011 at 10:39

I use picasaweb for this. 20GB of online storage only costs me about £3 a year or you can get 80GB for about £12.

There are a few settings you have to check in Picasa, but you can upload all your photos in origional quality with no compression and you get to choose whether or not the albums are public, limitied, or completley private. As I use Picasa for keeping track of my photos in Windows anyuway, it makes it increadibly easy to keep them all backed up.

Scam · 5 Dec 2011 at 18:55

Nexus said:
Flickr allows a Pro user to upload full resolution pictures from which it then generates the versions displayed in your Photostream. Regardless of what sizes you make available for people to view, your full originals will be saved on their servers so only you can download them again, the only caveat is they must be Jpegs.

I'm almost set on getting Flickr Pro purely for showcasing all my photos (I just find it easier and I'm not a 'pro' so don't need my own website!) so this would be great for me. But, I always upload watermarked photos now. So if I uploaded non-watermarked pics (full size) then everyone would see those. And if I uploaded full-size watermarked ones then I wouldn't have the backup of 'clean' photos for safe-keeping. Hmn..

Devrij said:
Not sure about its value as a backup, but G+ is definitely a great site for photographers and keeps exif data on your pics etc.

I'm confused. G+ as in the new social FB clone? :confused:

K.C. Leblanc said:
You could also consider something like Mozy or Crashplan.

Have you used either of these? I was looking into Amazon for cloud storage but I can't for the life of me figure out how much it'd end up costing!