The first consumer-priced, one-megapixel digital cameras hit the streets just over 10 years ago, and today digital cameras are everywhere—hell, one megapixel is tiny for even our cell phone cameras. As a result, we snap picture after picture without giving a thought to the price of film, which means you've got hundreds of pictures to share with friends and family. On Tuesday we asked you to
tell us your favorite photo sharing web site, and today we're back with the five most popular answers. Hit the jump for the low-down on the five best
photo sharing tools the web has to offer, then cast your vote for the site you like best.
SmugMug
SmugMug is a premium photo sharing web site with an emphasis on professional photography. That's not to say that the site's not also perfect for the weekend photographer, as its attractive and user-friendly interface is tempting for any level of photog. The biggest hurdle for new SmugMug users is that the site has no free account (though there is a 14-day free trial), and the minimum price for an account is $40/year. However, SmugMug users—many of whom are former Flickr die-hards (there's even an import tool called
Smugglr)—seem very pleased with their choice.
Personal Web Site
If you're willing to roll up your sleeves and you've got some hosted web space, you can host your
digital photos on your own web site. Granted, it may seem like a lot more work compared to the other options, but hosting your photos on a personal site means you've got total control, and some free, open-source options for rolling your own hosting solution are often as robust on features as their counterparts. If that sounds appealing, we've already walked you through
how to set up the free Gallery2 (pictured above) on your hosted web server. You may also want to check out
Jalbum (pictured at the top of this article).
Flickr
Flickr was originally conceived in 2002 as a video game-screenshot sharing web site, but it quickly blossomed into a full-fledged photo sharing site with a bustling community. The now Yahoo-owned site offers free accounts with limitations placed on photo uploads and other features, while the $25/year Pro account promises unlimited uploads, storage, and sets. Flickr, like many of the others, also
recently added video sharing to their repertoire.
Picasa Web Albums
Picasa Web Albums are the online counterpart to Google's popular, Windows- and Linux-only desktop photo organization software,
Picasa. Despite its late entry to the photo sharing game in
mid-2006, Picasa Web Album's seamless integration with Picasa and Google accounts quickly gained the service a large following. A free account with Picasa Web Albums gives you 1GB of free storage space, and you can
buy extra storage that's shared with your Gmail account for anywhere between $20/year for 10GB to $500/year for 400GB.
Photobucket
Once upon a time,
Photobucket was a favorite among internet users looking to quickly host an image and share it online at sites like eBay and MySpace or on blogs and message boards. While that's still true, Photobucket has added several features to keep users coming back to the site for managing photo albums and videos.
Now that you've seen the best, it's time to vote for your favorite:
Honorable mention goes to social networking web site Facebook and the online artist community deviantArt.
Whether or not it made the short list, let's hear more about your favorite in the comments.
