Let's share some photos. How do we do it?
May 30, 2013 10:31 AM Subscribe
What is the best service for a group of people to share photos of the same event?
I upload my wife's photos to my flickr account and we find it really neat to see different perspectives of the same events. I went to a friend's wedding over the weekend and of course everyone was taking pictures with their cameras and phones, some of which started showing up on Facebook over the week, but all quite piecemeal. What would be the best way to create a "shared" account or gallery so that all attendees could easily upload photos?
Some features that would be good:
Ability to control the privacy of some/all of the photos (ie viewable to everyone, all members of the group, people in the photo, the person taking the photo, etc)
Facial recognition so that you could tag people and then it would auto suggest them in the other photos (flickr seems to only be able to tag others with flickr accounts). I think facebook does this.
Easy to set up for the users. Something like being able to take a photo of a 3d bar code and automatically log in with your smartphone or being able to log in with an existing account such as google, facebook or twitter.
Ability to get copies of the photos in high/original resolution/format. If someone uploads RAW files from their camera others would be able to download those. This could be controlled by permissions to limit access if people want to keep control of their RAW files.
Can hook up to your apple photostream or google+ instant uploads so that pictures can be uploaded as they are taken.
While I figure that any photo sharing site would be able to get the job done more or less, in your experience which one does it the best?
I upload my wife's photos to my flickr account and we find it really neat to see different perspectives of the same events. I went to a friend's wedding over the weekend and of course everyone was taking pictures with their cameras and phones, some of which started showing up on Facebook over the week, but all quite piecemeal. What would be the best way to create a "shared" account or gallery so that all attendees could easily upload photos?
Some features that would be good:
Ability to control the privacy of some/all of the photos (ie viewable to everyone, all members of the group, people in the photo, the person taking the photo, etc)
Facial recognition so that you could tag people and then it would auto suggest them in the other photos (flickr seems to only be able to tag others with flickr accounts). I think facebook does this.
Easy to set up for the users. Something like being able to take a photo of a 3d bar code and automatically log in with your smartphone or being able to log in with an existing account such as google, facebook or twitter.
Ability to get copies of the photos in high/original resolution/format. If someone uploads RAW files from their camera others would be able to download those. This could be controlled by permissions to limit access if people want to keep control of their RAW files.
Can hook up to your apple photostream or google+ instant uploads so that pictures can be uploaded as they are taken.
While I figure that any photo sharing site would be able to get the job done more or less, in your experience which one does it the best?
Although, Flickr won't let you upload RAW files as far as I know.
posted by capricorn at 10:36 AM on May 30, 2013
posted by capricorn at 10:36 AM on May 30, 2013
the problem isn't which service you use, I think almost any of them will do what you want. It's organizing people ahead of time with clear instructions on how to share collaboratively with whatever system you use.
I would have some instructions printed out on how to add photos to the shared gallery and pass them out to people at the wedding.
You could also use a dropbox folder as a collection point and then batch upload them into whatever service you want for sharing/tagging etc.
posted by j03 at 10:46 AM on May 30, 2013
I would have some instructions printed out on how to add photos to the shared gallery and pass them out to people at the wedding.
You could also use a dropbox folder as a collection point and then batch upload them into whatever service you want for sharing/tagging etc.
posted by j03 at 10:46 AM on May 30, 2013
I find Flickr complicated to use (galleries, albums, blah blah blah - ugh). I much prefer Dropbox. In Dropbox you can create folders, put selected photos in them, share the folder URL, and then it will be in a slideshow format for your friend/family to view. Extra bonus: you can set up an iPhone to automatically upload photos to Dropbox (instead of iCloud).
posted by Dansaman at 11:07 AM on May 30, 2013
posted by Dansaman at 11:07 AM on May 30, 2013
I don't think this has all the features you're looking for but Pixt has been interesting to me for a while now.
posted by FlamingBore at 11:17 AM on May 30, 2013
posted by FlamingBore at 11:17 AM on May 30, 2013
You quickly run into problems with Dropbox if you're dealing with a lot of image files. Shared folders eat up space from all participants in the shared folders. So if a shared folder is 20 GB, and your Dropbox only has a capacity of 5 GB, you're only seeing that 5 GB. Moreover, the people trying to add things to the folder won't be able to until the folder shrinks to a size below their individual Dropbox capacities.
It's a huge pain to deal with RAW files on Dropbox because they eat up so much more space than even high-quality JPGs.
Flickr is a decent option (1 terabyte of space with permissions, groups, tagging, and high-quality photos).
You could also set up card-reading stations at exits to copy the contents of people's SD cards before they left so you could upload the ginormous load of photos to the image sharing service of your choice. Really, this would just consist of a laptop, external hard drive(s), and a power adapter. The con here is that the people who shoot in RAW won't be able to adjust their photos before you see them, and that you'll get stuck fixing things that need fixing.
Alternatively, if cost wasn't an option, it would be really easy to just give the people with digital cameras Eye-Fi cards during the event so the pictures all end up in one central location in real time. Eye-Fis are supposed to be slow with larger image files (such as RAW), though.
posted by topoisomerase at 7:25 PM on May 30, 2013
It's a huge pain to deal with RAW files on Dropbox because they eat up so much more space than even high-quality JPGs.
Flickr is a decent option (1 terabyte of space with permissions, groups, tagging, and high-quality photos).
You could also set up card-reading stations at exits to copy the contents of people's SD cards before they left so you could upload the ginormous load of photos to the image sharing service of your choice. Really, this would just consist of a laptop, external hard drive(s), and a power adapter. The con here is that the people who shoot in RAW won't be able to adjust their photos before you see them, and that you'll get stuck fixing things that need fixing.
Alternatively, if cost wasn't an option, it would be really easy to just give the people with digital cameras Eye-Fi cards during the event so the pictures all end up in one central location in real time. Eye-Fis are supposed to be slow with larger image files (such as RAW), though.
posted by topoisomerase at 7:25 PM on May 30, 2013
I'm going to suggest that the fine-grained permission controls you've specified are pretty much a non-starter. People don't like messing with that stuff, in part because it is easy to screw up and generally because it ends up being more trouble than it is worth. Facebook has tried to finesse the issue, but it still isn't used that much, still has problems, and only gets used at all because so many people use facebook.
posted by Good Brain at 11:12 PM on May 30, 2013
posted by Good Brain at 11:12 PM on May 30, 2013
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This thread is closed to new comments.
-Privacy controls
-Easy account creation (Flickr uses your yahoo or google account)
-High resolution copies, controlled by permissions
posted by capricorn at 10:35 AM on May 30, 2013