Best file way for 10 people to share thousands of photos?

January 9, 2025 8:55 AM

I need to collect and share 10 people's photos from a trip. It's about 3000 shots, taken on iPhones, Google phones, and DSLR cameras. We want each person to create a folder, upload all their photos, and then everyone can look through all the folders and download the images they want to keep.

Ideally only one person (me) needs to pay for a solution that will serve all of us, with a total cost of, say $50 max.
If it's helpful, we can all share the same login and throwaway password since we're all family.
The photos do not need to live online forever, so I was thinking of paying for a file-sharing service for just one month, and then deleting it after. Is that the best way?

posted by vanilla.extract to Technology (5 answers total)

We did this recently for collecting family photos from a wedding.

What worked well was setting up a Google Drive with folders for each person, and then everyone can see all the photos and download the ones they want. You can share links which allow people to view and upload photos — don't share the account password.

Google Drive has web access and apps and is accessible from any phone or tablet or desktop that anyone might reasonably be using. I think Google is slightly easier than iCloud for non-Mac people to work with.

You probably already have a Google account with a storage budget, but you might want to use a dedicated Google account for this, which would come with 15GB of storage for free. At 5MB per picture, that fits 3,000 shots. If you have more pics or a higher average file size, you can can upgrade storage level to 100GB for $1.99 per month with Google One.
posted by Klipspringer at 9:08 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

Google Photos, shared album.
posted by notjustthefish at 9:11 AM on January 9 [4 favorites]

The one problem with Google Drive is that you can't view the photos in Google Photos unless you upload them to it. It used to have automatic mirroring but they got rid of that a few years ago. You can still view the photos in Google Drive but it'll just be as square thumbnails.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:13 PM on January 9

I've done this with dropbox, but I'll be honest that it worked better for the folks who were a bit more tech savy to be able to view and save them. The idea of photos as files seemed a bit confusing for folks who had less familiarity with computer files systems as a concept. I think there might even be a free trial for a month, so it'd be a free thing to try at the very least.
posted by past unusual at 12:37 PM on January 9

Seconding a shared Google Photos album.
posted by Jairus at 3:36 PM on January 9