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.
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