Hi Reader,
Here's your second issue of The Photo Sharing Tips e-letter. In this issue we look at the essential question, should I use a pay service or free service to print and share my photos?
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Photo Sharing Tip #2 – To Pay or Not To Pay, that is the question…..
Recently, there have been several photo sharing services that charge either a monthly or yearly fee to use the service. Is it worth it? Well, as we talked about in the first issue, of course it depends. Here are some of the pros and cons to using Smugmug, Our higest rated and favorite photo sharing service, versus using most of the free sites out there:
Things SmugMug offers that free sites don't:
- No ads or promotions surrounding your photos.
- Unlimited storage and traffic.
- Ability to retrieve your photos anytime.
- No requirement for your visitors to register.
- No threat of losing your photos if you don't buy prints (read the full report to learn which sites do this!)
- No reducing resolution of your photos like at free sites.
- No "free for a few photos, expensive for more" plans like Picasaweb's or Flickr.
- Ability to view big, clear photos.
- Gorgeous themes to personalize your galleries.
- Full-screen slideshows.
- Real, knowledgeable & friendly humans to answer your emails quickly.
- More safety for your photos. Pay sites rarely close; many free sites—even from Yahoo, HP, Canon and Microsoft—have closed.
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In PSR’s humble opinion, the main reason to use a paid service such as Smugmug is for the archival ability (they store all your photos online in case your computer or hard drive ever crashes) – and the ability to let our friends download full sized images. This is very useful when you want to email many large 5 megabit+ files that may be over 2 megabytes each! Ouch, that’s a quick way to clog up somebody’s email. With Smugmug, you can just send them a link to your gallery, and they can download the FULL SIZE digital files, something no other site lets you do for all your photos.
But, what about our friends at Google’s Picasa you may ask?
Well, I do like Picasa. However, they really got users at PSR upset after we started using them. Do you know why? Because they only give you 1 Gigabyte of storage for free. In today’s day and age of super large photo files, that’s just not enough. In fact, it seems to me like it’s a “first one is free, next one is $$$$” strategy that just isn’t fair. Their current prices for more storage:
Purchase extra storage for:
10GB $20/yr
40GB $75/yr
150GB $250/yr
400GB $500/yr
Now my personal Smugmug account has 11.5 gigs of photos on them, so this “Free” service form Picasa would already cost me more then Smugmug’s basic service.
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To read more details and in-depth reviews of several photo sharing services, go to:
http://www.photosharingreviews.com/reviews/
Happy Shooting!
-Aaron
