Image Hosting??!!

[MPWR]

So I logged into my ImageShack account for the first time in years, to find a statement saying "You have 600+ images hosted. You are allowed 500. Older images will be erased on July 1st. Upgrade to premium to avoid this". Of course I already use premium in the M3, but friggen' ImageShack doesn't seem to care. And nearly all the images I have on ImageShack are for posts on this forum.

Several members recently have suffered the unpleasant smackdown of Photobucket's 30 day bandwidth limit. Again, "upgrade to premium" to avoid this, and again they don't seem to mean petrol (or beer).

For a number of years, I've assumed both of these sights were reliable, durable places to host images. Now it seems they are not- unless I am willing to give them monthly donations out of my gas and beer money- which I am not!

It has always been assumed that AF (especially the modeling section) should remain a stable, long term library of building greatness. This of course requires threads to last (and they do), but it equally requires the images in those threads to remain viewable. A lot of images from the early days of the forum are already gone, and it would be a real shame to loose more. So I'm looking to migrate some images over from ImageShack, and I can't say I trust Photobucket very much either now.

Does anyone have a favorite image hosting service that you would recommend for AF users? Some criteria we're obviously looking for:

-Reliable: Large, stable, durable, will (hopefully) be around for at least 10 years

-No Limits: no blackouts for bandwidth, or arbitrary image number caps. Ideally, a service that is not trying to sell 'premium' memberships.

-No Thumbnails!!: Thumbnails suck, and posts with thumbnails suck.

Seems like this might be becoming a big ask of a hosting service. Obviously the hosting service needs to be able to make ends meet. But I suspect that many member of the forums here are not going to be terribly happy to pay $100 a year or more to some other website just to use AF in the ways we've been accustomed to for years now.

Thoughts?

[Hemi Killer]

Thats crossing the line, trying to take your beer money.

What about uploading the pictures to the af site. You can limit the size. At 800x600 you can still see the details

[jano11]

I use Flickr, they have a free and a pro version.
The free account is limited to upload 300MB worth of photos each calendar month. Might not be much but I do not remember ever uploading so many photos in one month.
Info here:
http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#65

[ZoomZoomMX-5]

Here's the problem; hosting originals takes more and more space now, as many people are uploading high-res photos from their digicams. I've used Fotki, and even they are forced to take drastic measures to stay afloat; my current albums of over 17K images are "only" 6.7 gigs, and what they want for me to have access to originals (that are larger than the compressed viewing size) amounts to only about 40 cents more per month. I've resized all my model shots before uploading, but car show photos are not because it is too much work to resize all of them vs. just uploading.

If you want free or low-cost, you're not going to get much. I hate Photobucket w/a passion, Flickr and Smugmug are decent, I will try something new in the fear that Fotki might go away, which would suck, because it is very user-friendly, easy to upload, some great options for viewing albums.

[SchuberT]

I use imgur for a lot of my public photosharing. If you create an account, you can keep track of your photos and organize them into albums.

Google's Picasa is good, too, but I don't know how they handle hotlinking.

[petesy]

Originally Posted by ZoomZoomMX-5

Here's the problem; hosting originals takes more and more space now, as many people are uploading high-res photos from their digicams. I've used Fotki, and even they are forced to take drastic measures to stay afloat; my current albums of over 17K images are "only" 6.7 gigs, and what they want for me to have access to originals (that are larger than the compressed viewing size) amounts to only about 40 cents more per month. I've resized all my model shots before uploading, but car show photos are not because it is too much work to resize all of them vs. just uploading.

Can you just let Fotki resize it? From what I understand if you don't pay extra, they'll delete the original size photos but keep the auto resized ones.

I prefer Fotki myself. But then I haven't even hit the 3000 MB free account limit yet.

[ZoomZoomMX-5]

Originally Posted by petesy

Can you just let Fotki resize it? From what I understand if you don't pay extra, they'll delete the original size photos but keep the auto resized ones.

I prefer Fotki myself. But then I haven't even hit the 3000 MB free account limit yet.

I let Fotki resize photos when I've taken a ton of pictures at a car show or model show. If the images are not resized beforehand, it can take a long time to upload them. I resize model photos because they're taken at high resolution and it is easy to resize when I crop the images.

[ianc911]

I've been using Slickpic.com, which has a free 'Lite' account:

Unlimited photo storage at 1600 x 1200
Max upload image size - 10 MB

I don't see any mention of bandwidth limits, and they do allow direct linking to pics. Here are account type details:

http://www.slickpic.com/page/features

ianc

[MidMazar]

Thats aweful news. I use mainly photobucket and have no problems but thats due to not many pics being uploaded. I might have to give flickr a try.

[MPWR]

Originally Posted by Hemi Killer

Thats crossing the line, trying to take your beer money.

Yeah I know, right? Total bastards, I tell you!

Originally Posted by ZoomZoomMX-5

Here's the problem; hosting originals takes more and more space now, as many people are uploading high-res photos from their digicams.

Yeah that really is the problem- using 8+ megapixel cams, when 3 would be entirely adequate.

Originally Posted by ZoomZoomMX-5

If you want free or low-cost, you're not going to get much.

That's certainly truth in advertising. But then, I don't really need much. It's not like I'm uploading gigapixel images of last nights dinner and my new shoes everyday for some social site.

Most of my builds have about 5MB of images- I doubt I've done one with 10MB. 500MB is really all I can imagine ever using.

But really it's not just my stuff that I want to keep- it's everything here.

[360spider]

Andy, I faced the same problem with photobucket lately. Decided that $20 (or even less if you pay upfront, I believe) per year is not that much after all. Signed up for premium and think its worth it to avoid all the hassle. The hassle is not opening up new account or setting up, the hassle is there are soooo many threads that use the images, and moving them, or switching to different provider could be just catastrophic.