Photos

I still haven't found a good system for posting photos online. I occasionally post them inline in the blog, but it's a bit of a pain to get them there. I sometimes use iPhoto's export-to-web feature to put up a set of photos for a small group of people (like the people who are in the photos), but the layout and UI aren't very appealing.

I've heard good things about Flickr, but haven't tried it yet—and I'm not sure I like the focus on a stream of photos or the ad-hoc categorization/labeling system. (I still need to work out a good set of metadata and a good categorization system for use with iPhoto. The desktop photo software Kam uses, iView MediaPro, apparently allows you to create your own metadata tags, a more comprehensive system than iPhoto's, but I think iPhoto does enough of what I want that I'm going to stick with it for now.)

I keep meaning to install Gallery on my site and try it out, but haven't done so yet. Kam likes smugmug (which I think she was introduced to by Ling); I like it in general, but I'm not quite convinced it's exactly what I'm looking for. I suppose I should try it. (See an earlier entry for links to some of my favorites of Kam's photos that are online there.)

Here are some of the features I want, in no particular order:

  • Easy to use.
  • Produces attractive web pages.
  • Fast/easy to upload photos to it.
  • Some kind of categorization system.
  • A way to password-protect a group of photos, so I can show photos to their subjects before making them public.
  • Ideally, a way to unprotect one photo at a time from a protected group, so as I get permissions I can easily make them public.
  • Low-cost or free.
  • Can display one or more small images at a time, with links to larger images, and ideally links to full-resolution images. Even better, a way for the visitor to click checkboxes next to a set of thumbnails and batch-download a set of medium- or full-resolution versions all at once.
  • In the really ideal world, it would be hosted in my own kith.org account rather than at a hosting service. (Though there are advantages to hosting services, and I'm not entirely opposed to using one.)
  • No obtrusive ads.

What do y'all use?

2 Responses to “Photos”

  1. SarahP

    Hmph. I’m still waiting for somebody to come along and comment, because I want to know about posting pictures, too.

    reply
  2. Thida

    We use gallery and love it. It has all the features you listed, except batch-download. You can batch upload.

    reply

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