I love Flickr. Who does not?! It’s my first place for publishing my photos and it’s a stable platform for storing and publishing photos. It’s prepared to serve a photographer very well in most of their needs. I can’t say I’m a photographer but I like to keep & organize my photos and share them especially with family and friends. I tried Picasa once. But unfortunately Google killed it. Google Photos in return is a step in the right direction. However, still don’t believe Google is giving real efforts on this service.
Flickr has slow improvements progress. Correct me if I’m wrong, but their site is slow after few navigation and searches. Their Android app is almost the same. Ads on the other side is annoying. Paying subscription will remove ads from your side only. So, even if you’re a paid subscriber, viewers of your collections will still see ads unless they are paid subscribers too! Private sharing (Friends & Family) is not easy as not all my family and friends have Yahoo accounts. Additionally, those who I privately share photos with need to go to my albums page and view shared photos from there. So, I find that Flickr is more for public photos. The killer point was when I tried Windows phone. Flickr has no Windows official app. There are good alternatives though.
OneDrive
Upon my moving to Windows Phone (temporarily), I tried it with photos. They give you 30GB of storage. However, they stopped that for new users (https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/status/1760913)! The good thing here is that it’s available on your computers and phones. Microsoft is doing great job in making their apps available on many platforms. Things are easier when it comes to accessing photos and uploading/editing them. Just define the photos folder as Picture Type Folder and it’s done. The winner point for me is the sharing options: Multiple levels. You can share a folder or a photo with/without editing option. Then, you can add some of these photos into albums and share these albums with different options. For example, if I’m sharing a folder with XYZ, XYZ will have the folder listed in shared section on their OneDrive account. I then add some photos of this folder into an album and share it with ABC. ABC will have the album in shared section on their OneDrive account too. I’m assuming that XYZ and ABC have both Microsoft accounts as sharing through URL (get link) only means there is no other way to access the album but through the link. Please note that sharing albums (not folders) on OneDrive right now is view only.
Having OneDrive installed on your computer, you can edit the properties of the photo (tag, geo info, ..) on your computer and it will be updated on albums/folders. Unfortunately, this is not available in reverse. That’s, editing tag or title of a picture on OneDrive website won’t be reflected in the picture itself! Another bad thing is that viewers with links to your albums won’t be able to see the photo geo information. On other hand, you can save sorting options for folders but not for albums. This is bad too as adding new photo to an album will bring it to the bottom not on the top!
Google Photos is moving toward the same in sharing with better search of course. However, it doesn’t search photo’s meta info nor does it stable when you try to split photos folders and albums using Google Drive. And as usual, Google isn’t on Windows Phone.
| OneDrive | Google Photos |
| No Geotag in shared photos | Geotag sharing is optional |
| Geotag don’t show on Android | Geotag is on Web and on Android |
| Slower on Android | Faster on Android |
| A folder can be defined to be Picture folder | Albums can be shared with edit and upload option |
| Better tags capability | Better search capability |
| Comments system is not that good | Comments system is better |
| Storage is calculated against your quota | Storage could be unlimited with decreased quality |
| Only folders have default sorting | Album has default sorting |
| Managing photos is easier on desktop | Managing photos is painful |
For me, concentrating on sharing, OneDrive is the best. Google could follow. But if you’re a photographer that is more into public photos, Flickr is still the best.
To prevent other users from seeing ads in your photos you can try http://flickrock.com
Flickr still the way to go. OneDrive and Dropbox are file storage services
That’s true, Karin. That’s the reason I’ve mentioned that sharing options are better on OneDrive. I think that Google Photos hence could be the best someday if they did it well with Google Drive.
Amazon photos
It’s not free. But it’s also affordable
I use Amazon Photos which comes with my Prime membership. My iPhone automatically uploads to it when I connect to WIFI. I would use my iCloud, but it has a limit of 5gb unless you pay for more.
Thank you. That is the point, I guess. Getting 1TB of storage at OneDrive with my Office365 package was additional convincing reason in my case. Though, I’ve liked Amazon Photos service.
It has become impossible to know where your data is. OneDrive is in the cloud… Stick to your C: drive folders. At least that is what I do.
I 100% agree with you – especially nowadays… Thank you very much for your input
The level of infiltration is as deep as there are layers of technology. We’d be naïve to believe it’s all good.
Love your technology blog!
Again, thank you Lisa. I’m very honored and pleased by your kind words. I’m trying to write about tech in some simple way. I like your blog too.
You write from very personal experience, and it shows! Sincerity has a certain ring to it. I will catch up on some of your earlier posts. It’s been a bit crazy here in Toronto.
Thank you, Lise. The honor and pleasure are all mine. Hope you all be safe there
Oui! J’ai joublié mon nom en Français!