Free or Cheap Image hosting

[fishfreek]

I know alot of you guys are using imageshack for your photo hosting needs but I wanted to post a message here for my buds on Jabbasworld. I am launching a new image hosing site. Feel free to give it a spin. If you like it then please use it and tell others. If you dont like it then you can just go find someone elses bandwidth and disk space to use up. :lol:

http://www.photolocker.net

[TT]

Nice and clean job you did there dude.

I admit the auto resize thing that will bring down any pic to 800x600 (if bigger), doesn't really do it for me, but it's a hell of a good autoresize, never saw such a good quality one. And I see you can also resize the pic to any given smaller size afterward.

The look is nice and easy on the eyes.

The multiple upload thing is also pretty usefull, even just two at a time can save some time ;)

BTW, I am a stats freak and to be able to see the b/w used by every pic is damn cool

I hope it will pick up and one day you will have to face problems like imageshack has, with ppl trying to upload 13'000 pics on their servers :P

[ARMAN]

/\/\/\ :lol:

Nice work fishfreek :D

[mv]

Isn't there going to be a special offer for JW members ? The premium account for free ? :P :mrgreen:

[DR.GONZO]

link does not work

now it works Looks Nice.

[Stikz]

Thanks for the link fishfreek. Just signed up. Also, pretty decent job on the setup.

[fishfreek]

One feature I think is so awsome is the gallery feature. Below is a link to a gallery I just setup.

http://www.photolocker.net/gallery.php?u=fishfreek&g=March-05---80Gal-Reef

[TransAm]

Nice site, FF

Will try it out next time I post pics.

[fishfreek]

Well today was the offical launch day. Not counting myself there is proably 6-7 users.

There are more features comming in the next month or so. The 100mb limit might change. I had to put some kind of resonable level on there for now to keep the site from outgrowing the server its on for at least a few months. ;)

[dingo]

It looks nice, the only thing which bothers me is the autoresize (as TT mentioned) as I am a high-res freak and all the pictures I post are in 1600x1200 so thats how I want them to stay :wink:

[ARMAN]

Isn't there going to be a special offer for JW members ? The premium account for free ? :P :mrgreen:
No point of making business then :lol:

[sikx5]

I would be interested in something similar to this dude, I went to F1 Melbourne this year and got some really really nice photos with the d70.....just one problem now, i need a place to host them. They are inbetween 2-3mb. 1.75gig in total, can i get some prices on hosting please dude.

Thanks

8)

[Pimp Racer]

Nice dude! I like the layout alot!

[TT]

I would be interested in something similar to this dude, I went to F1 Melbourne this year and got some really really nice photos with the d70.....just one problem now, i need a place to host them. They are inbetween 2-3mb. 1.75gig in total, can i get some prices on hosting please dude.

Thanks

8)

You don't plan to put "raw" pics on the net do you? it is totally useless, there is no noticeable gain in quality, they will be too big anyway and too heavy for us to handle ;)
Don't be lazy and start to slowly edit them, to take down size but also to improve quality ;)

[fishfreek]

Lets see if I can work thru the comments.

If you dont like the autoresize to 800x600 then pay $5/month. The images will not be resized unless they are larger than 1600x1200. Any image larger than that is useless to most people anyway. For $5/month you get 100mb of storage and 2gb of monthly bandwidth and the best part you have to know absolutly ZERO about webpages, etc. You can upload up to 10 images at a time and can have an unlimited number of galleries to categorize your images into (current limit is 100 until I can modify the code to permit unlimited). Pay a year in advance and its even less per month. For the internet noob this is an outstanding deal.

I gave TT a free month of preimum membership so he could upload the following

http://www.photolocker.net/images/TT/ferrari430203.jpg

Premium members can upload images as large as 2mb. Why on earth host an image that large on the internet? Its insane. Even people with highspeed cable modems are not going to sit thru downloading a bunch of huge photos only to try to view them on their computers where they can see a wopping 20% of the image before having to scroll left/right and up/down to get the big picture.

If you insist on needing 1+gig of disk space to host those kinds of images then my web hosting offer will be of interest to you. I can offer you 1gig of disk and 20gigs of bandwith per month for $5. You must own your own web domain. You must also know how to develop and create a website. You would have the ability to install your own photo gallery and of course orgnize your photos and customize the apperance. You get much more disk and bandwidth for the same money but your also expected to have a greater level of knowlege in what to do with that space.

[fishfreek]

I can offer you a larger hosting package that would include 5gigs of disk and 50gigs of bandwidth for $10/month. Same requirements would hold for this in that you would have to register your own domain name. It would be hosted on my server and you would ftp your files to your webspace. You would be responsible for setting up your website and installing a photo gallery of some sort. At that point you would have full control over your webspace.

[komotar]

I think it's nice.

I sometimes upload smaller images(not car related ones...), and I will use your site for that.

[sikx5]

I would be interested in something similar to this dude, I went to F1 Melbourne this year and got some really really nice photos with the d70.....just one problem now, i need a place to host them. They are inbetween 2-3mb. 1.75gig in total, can i get some prices on hosting please dude.

Thanks

8)

You don't plan to put "raw" pics on the net do you? it is totally useless, there is no noticeable gain in quality, they will be too big anyway and too heavy for us to handle ;)
Don't be lazy and start to slowly edit them, to take down size but also to improve quality ;)

There not RAW pics TT, just on Large - Fine quality setting, 3008x2000.

I will sort through them, pic out the nice ones and get in contact with you fishfreek, thanks for those prices. I do not know much about software used to display the images, will learn though. :D

[TT]

Yes that's why I said "raw" with the ".

Still, the pics as they come out of the camera are not compressed. They are not usefull like that if not as a base to start the editing, and you don't need them that big if not to print them in big size.

Even if you desire to post them at 3000+ pixels you can easily go down a lot in weight for each one without losing quality.

If I would post all my pics in 3264 pixels, high-res freaks would be happy, but I would need more than 10 GB for my webspace :D

Definitely, to show and post pics on the net, size has to be taken down. (and even to print them, a 1600x1200 will end up perfect quality for a 11x15 cm print ;) I never tried to print a 3264 superfine quality pic myself, but for sure to see the difference you need to print it some 30+ cm wide :D

[fishfreek]

sikx5, If you elect to go with a webhosting solution vs a photo hosting solution thats fine. I would suggest you check out photo galleries like coppermine or Gallery. They are two big and popular gallerys. Of course all of them will resize images to at least two levels. Thumbnail, Medium (800x600 or 1024X768 usually) and then leave the orgional. With that said 99% of your gallery visitors will never view the image any larger than the meium level.

[sikx5]

Ok thanks for that fishfreek, much appreciated. :D

and here is a pic i down sized TT:
http://img72.exs.cx/img72/9139/dsc0952resized1wc.th.jpg (http://img72.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img72&image=dsc0952resized1wc.jpg)

what do you think?

[TT]

Still too heavy. a 1280 usually has top quality when around 200 MAX 300 kb ;) 645 is still too much IMO.

I think none of my 1600x1200 is above 500 ;)

The pic itself is very good though!

[fishfreek]

Same photo at 800x600 and at a slightly higher compresion level. ALOT smaller filesize.

http://www.photolocker.net/images/fishfreek/800x600.jpg

OR same size as your just more compresion

http://www.photolocker.net/images/fishfreek/bettercompression.jpg

[sikx5]

Wow thats some great compression there, i will look into this further, cause those came out so well, and sizes are much much smaller.

here is another one i tried:

http://img55.exs.cx/img55/1820/rotationofdsc13736tv.jpg


Its still massive in size, but she was hottest chick at the motorshow :P


EDIT by Dan\/6 :: DONT USE [IMG] TAGS FOR FULL SIZE PICS ON IMAGESHACK - USE THE THUMBNAIL LINKS THEY GIVE

[fishfreek]

Any image editing program thats worth its weight will allow you to specify the compression level to save a jpeg image as. WHen I opened your file it had a compression level of 12 (basicly NONE). I resized the first image to 800x600 (basicly) and gave a compression level of 10. The larger file I simply changed the compression level from 12 to 9. Note the file size is easily 20% of your file and the visual quality is the same.

In addition if you crop out the part of the photo your not interested in. To use the image above for example you could probably cut out 30-40% of the image since its just blury citysape. The subject of the car is still the prime focus and you can end up with a larger image and the file size smaller since your only showing the most important parts of the image.

[fishfreek]

Various resizing and compression levels.

http://www.photolocker.net/gallery.php?g=Car-Girl-Compairson&u=fishfreek

Different DPI levels. Your orginoal is at 300DPI. Way more than you need for the web. Various images at 200DPI, 150DPI and 75DPI :shock:

Also different crop levels and different compression amounts. Most images are at least 60% smaller than the starting image with next to no loss in visual quality.

[fishfreek]

Free and Premium packages have had their disk quota upgraded to 25mb and 200mb.

[fishfreek]

Just wanted to update those that might be interested. I have made some changes again to the plans for the better im sure. First no more branding on free uploads. Second maxium image size has been increased on free and paid accounts. Third bandwidth AND view count tracking. Finally users using IE can have the code autocopyied to the clipboard with a simple click of the button.

[jon_s]

Fishfreek, on a different note completely, I will soon be starting a little website very similar to:

http://www.strawberrywater.co.uk/

can you provide website hosting? There will be quite a few photos going onto the site eventually, so bandwith could be eaten into quickly. Any suggestions?

[fishfreek]

Yes I can provide you hosting. If you dont mind doing it in the public here how much bandwidth do you anticpate using per month? How much disk space to you anticpate needing?

Here are two options. If you need more disk or more bandwidth we can hammer something out privatly. Usually I price bandwidth at $1 per 10gig over your normal monthly quota.

$5/month or $50/year
1gb disk and 50gb bandwidth/month
5 database mysql
10e-mail addresses
5ftp accounts

$10/month or $100/year
5gb disk and 100gb bandwidth/month
10database mysql
50e-mail addresses
10ftp accounts

Hosting server includes several stats packages as well as the ability to install many php based scripts with just a few button clicks. I see the site you list includes coppermine for a gallery. our system can install that for you with just a few mouse clicks for example.

[fishfreek]

Forgot to include that you will need to register your own domain name.

[jon_s]

The latter option is probably better as I will be hosting high res pics. I shall contact you when I have things in place 8)