Well, my camera is horrible, so I very much doubt that my pictures could get any worse. My pet peeve has already been mentioned by ZeWrestler, ganking my metadata does not make me a happy citizen.

I’ve had a paid-for flickr account for ages and I’m really happy with it. Add Desktop Flickr Organiser (Linux) based on flickrfs and you’ve got a great way of managing those photos from a desktop.

Wow, everyone loves gallery2. :)

@Chris Wellons: Well, there are many reasons really.

1. I had that Flickr account for ages – relocating all these pictures would be a pain

2. Flicrk == fast, terminally-incoherent.com == slow

3. Because of #2 I’m always planning to switch hosts (but ultimately never do) so that’s few hundred MB less stuff for me to move

4. Something about putting all your eggs in one basket

5. With Flickr I can upload my pictures directly from my phone, my watch, my toaster and bunch of other things that implement their API

6. Dreamhost stores my files on a linux box that I share with like 5 million other people (at least that’s how it feels on some days when I look at the server load). Flickr stores my files on a cloud… At least I think it does.

7. Flickr has a built in community stuff like tagging, groups and etc. I originally created the account to post funny pictures of stupid signs, graffiti or the lousy art pieces people install in the quad at school. Then I started uploading other stuff.

8. ???

9. Profit

So yeah. I could set up a gallery2 but it would actually take more effort than just using my Flickr account.

@ZeWrestler: OMG! LOL! That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. People just don’t get that whole resolution thing.

I blame Hollywood for this – cause in every single movie they take a grainy, low resolution photo and then they zoom-in and enhance it so that you can see the fingerprint on a glass that is visible in a 5th floor window in the building across the street.

I was going to suggest Gallery2, but a few people beat me to it already.

I’m in complete agreement about FB pictures. Another thing that p.o.s me about it is the fact it completely wipes out the metadata from the original picture with its compression algorithm. I like utilizing that data for my pictures I have, so that really sucks when its erased.

Also, story: I had it happen where I asked my brother to send me some pictures that I could get printed professionally, and sent to family members. I was given links to FB. I asked for the original, and he told me to ask his gf. She proceeded to download them off FB and send them to me. *GAARRRGH* It looked like crap when it was printed out.

The real shame is when people lose the original image files and the low-quality version on Facebook is all that’s left. I guess that’s better than not having it, but it also might encourage people to make Facebook their only copy in the first place (not ever noticing the quality issue).

I haven’t used Facebook in over 4 years now, so I haven’t seen this for myself, but it seems just like something they would do.

I am curious why you pay for a Flickr account when you have this Dreamhost website which can serve mostly the same function (after some webapp wrangling (like the above mentioned gallery2)). Surely you must have unlimited storage and bandwidth here by now, so these wouldn’t be concerns. You could have your own photos.terminally-incoherent.com or something. Is it the social networking aspect of Flickr?

For me, if I can shoehorn something into my website I do that instead of getting a separate account somewhere else. As a bonus, I make regular backups of my website so anything I hook in gets included in those backups.

@k00pa: I’m not really into getting views, but I have recently registered a so-called “family” domain name, and would like to host family-stuff under it. Since I do plan to get a small mini-ITX-based PC to act as a throw-anything-at-it server, gallery2 seems to be just nice.

@mcai8sh4: It’s ok dude. I’ve downloaded and experimenting it with WAMP for now. Thanks!

I can’t really comment – I have no strong reasoning (short enough to put in a comment) – but I hate Facebook! I joined ages ago, but it seems like a pointless wast of time for me (perhaps I just ‘don’t get it’).

I have a litter server in my lounge and host a gallery2 site from that – I’d recommend trying it Mart. It works well. I’ll not post a link here, who knows what type of reprobates may visit ;P . But if you want a link to have a look, let me know and I’ll figure out a way to send you the link.

Like Luke, I’m a fan of the face tagging in Facebooks pictures, but hate the small pics (although I thought that was just the res people decided to upload them as). Perhaps there should be some sort of linking feature allowing you to upload to, say flickr, or someother host and then kinda hotlink to them – therefore upload a good quality pic once – then share it with your mates via facebook…. just a thought.

Another great post!

I like to use flickr, because well there is pictures I like. I don’t like to stalk peoples, but I like to see nice pictures.

Flickrs explore feature is awesome. (or what it was).

@Mart: And about that gallery2, try flickr :) it is much easier to use + you get more views easier.

I’m looking into hosting my own personal photo sharing site. Maybe using Gallery2? Already registered a shiny new domain name & planning to (probably) use dyndns’s Custom DNS service.