Been out of the game for about a decade, just wondering what platform everyone uses to share digital albums/event photography with friends and family?
Back in the day imgur, Picasa, 500px and flickr were viable options for the hobbiest but it seems they either no longer exist or are now very, very expensive for low volume nonprofessional sharing
I selfhost Lychee for personal and professional work.
Apart from a small donation I made to the team, I just pay for the electricity and keep my data private.
Why do you choose Lychee over Immich? Does it have features you prefer?
I started using Lychee before Immich came out and I use them for different purposes.
Eventually, I ended up using Immich only for backing up my and my partner’s phone pictures.
They’re both incredible piece of software.
Two ways:
- I got annoyed after years of being a slow mess, I finally had enough of deviantART and started designing my own HTML/CSS landing page, started exporting galleries from digiKam, linked it together on the landing page and uploaded it on a webhotel.
It is extremely quick and easy to navigate, but I only share the URL in a more private manner.
- Pixelfed, I run the account @stoy@metapixl.com it is decently fast and people are engaging.
Embarrassingly low effort, but I just use Google Drive Shared Folders, read-only mode, and forgo any curation of what is seen (e.g. no imposed order, text, etc.).
I went a slightly different selfhosted route: I made a website with Public CMS. It’s WYSIWYG, simple and straightforward, and just goes to my existing stuff anyway.
For private things its usually a Google photos album or folder.
I use a combination of flickr, ente.io, glass.photo, portraitmode.io.
Ente seems to be exactly what I am looking for! Low cost, good for sharing, private and encrypted
The high-effort-way: self-hosting. Take an old PC (or easier: nextcloud-hardware) and install Nextcloud + Memories-App or e.g. immich. But exposing your server to the internet should only be done after learning a lot about the subject, as it could potentially be quite dangerous.
Two of our professional-photography-friends are using picdrop.com, 1 GB is free, 10 GB cost 10€/month, 500GB are 15€/month.
I would be skeptical of a page where you could upload this much data for free, as server space simply has it’s costs. If you don’t pay the service, they will make sure they get their money in a different way.
Piwigo on a web host.
