Hosting of images. Storing photos in the cloud

Hello, dear readers of the Start-Luck blog. After the photos were converted into electronic format, many users encountered a serious problem.

Once upon a time, we selected the best photographs, printed them and pasted them into an album that was almost impossible to lose. Nowadays disks are lost, computers and phones periodically “fly”, so that all information disappears without a trace. As a result, hundreds of megabytes and the best pictures from your vacation disappear into obscurity. How can this be avoided?

Today I will tell you where to store photos on the Internet for free so that this problem never affects you. You will learn about the best places and the most profitable solutions. I'll teach you how to save time while still providing better protection for your important photos and even videos.

Well, let's take it in order. There are many options. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Which one to choose is up to you.

Social media

A relatively good way to store any number of photos and videos for free is to post them to your own social media accounts. This could be Vkontakte, Instagram, Odnoklassniki or some other.

If you do not want other users to see your pictures, then this problem can be solved very easily. VKontakte, for example, using privacy settings. You create an album and either immediately or a little later go to the editing section. To do this, click on the pencil icon in the right corner of the album cover.

Now enter the value “Who can see photos of this album” - “Only me”. All. You can do the same with other photographs, videos, and so on.

The only thing you need to take care of in advance is high-quality protection of your personal data. You can only lose all your images if someone decides to hack you. Read the article to resolve this issue.

You can store photos from your phone on Instagram. It is very easy to send them to this social network if you have a special application installed. In the publication, I also tell you how to close your profile from prying eyes. No one will see your pictures unless you want them to. However, if you have just created a profile, you can add no more than three pictures per day.

The main advantage of these methods is the duration and unlimited amount of memory that the photo will ultimately occupy. You can store as many images as your heart desires.

If you choose another social network for storing photos, then first try to find out about the current limits and restrictions for 2017. If you are a regular user, this will not be that significant. There will most likely be enough opportunities. If you are a photographer or a fan of filming, and therefore take a lot of images, then this information will definitely not be superfluous.

Hosting and photos

I already wrote about that. In that article, I focused on websites, but there is another very good function - data storage. You can find some, for example, on www.hostinger.ru you spend only 185 rubles per month and get unlimited space to store your own files.

You can find something that won’t require financial investment for a while, just try not to forget where the free cheese is stored. As soon as you need more space, the numbers that will definitely have to be paid to pay for your account will immediately appear. Be prepared for this moment. As a rule, they are not that big. The security of your photos is worth it.

Using hosting will be very easy. You will need the program. You set up a connection to the hosting through you can also in my previous article. Now, to upload your files, you will only need to open a program, much like Explorer or Total Commander.

By the way, there are also special photo hosting sites, for example. Read the previous article to find out a little more. This is a specialized and free hosting that can store your photos for an unlimited amount of time. You can upload without registration, but it will give you the opportunity to add up to 20 images weighing 7 MB each.

I should note that if you rent unlimited hosting, there will be no such restrictions. The weight of the photo can be any, as well as the number of files. Will someone see your photos through Yandex or any other search engine? Of course not, if you do not connect a domain, but use hosting only as a “remote flash drive”.

Clouds

I have already written several times, such as Yandex or Google Drive, Mail.ru, Dropbox and so on. Now they are developing and provide ample opportunities for users. What are they doing? You install programs created by the developers of these “disks” on your mobile phone, tablet and computer, and then you can simply press a button to send files to it, which will also be stored on the hosting (“remote flash drive”). Essentially, they work on the same principle as FileZilla.

What is their advantage? Well, for example, you can set up automatic posting. That is, any photo taken on a mobile device will immediately be uploaded to Yandex Disk or some other.

One of the disadvantages of the cloud, I would say, is the price that you will need to pay to increase the amount of memory. If you need another 100 GB, it will cost you 800 rubles per year, 1 TB - 2000 rubles. As you understand, unlimited hosting in some cases will be cheaper, although the interface will not be as friendly and understandable, and you will have to forget about autoloading.

The same Yandex often holds promotions. For example, I recently received an additional 32 GB of memory for automatic downloading from a mobile device. You might be lucky too. Don’t write off cloud services right away. Consider using them. For the average user, this is not such a bad solution.

That's basically it. Now you know where to store photos on the Internet and you can choose the option that suits your case. Much depends on the amount of memory you need, as well as the effort. The easiest way, of course, is to use cloud services or social networks, but if you are a real photographer or just your library is extensive, then it is better to think about a different hosting.

Until next time, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog’s newsletter to stay informed about the most useful and profitable services for working on the Internet, and also become a subscriber Start-Luck groups VKontakte .

No more lost photos.

Recently, cloud services for storing files have become extremely popular. There are at least three reasons why you should store your photos in the cloud. Even when there is enough space on your home computer.

Firstly, storing photos on a special server is safer

Secondly, it will allow you to access your photos from anywhere you have internet access. And thirdly, it is more convenient to insert images into your blog or website - to do this, just copy the URL of your image from the hosting and paste it where necessary using HTML tags.

Since recently the number of cloud services tends to infinity, we invite you to take a look at the 7 best photo storage facilities in our opinion. Considering that 1 photo session weighs on average 15 GB, and wedding photography is approximately 50 GB, we will try to calculate the cost of storing them for a month on each cloud.

One of the most famous photo storage facilities. The service is very flexible to use. It is possible to organize photos into albums, then create collections from them. Other users can track your work updates and comment on them. Or you can choose to block access to your photos, making them completely private.

Flickr has two interesting tools: Camera Roll And Uploadr to improve the organization. Camera Roll is a chronological feed of photos, similar to the iOS Photos app. You can scroll through months and years until you find what you're looking for. Uploadr is a desktop tool for Mac and Windows that uploads photos from any folder on your computer or external hard drive.

You are getting 1TB of free space to storage. This is enough for 500 thousand photos. Each uploaded photo has a size limit of 2MB; video - 1GB (or 3 minutes). You can upload photos in their full original resolution.

Flickr offers 2 paid plans: the first will get rid of ads, the second will give you more space. For $6/month you can get all the functionality of a free account, but without the annoying ads. If you need more space, the $499/year plan (yes, we read that right) gives you an additional 2TB of photo and video storage. The downside of this storage is that it is not possible to store RAW.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 232 rubles/month.

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 772 rubles/month.(if 1 TB provided by the service for free is not enough for you)

Google + Photos

This service can highlight the best shots, improving the clarity/brightness of the photo, putting them together to create panoramas or GIFs. Google does all this on its own - all you have to do is upload a photo. It is possible to automatically upload photos from your phone or tablet using the Google + application for Android and iOS.

There is 15GB of free space in storage, but this space is also designed for both Gmail and Google Drive. Fortunately, photos smaller than 2048x2048 pixels and videos shorter than 15 minutes do not count toward your storage limit. If you need to upload longer videos and larger photos, you can get an additional 100GB of storage for $1.99/month or an additional 1TB for $9.99/month.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 9 rubles/month.

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 31rub./month

Dropbox is suitable for storing files of any type. The organization of files is made in the form of an intuitive system of folders, which you can access not only from a computer, but also from a mobile device: the service has official applications for IOS and Android.

All this and 2 GB of memory is provided absolutely free on a standard Dropbox account. The Pro account already offers 1TB of disk space, but will cost the user $9.99 or $99.99 per month or year, respectively. In addition, for each friend you invite to the service, you receive an additional 500 MB for free. Despite its versatility and ease of use, Dropbox lacks only the socialization interface that, for example, Flickr has.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 7.50rub./month

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 26rub./month

Microsoft's cloud storage offers a set of capabilities very similar to those of Google + Photos. The design and organization of work in OneDrive is similar to Windows 8, so it’s quite easy to navigate. Still, the service isn't designed exclusively for photographers, so don't expect the same photo browsing experience as Flickr.

Prices are close to Google prices: 15 GB - free, 100 GB - $1.99 per month. But 1 TB is only $6.99 per month, plus for this money you also get the Office 365 software package. The downside of storage is that viewing photos is not as well organized as that of competitors.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 6rub./month

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 22rub./month

Shared libraries let you and your friends store photos together, but you can make any of your photos private. The service has the ability to integrate with Lightroom and Elements; in addition, Revel itself has tools for quick editing.

Easy downloading is provided by official applications for Windows, iOS and Android. Revel has support for RAW formats.

For the first 30 days of using Revel you can upload an unlimited number of files, then the free subscription limits you to what you can upload up to 50 files per month. This limitation is removed by purchasing a Pro subscription that costs $5.99 per month.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 9rub./month

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 18.50rub./month

The Yandex service offers 10 GB of free space for storing photos on the server. Additional 10 GB costs 300 rubles per year, 100 GB – 800 rubles, 1 TB – 2000 rubles. The size of an individual downloaded file is limited to 20 MB, which is more than enough. There is a plugin for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox that allows you to simply drag images into the browser window with the mouse.

The album viewing interface of Yandex.Photos is simple and convenient, consistent with the style of the entire portal. For uploaded photos, you can determine the access level so that they are visible only to you, the users you specify, or all visitors to the service. Yandex.Photos provides applications for almost all existing mobile platforms, and also provides an interesting built-in printing function that allows you to print photos directly while on the site.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 3rub./month

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 10rub./month

Cloud Mail.ru

The service provides not only a set of code fragments and widgets for placement on external sites, but also printing of images. The service periodically holds thematic competitions with good prizes among its users.

Approximate cost of storing 1 photo session: 7.50 rubles/month.

Approximate cost of storing 1 wedding photo: 25rub./month

Final table

*Prices are converted into rubles at the dollar exchange rate as of 10/11/2015.

Also, the question of where it is better to store photographs in electronic form is relevant not only for photographers. Today, every second person always has a smartphone with a built-in camera. Some fans take dozens of photographs every day. And for a photographer, sometimes it’s also faster to take out his phone and catch a random funny shot than to take out his own camera, turn it on, set it up, and miss an interesting shot.

This article provides a short overview of cloud storage systems in 2015, which I actively use myself.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the first cloud storage I started using, which is why it comes first in this article. Dropbox is far from the largest cloud storage where you can store photos on the Internet.

They provide only 2 gigabytes of space for free. Today this is very little for storing photos. But I use it out of habit, and not so much for photographs as for storing documents and quickly accessing them from any device.

You can also invite friends to use dropbox and thereby expand your free space, but these are insignificant numbers.

Owners of Samsung and HTC phones have a nice bonus of an additional 48 gigabytes of free storage in Dropbox.

The Dropbox client has both a version for computers and a version for mobile devices. You will always have access to your photos if there is internet nearby.

In order to use Dropbox cloud storage, you just need to indicate your email address when registering.

Perhaps these are all its advantages. Use: www.dropbox.com

Cloud storage mail.ru

Appeared relatively recently. At the end of 2013. What particularly attracted me to it was that at that time it was the largest free cloud storage. At the start, mail.ru cloud storage offered 100 GB of space for free. It was a new cloud service. At first there were a lot of lags, the client was loading the computer, and a scandal about data confidentiality broke out on the Internet. But the mail.ru cloud storage is growing, correcting all its lags and shortcomings.

At first I used such a large space to store video files, but there was one drawback - it was impossible to view videos online. I had to download it to watch it. But in 2015, the functionality was improved and now you can watch videos directly from cloud storage from any device, be it a computer, tablet or smartphone.

There was also a promotion at the end of 2014. Everyone could expand their storage up to 1 terabyte for free. Which is what I did :).

Unfortunately, today, when registering, the mail.ru cloud storage gives only 25 GB of free space. But all the bugs and shortcomings have been corrected. All functions work like clockwork.

I would also like to note that the developers care about their clients and make using the service as convenient as possible. All services have instructions for use in text format, and there is a whole “video help” section that describes all the functionality and capabilities of the service in video for both regular computers and the mobile version of the mail.ru cloud.

In order to use cloud storage mail.ru, it is enough to have registered mail on the mail.ru website

Cloud storage Yandex disk

Yandex cloud storage provides free 10 GB of space not only for photos, but also for any files. What I especially liked about Yandex disk was that there was more space than in Dropbox and I could watch videos online without downloading to my computer. I used this service before I switched to mail.ru cloud storage.

Yandex Disk has a client for computers running all popular operating systems: Windos, MAC OS and Linux. You can also install the Yandex disk application and have full access to your photos and files from mobile devices based on Android, IOS and Windows phone.

Cloud storage Yandex Disk has all the same functions as Dropbox, only it provides 5 times more space for free - 10 GB.

Free space on Yandex disk can be expanded just like in Dropbox if you invite friends to Yandex disk.

In order to start using Yandex disk, it is enough to have mail on Yandex. If you have mail, then you automatically already have 10GB on Yandex disk.

Google photos and google cloud storage

I saved the best for last. Google photos and google cloud storage. Perhaps this service is by far the most generous. The largest free cloud storage for photos is Google Photos. How much space does Google provide for free to its users for storing photos? Exactly as much as you need.

Since 2015, Google has been providing unlimited storage space for photos up to 16 megapixels in size. For all other files, free cloud space is limited to 15 gigabytes.

Previously, the Google Photos service also provided unlimited space for photos, but their maximum size was limited to 4 megapixels. Today the limit is 16 megapixels.

Is 16 megapixels a lot or not enough for photography?

For reference:

• — Professional reportage DSLR Nikon D4s has a resolution of 16 megapixels.
• A top-end mirrorless camera with a full-frame matrix and the highest light sensitivity among all cameras, the Sony A7s has a resolution of only 12 megapixels.

It's up to you to decide whether 16 megapixels is a lot or not. I'm quite happy with this limitation. Moreover, on Google photos you can store video files with a resolution of 1080p for free, that is, in FulHD resolution.

In addition, in Google Photos you can apply different filters to photos, make a collage of photos, make a video, apply various photo effects to photos directly online without Photoshop and even from a mobile phone.

Google Photos is an excellent solution not only for photographers, but also for all lovers of photography and being photographed. It has unlimited virtual space for storing photos and wide functionality for processing and applying various effects for photos.

And today, if they ask me where to store photos on the Internet for free, I will answer without hesitation - Google Photos.

In order to start using Google Photos, you just need to have a registered Google account. Simply put, a mailbox on gmail.com. All users of devices based on the Android operating system have a Google account and not everyone knows about the opportunities that open up to them.

Ease of use

We looked at four of the most popular cloud storage services. If you are concerned about the problem of where to store photos on the Internet for free, then the Google Photos service is best suited for this. The service provides unlimited storage space for photos up to 16 megapixels in size.

If you are just looking for cloud storage with a large volume for free, then mail.ru cloud storage is best suited for you. The developers provide 25 gigabytes of space for all types of files, or maybe some of you managed to register earlier and now have 100 gigabytes, or maybe even a whole terabyte of space in the mail.ru cloud storage

Today, all of the listed services have a web version - that is, you can use, upload files, download and share them directly in the browser. And they have a client for downloading to your computer and an application for other devices (tablets, mobile phones). Working with the client is also very convenient. You add or change some files on your computer and they are automatically uploaded to cloud storage and become accessible from any of your devices on which the client or application is installed.

Now you know where to store photos on the Internet for free and free cloud storage with a large volume.

The space on it will eventually run out anyway. Then most photographers simply copy the pictures from the camera to the hard drive of their computer, without even thinking about their further safety. But in vain... Due to a simple shock to the laptop, a power surge, or simply a malfunction of the electronics, your entire photo archive can be lost literally in an instant. In this article, we'll tell you how and where to store photos safely, and which storage system will best suit your needs.

In my photographic practice, an unpleasant situation has already happened twice when the hard drive stopped working and all the data on it was lost. For the first time this happened for no apparent reason: one day the computer did not turn on. The second time I simply dropped the laptop from a height of about half a meter. This turned out to be enough. A very unpleasant situation, but not fatal. Because in both cases, the most valuable data (and for a photographer this is, first of all, a photo archive) was copied to a separate medium. So, the main rule for secure data storage is that you should always have up-to-date backup copies of your files on a separate medium.

Which media should I choose for backup?

When trees were big and cameras were 6-megapixel, some photographers managed to record their photo archives on DVDs and then simply stack them. Now this approach may seem ridiculous: what kind of self-discipline and perseverance do you need to have in order to remember to write down a couple of blanks with photographs after each photo shoot? In addition, modern laptop models are increasingly supplied without a CD-ROM.

Today, the most reliable and affordable storage media are hard drives.

Today, the most reliable and affordable storage media for photos are hard drives. We'll look at two ways to organize your storage system: using external hard drives and using hard drives inside your desktop computer. Let's start with external drives.

Storage system for photo travelers

For many photographers, a laptop has become the same creative tool as a camera: it accompanies its owner on trains around the city, at outdoor photo shoots, and on long-distance expeditions. The photographs taken are reviewed on the laptop, the most successful ones are selected, partially processed... and, of course, the results of the shooting are stored. It is he who bears the entire burden of responsibility for the filmed material. But even in the field, data backup can be done easily and simply. The best solution for this is the My Passport and My Passport Ultra drives from WD.

These compact and lightweight drives have capacities from 500 GB to 2 TB, which is currently a record for devices of this format (2.5” external drives). To connect to a computer, a fast USB 3.0 interface is used (the previous version, USB 2.0, is also supported). The device does not require a power outlet to power it, allowing you to use it anywhere.

Now comes the fun part: Using the WD SmartWare Pro backup software included with My Passport Ultra, you can sync folders on your hard drive and drive. When you connect the drive to your computer in the background, all changes that have occurred to the folder on your laptop are absolutely automatically added to the backup copy: edited files are updated, newly created ones are copied, and deleted ones are erased. In addition, My Passport Ultra allows you to copy your files not only to the drive itself, but also to the Dropbox cloud service if you are connected to the Internet.

A simple solution for amateur photographers

Not all of us spend days and months traveling long distances. Some people prefer to return home every day and look at fresh photos, sitting in their favorite chair with a cup of coffee in front of a large monitor. In that case, the larger My Book external drive might be the right choice for you. It will stand in your home near your PC and will delight you not only with its strict design, but also with its impressive capacity - up to 3TB! The drive also connects to your computer via fast USB 3.0 and comes with free WD SmartWare automatic backup software. In addition, such a solution will, to some extent, be a more reliable storage for the archive, since it is less likely to suffer from such troubles as falling or accidental impacts than mobile drives.

Network storage for the whole family

All the drives that we looked at before had one thing in common: a USB interface. But if you have a local network at home (and almost everyone now has a Wi-Fi router), then why not connect your computer to the drive using this very network? My Book Live is not equipped with USB, but with a Gigabit Ethernet network interface. This means that you can place it next to your router, connect them with a power cord (it, of course, comes included) and access data remotely, for example, via Wi-Fi. Setup using the included software is carried out automatically with just a couple of clicks; even a person far from network technologies can handle it. Five minutes - and all your home computers already “see” the drive; all members of your family can store their files on it, regardless of what operating system they use - MAC or Windows. Naturally, the network interface is not a hindrance for backup using WD SmartWare. It's also available with My Book Live: data from synced folders is saved automatically in the background when your computer is connected to your home network. Moreover, you can use this drive as a centralized storage for backups from several computers in the house, all data will be transferred within your local network.

But all the advantages of My Book Live do not end there. A few more clicks and you can set up remote data access from mobile devices. Saving pictures from an iPhone to a hard drive or, conversely, downloading a movie to a tablet from a hard drive - all this has become accessible and simple with the help of special applications for smartphones and tablets. The WD2go and WDphotos applications allow you to access your hard drive not only from the local network, but also from the outside (if you have an Internet connection).

Well, if you have access to the Internet, then you can now access your files from anywhere in the world using the WD 2go service: register web access in the device settings (you just need to indicate your name and email address), log in to the portal www.wd2go.com and view the contents of our archive via the Internet. So, for example, if you need some important files in the office, you can remotely access this drive and download everything.

It remains to add that My Book Live is produced in exactly the same volumes as My Book - from 1 to 3 TB.

Dual-disk network storage for professional photographers

Three terabytes - to some this may seem like a huge amount. But professional photographers can fill up even such a hard drive quite quickly. They need a more serious model: My Book Live Duo. Its main difference from the regular My Book Live is that there is not one, but two hard drives inside. In this case, the possible storage capacity ranges from 4 to 8 terabytes.

It would seem like a small thing - just double the volume. But the use of two hard drives inside the drive allows for different approaches to data storage: if the owner of the device wants it, information can be written to the disks in parallel (RAID 1). Yes, but the storage capacity will be halved. But even if one of the drives fails, you will not lose important data. You can completely trust your photo archive to such network storage, without even saving it in your computer’s memory. The second difference with the My Book Live Duo is the USB port, into which you can connect another drive to expand the storage capacity or create a restore point.

Another interesting feature of this model is the ability to independently disassemble and replace the hard drives inside. We ran out of memory, took out the full hard drives and put them on a shelf. And in their place we put new, empty ones.

For computer processing professionals

If your Mac has a Thunderbolt™ interface and your main storage requirement is speed, then the My Book Thunderbolt™ Duo is for you. Like the My Book Live Duo, this drive has two hard drives inside, and its capacity can be from 4 to 8 TB. But the use of a bidirectional Thunderbolt interface provides unsurpassed fast multitasking with video editing programs, 3D rendering programs and other “heavy” graphics programs. This two-disk drive can be configured to operate in the mode you need: RAID 0 for speed (the fast Thunderbolt interface allows you to unlock the full potential of such an array), RAID 1 for data protection, or JBOD to work with each drive separately. Another useful feature of this device: in Mac OS® X, the My Book Thunderbolt Duo drive can be made a bootable external device.

Self-organization of the storage system

If for one reason or another ready-made storage systems are not suitable for you, you can create a storage system yourself. For example, the simplest backup option might be to add another hard drive to your desktop computer. Then all that remains is to set up backup using certain software products. For example, when you import photos from a flash drive, Adobe Lightroom can create backup copies in a location you specify. Or you can simply sync multiple folders on your computer using the Sync Toy utility for Windows. You can also use the already mentioned WD Smartware Pro by purchasing it on the manufacturer’s website. This program will independently track the latest changes in files on any disks installed in your PC.

It is important to choose the right hard drive that best suits your purposes. If it will only be used for backup, then the best solution would be one of the WD Green series drives. This line has proven itself to be the quietest and coolest drives on the market. Other important features of the “green” series include an impressive volume (up to 3 TB) and an excellent price per gigabyte ratio. If you plan to install an operating system on the same hard drive or perform complex file processing directly from the disk (for example, video editing), then you will need more speed. For these purposes, it is better to prefer another line - WD Black: these drives are record holders for speed and performance among models for PCs.

WD Red is designed for NAS use

They are specifically designed to work in small NAS (for home and small office): support 24/7 operation, have low noise and power consumption and are compatible with the vast majority of NAS

Summarize?

Don't wait for your first negative experience with data loss. Think rationally about the idea of ​​backing up your files now. And then just choose the solution that suits you best. Fortunately, today there are devices on the market for every taste: from light and compact external drives with a USB interface and a convenient backup program to serious multi-disk drives that can be used both for storing photographs and for processing. Choose what suits you! And in our turn, in the very near future we will tell you about several of the most successful drive models, conduct tests on them and describe in detail the entire setup process.

Almost every camera owner is faced with the issues of storing their photo archive, cataloging it, processing photos, and posting their pictures online. Let's see what the network offers. What is more convenient to use and for what purposes?

Currently, there are many similar services operating on the Internet, and experienced photography professionals have already tried most of them. For beginners, it can be quite difficult to immediately understand the motley variety of paid, free, Russian and foreign photo hosting sites.

Actually, there are a great many resources that perform the functions of a “warehouse” of pictures, so today we will not talk about them.

Modern photographers can store their works, share them, participate in discussions, voting, etc. on one resource. It is perhaps impossible to answer which of the existing services is the best, so we will consider the most interesting options available.

One of the most popular and oldest photo hosting sites in the world - service Flickr, owned by Yahoo! In addition to its impressive photo database, which is updated with thousands of new photos every minute, Flickr is, at its core, a huge community of photography enthusiasts. By registering on the resource, you can upload photos to online storage, work with pictures, participate in discussions, etc. If you already have a Yahoo!, Google or Facebook account, Flickr does not require additional registration. If not, the process of creating a new account is as simple as possible.

Annual fee for all features Flickr- $24.95. The service can be used for free, but there are some restrictions: you can upload no more than 100 MB of files per month, while only the last 200 images will be available for other users to view. The maximum size of one photo in the “Free” tariff is 5 MB, while in the paid “Pro” version it is 10 MB.

A significant disadvantage for many: the service is English. However, in addition to numerous detailed descriptions of Flickr in Russian-language blogs, the resource itself has a group where you can find answers to frequently asked questions and simply chat with like-minded people in your native language.

An equally popular and slightly less “adult” Internet service for storing, discussing and “sharing” photos and videos is Photobucket.com- has no less (and, according to loyal fans, even more) set of important and useful features for amateur photographers. The process of creating a new account is as standard simple and is unlikely to take much time.

The maximum resolution of uploaded photos allowed in the free plan is 1024x768 pixels. When using the “Pro” tariff, there are no restrictions on storage and traffic, and the maximum resolution of pictures increases to 4000x3000 pixels.

If you are used to Google services, then understanding Picasa will not be difficult. Moreover, there is now a Russian-language version of Picasa web albums. The service requires registration, and of course, you can use a Google account for this.

In “Web Albums” you can place photos with a total volume of up to 1 GB for free. If necessary, you can buy additional space: 20 GB will cost $5 per year, and for $20 you can get as much as 80 GB (and this is not the limit).

This is an online community and hosting for storing and sharing photos with a partially Russian-language interface, working on a paid-free model. For $2 per month or $27 per year (subject to a 3-year subscription), the account owner receives unlimited storage space for photos, the ability to sell them, upload via FTP clients and access to all types of settings for a personal page, albums, etc. In addition, paid users do not have to be distracted by intrusive advertising. There are no restrictions on the size and resolution of pictures. Access to albums is regulated from private to public.

Free Russian photo hosting with a simple and user-friendly interface. The volume and number of pictures is unlimited, but the image size cannot exceed 5 MB, and its resolution - 5000x5000 pixels. Photos can be placed in separate albums, tags assigned to images, and added to the “favorites” section. The site has many “social” functions: groups, messages, discussions, notes on photos. Currently, the resource is in the process of updating, as reported on its main page. You can add photos, however, according to user reviews, the site is periodically unavailable or works slowly.

The largest search engine on the Runet has its own photo hosting - convenient, simple, understandable and free. However, Mail.ru and Rambler also have sections for storing and discussing photographs.

This was largely due to various photography competitions that the resource holds regularly. In addition, a lot of users are attracted by the daily candidates for “Photo of the Day” that appear on the main page of Yandex. Currently, the resource has already hosted more than 162 million user works.

Uploaded pictures can be placed in albums, assigned names, tags and descriptions. It is possible to create lists of favorite pictures. Photos can be made private, available only to friends, or shown to everyone. In the latter case, it is better to prepare for the fact that the comments may not only be friendly, especially if the photo is included in the “popular” ones.

Let us make a reservation that the listed services are not all that is offered on the Internet to amateurs and photography professionals.

What to choose - English speaking Flickr or Photobucket, intended for avid photographers, cozy “friendly” Picasa web albums or Russian services where you can chat to your heart’s content with your compatriots - everyone will decide for themselves. There are many options, the main thing is not to be afraid to try something to start with.