Currently I use Gallery, though it could use an update in version, but I’m looking at moving to Picasa or Flickr to host images.  Though I currently don’t have a lot of images, that may change in the future.  I do need to know how easy it is to upload images, how many you can batch upload at a time (Gallery version I have limits to like 10 images at a time or something, it’s been a while), and how much storage space each one allows.  Gallery is limited to what my webhost allows while the others may have significantly larger amounts of space.

From initial glances, it looks like Flickr has far better support for things like WordPress integration.  Picasa, I’ve heard, is an overall better experience though.  So I’ll have to check into all of them and we’ll see.  My image gallery may see some hiccups though (hopefully not since I don’t have any of those images backed up anymore) while I fiddle with the upgrade.

If anyone has any insight on the various photo hosting solutions let me know.  Thanks!

Flickr Page | Picasa Album

UPDATE

Here’s what I found out so far.

Flickr allows 100MB of storage with an option of purchasing a premium account for more space.  It seems to indicate 100MB per month so I dunno if it’s increased each month.  I’ll find out next month.  Flickr’s uploading utility is quite nice for batch uploads as well as new album creation.  Overall the experience is nice but very basic and straightforward.  I didn’t find any of the nice plugins for WordPress yet much to other user’s claims.

Picasa: This is a combination solution for on and offline photo management.  The software you get from Google is really sophisticated and offers by far a greater set of tools to tweak your images.  Crop, straighten, redeye reduction, auto contrast/color, effects such as sepia and glow are all included.  You get 1GB of storage online which seems like it’s more than enough for me.  It generates albums based on the folder structure you’ve created then you can push images up to the web for online viewing.

Gallery 2 moves from flat file management to a database management and restricts me to the size of the database (which I only have one covering both WordPress and phpbb now) I use.  Gallery 1 limits me to the size of webspace storage I have using a flat file management system. I won’t be making the upgrade to Gallery 2 since looking at Flickr/Picasa I can have potentially vastly larger storage space.

Another image hosting place I haven’t looked at is photobucket so I’ll have to do some research there later.  The nice thing about Picasa and Flickr are that they use accounts I’ve already established with google and yahoo respectively.  Account management is an issue for me and while it’s not favorable to have all your eggs in one basket, it’s also just easier to know that there are all these great services that are linked by your semi-universal accounts.