Photo websites review

The Best Online Photo Printing Service for 2022

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Photo: Amadou Diallo

FYI

We removed our runner-up pick because our top pick now has a mobile app that provides a better experience than Printique’s.

November 4, 2020

After more than 40 hours of research and comparison, including a blind test with a panel of photo novices and hobbyists, we recommend Nations Photo Lab as the best online service for ordering hassle-free, high-quality photo prints delivered straight to your home. Nations produces prints with pleasing skin tones on a range of paper types and in a variety of aspect ratios, all at a reasonable price. And it ships everything in professional packaging—ensuring that your prints arrive in great shape.

Our pick

Nations Photo Lab

Of the labs we tested, Nations Photo Lab offers the best combination of quality, price, options, and service, delivering good-looking prints in secure packaging.

Nations Photo Lab delivers good-looking prints and packs them securely to avoid any shipping damage. It offers a wide range of print sizes, from wallet size to 30 inches wide. The order process is straightforward, giving you the choice of a simple Web interface, a standalone desktop app, or a mobile app. For a nominal fee, you can have your images color-corrected to more closely match what you see on screen if you’re using a calibrated monitor. Crucially, Nations Photo Lab is also one of the few services we found that offer an attractive gift-packaging option: A sleek box tied with a silk ribbon makes for an attractive gift shipped directly to family or friends (or clients, if you’re selling your photos). The company offers free shipping for orders of $50 or more, too.

If you’d rather print at home for the ultimate in image quality, color accuracy, and sharpness, a well-made inkjet print from the best photo inkjet printer delivers superior results that in some cases may be worth the added time, effort, and expense. But the printer, ink, and paper aren’t cheap, and it takes some practice and a properly calibrated monitor to get great results. If you have boxes of prints from your film days and want them digitized, take a look at our guide to the best photo scanning service.

The research

Why you should trust us
Who should use an online print service
How we picked
How we tested
Our pick: Nations Photo Lab
Flaws but not dealbreakers
What about professional photo labs?
What about big-box stores and pharmacies?
The competition

Why you should trust us

I’ve covered camera and printer gear here at Wirecutter since 2013 and have worked as a professional photographer and digital-imaging consultant for 15 years. I also ran my own digital-printmaking shop for a nearly a decade, producing exhibition-quality photographs on wide-format inkjet printers. I’m on the faculty of New York City’s International Center of Photography, and I lead photography workshops around the country.

In preparing this guide I researched pricing and features for 24 US-based online print shops. I sent an identical selection of digital files to the 10 most promising contenders and asked a panel of photo novices and hobbyists to weigh in on the results.

Who should use an online print service

With the ubiquity of images shared online, there’s something special and inherently pleasing about holding a physical print. Whether you’re into scrapbooking, creating a one-of-a-kind photo album, hanging prints on the wall, or sending your loved ones keepsakes of special moments, photo prints can be cherished for years to come.

If you need prints only occasionally, an online photo service saves you the up-front hardware cost and the hassle of ink and paper replacement.

Seasoned photographers often opt for a home inkjet photo printer. The best models, like our current photo printer pick, produce noticeably sharper images than the high-volume chemical process that online photo labs use. And of course, having a printer in-house means you can generate prints any time you desire. But inkjet printers optimized for pro-level photo output start at around $800 and take up a lot of desk space. They make the most sense for folks who print on a regular basis and demand gallery-quality results with unerring consistency. If you need prints only occasionally, an online photo service saves you the up-front hardware cost and the hassle of ink and paper replacement.

An Internet connection and access to your digital image files are all you need to place an order. Turnaround times are usually just a day or two (excluding shipping), and the best shops pack your photos securely to avoid damage in transit. And with print prices for the shops we looked at ranging from 9¢ to 30¢ for a 4-by-6, online printing is very economical.

How we picked

We ordered prints from 10 online services to find out which ones offered the best combination of price, service, and features. Photo: Michael Hession

We kept our initial criteria simple, opting for services that let you upload multiple image files, select individual print sizes, and ship them to your home. We began with 24 services and quickly realized how difficult it would be to make recommendations based on price. Shutterfly, for example, charges less for 4-by-6 prints than many of its rivals but significantly more for an 8-by-10. Print shops frequently offer discounts and promotions throughout the year, making price-per-print comparisons even less reliable. Shipping costs and options also vary, so although we do provide the order totals for our final picks here, we can rarely say with any certainty that one service will always be cheaper than another. And of course, a low price means little if the photos don’t look good.

In the interest of choosing services relevant to as many readers as possible, we were able to dismiss those of Costco and Sam’s Club, because they require an annual membership. We also eliminated services requiring in-store pickup, because the quality of the prints you receive can vary greatly from store to store. After creating logins for 20 services in order to evaluate the user interface, print choices, and shipping options, we narrowed the list to 10 contenders. (For a more detailed look at what we dismissed and why, see the Competition section.)

We found precious few editorial sources that had conducted real-world comparisons of print services, and none that had included all of our contenders. So we conducted our own test, uploading an identical set of image files to each service.

How we tested

We uploaded a variety of images, shot on a range of digital cameras, to our top 10 contenders and then compared the results side by side.

Photo: Amadou Diallo

We uploaded 20 images—shot with mirrorless cameras, DSLRs, and smartphones—to each of our finalists. We included landscapes, a range of skin tones, neutral and tinted black-and-whites, low-light images, and photos with heavily saturated colors. When given the option, we had the images printed on luster paper and requested that the lab make no additional color adjustments. For each service we ordered 4-by-6 prints (or similar), a 5-by-5 square image, an 8-by-10 black-and-white portrait, and an 11-by-14 color landscape. As a reference we used the Epson SureColor P600 inkjet printer (our pick for the best photo inkjet printer) to make our own identically sized prints from these same files. The P600 produced notably sharp prints that matched the colors we saw on our properly calibrated iMac 27-inch monitor, providing a baseline by which we could evaluate results from the online print services.

Most of the shops we tested delivered “good enough” results.

After comparing the prints from each lab not just in image quality but also in how well they were packed for shipment, I whittled our list of contenders down to five finalists. I then set up a blind test with several colleagues in the Wirecutter office; some of the panelists were photo novices, and others owned DSLRs and took photographs on a regular basis. The testers made side-by-side comparisons of six sets of identical image files printed by Printique (then called AdoramaPix), Aspen Creek Photo, Bay Photo, Mpix, and Nations Photo Lab, along with the reference prints I made using the Epson SureColor P600. For each set of prints, I asked the testers to rate their first and second choices, as well as their least favorite prints.

Our pick: Nations Photo Lab

Our pick

Nations Photo Lab

Of the labs we tested, Nations Photo Lab offers the best combination of quality, price, options, and service, delivering good-looking prints in secure packaging.

Nations Photo Lab is the best choice for most people looking to order photo prints online. Its service is easy to use, with pricing and printing options clearly displayed on a single Web page. In our tests, turnaround was impressively fast: Our prints shipped out the same day we placed our order. The prints had pleasing contrast and detail, and they ranked among the most color-accurate across the services we tested. And unlike some of the other shops we ordered from, Nations Photo Lab packed our prints very securely, ensuring that they wouldn’t take damage in transit.

Nearly all of the services we tested delivered prints good enough to frame and put on the mantel. To be honest, the differences in print quality that did exist were too subtle for us to show you via the Web. And all of the services we used had our orders ready to ship within three business days or less. Some shops are less expensive than Nations Photo Lab (prices vary with print size and quantity). But each service we tested brings compromises of some sort. Nations Photo Lab gets the most important things right: color-accurate prints, packaging that avoids damage in transit, and a hassle-free ordering process.

Nations Photo Lab gets the most important things right: color-accurate prints, packaging that avoids damage in transit, and a hassle-free ordering process.

As with other services, you begin the order process with Nations Photo Lab by creating an online account. Once that’s complete, you can order images in one of two ways. The Web browser interface lets you drag and drop images to upload them from your computer. At this point you can select an image to specify print size and select a paper type before manually cropping the image to taste, if necessary. You can also choose to have your image mounted on foamcore for an additional fee or converted to black-and-white or a sepia tone.

In Nations Photo Lab’s Web interface, you can choose from a range of paper options and print sizes, and then manually adjust the image’s crop if you desire.

Photo: Amadou Diallo

If you plan to order a lot of images at the same print size, you’re better off downloading the ROES (Remote Order Entry System) app from Nations Photo Lab and using that instead. ROES is a third-party app that many photo labs license to use for their customer orders. Though designed with the high-volume needs of wedding and portrait photographers in mind, the app is simple enough for just about anyone to use. To begin, you point the app to a folder on your computer containing the images you want to print (the images don’t actually upload to Nations Photo Lab until you place your order). Selecting a print size calls up a blank page onto which you simply drag an image. Add the image to your shopping cart, and then just drag the next image in its place. For large orders of multiple prints at different sizes, this process can be faster than using Nations Photo Lab’s Web interface.

You can also place orders by downloading the pro-oriented ROES software, which is more efficient for large orders of multiple prints at different sizes.

Photo: Amadou Diallo

The biggest advantage to using the ROES software, however, is that you can avoid having your photos cropped when there’s a mismatch between the aspect ratio of your image file and the paper size you’ve chosen. I’ll explain.

The standard 4-by-6 print has an aspect ratio of 3:2. It became a standard print size precisely because it’s the same ratio that analog cameras produced using 35mm film. DSLRs and most mirrorless cameras still use that aspect ratio today. But the image sensors in smartphone, point-and-shoot, and Micro Four Thirds cameras have a 4:3 aspect ratio instead.

An uncropped iPhone photo has a 4:3 aspect ratio, a mismatch for the traditional 4-by-6 print, which has a 3:2 aspect ratio. Photo: Amadou Diallo

Faced with this mismatch, you have two options. First, you can crop the digital file so that it fills the frame of a 4-by-6 print. But as you can see below, this tactic risks cropping out important areas of your image.

When you’re forced to print in a 3:2 aspect ratio (indicated here by the red lines), you have to crop the image on two sides, potentially losing important image area (shaded in white).

Photo: Amadou Diallo

The second—and in this case preferable—option is to print the image at its native aspect ratio and leave a paper border on two sides of the print. The ROES app offers a Fit Entire Print icon that does just that, resulting in a print like the one below. You’ll have to manually trim the borders if you find them distracting, but you avoid an unwanted image crop.

Using the ROES app you can instruct Nations Photo Lab to print your image uncropped, leaving a white paper border (shown above) on two sides instead. Photo: Amadou Diallo

Although I’ve used the example of an iPhone photo on a 4-by-6 print, the idea applies equally to any photo from any camera in which the aspect ratio of your final image doesn’t match that of the print size you want to make.

This package could have taken a severe beating without any damage done to the prints.

Our order of 17 small prints, plus an 8-by-10 and an 11-by-17, came out to $18.09 with shipping. The average order cost of the 10 services we tested was $20.70, placing Nations Photo Lab roughly in the middle in cost. Within hours of placing the order, we received an email saying the job was complete and ready to ship. Nations Photo Lab is based in Maryland, and we received the prints at our New York City address the very next day. We need to stress, however, that ours was a very low-volume order placed well outside of the holiday-rush season. Your mileage may vary.

Our prints arrived in perfect condition, which came as no surprise once we inspected the packaging. The prints were in transparent sleeves and taped down to an oversize sheet of thick cardboard with another laid on top so they were sandwiched in between. This bundle then went into a shallow but sturdy shipping box for maximum protection. I ran a digital-printmaking service for almost 10 years, and we shipped high-end prints on a daily basis. There’s simply no better way to pack photos of this size. This package could have taken a severe beating without any damage done to the prints.

Nations Photo Lab places your prints in transparent sleeves and sandwiches them between thick, oversize cardboard sheets, taping them down to ensure they don’t move in transit. Photo: Amadou Diallo

We think most folks will be very pleased with the image quality of prints from Nations Photo Lab. In our tests, the print contrast was pleasingly punchy without sacrificing image detail, and colors were reasonably accurate compared with the digital files. If you’re serious about color fidelity and you have your monitor calibrated and profiled for accuracy, Nations Photo Lab offers a “color-corrected” add-on for a nominal fee that makes adjustments to your image before printing to produce a closer match to what you see on screen. The difference can be subtle for casual photographers who send only 4-by-6 holiday photos once a year, but is a worthwhile option for anyone making larger prints to hang on their wall.

Over a wide range of images including various skin tones, foliage, and saturated colors, our panel of testers consistently ranked prints from Nations Photo Lab near the top among our contenders. Nations Photo Lab tied with Aspen Creek Photo for the number of times selected as either a first or second choice, and it had among the fewest designations as a least favorite choice. Though no print service scored as high overall with our testers as the Epson SureColor P600 inkjet printer, we want to emphasize that image quality is not a dealbreaker with the majority of services we tested. Prints from one lab don’t necessarily appear identical to those from another shop, but the differences are very subtle and largely come down to personal preference. Viewing the images in isolation, we think that outside of imaging professionals, most folks will find little to complain about.

Though gift wrapping is not an essential feature, Nations Photo Lab’s boutique packaging add-on should hold great appeal for anyone wanting a special gift for family or friends, or for clients if you’re a pro photographer: For an additional $6, Nations can deliver the photos in a sleek box tied with a silk ribbon in one of three color options, a classy touch.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

As we described above, the image sensors on smartphone cameras have a 4:3 aspect ratio, so we’d appreciate appropriately proportioned print sizes like the 4-by-5.3 offering that Snapfish and York Photo offer. Again, Nations Photo Lab does give you a full-print option in which your uncropped image prints on a 4-by-6 sheet, but that leaves you with white borders on the left and right that you’ll need to trim manually.

Finally, we’d like to see an additional verso-printing option in which the filename and capture date are automatically pulled from the files’ metadata and printed on the back of each photo. This stamp would prevent confusion over when an image was taken (assuming you’ve set your camera’s time and date correctly) and make it easier to locate the original digital file by searching for its filename. Again, this isn’t a new feature; two of the shops we tested, Printique and Shutterfly, already provide this as an option.

What about professional photo labs?

Miller’s Professional Imaging, ProDPI, and WHCC all have reputations for high quality and excellent service, but they’re geared toward working photographers, with services such as custom portfolios and drop-shipping directly to clients. Using these services effectively requires a degree of input that’s beyond what we expect most amateurs would feel comfortable with.

According to its website, Miller’s is “reserved for professional photographers.” It points all other photographers toward Mpix, the online lab that Miller’s created specifically for consumers and hobbyists. We spoke with representatives of ProDPI, who told us the company individually vets all new clients and requires prospective customers to submit a link to a site featuring their photography to gain approval to place orders.

Before you can place an order with WHCC, the lab requires you to submit up to five test images, which the company prints (free of charge) as 8-by-10s for you to confirm that your monitor is properly calibrated. Only after this process may you place your initial order. Though committed photographers can appreciate this dedication to print accuracy, we think that folks looking to get occasional 4-by-6 prints of the family vacation will find this extra step arduous.

What about big-box stores and pharmacies?

Costco and Sam’s Club each offer photo printing services, but you must be a member to use them, greatly limiting their appeal. We also eliminated shops with in-store pickup options, like CVS, Office Depot, Target, and Walgreens. Although picking up your print from a local retailer within a couple of hours of placing the order is a great convenience, the results we’ve seen in the past have been very disappointing. The quality of the prints you get with in-store pickup depends on the maintenance of that location’s equipment as well as on the expertise of whoever happens to be behind the counter when your online order arrives. We’ve seen dreadful output from our local Walgreens, for example. Your results may vary, of course, but the inherent lack of consistency means we can’t recommend such services as an option for most people. In addition, these shops offer a very limited range of print sizes, and none of them can print a smartphone photo at its native 4:3 aspect ratio without cropping the image’s edges. Walmart does offer a smartphone-friendly 4½-by-6 print size that avoids any cropping, but its overall choice of print sizes is far more limited than those of our main picks, and we have the same concerns about using its in-store pickup option.

The competition

Printique had been our runner-up pick for this guide, but that was almost entirely because it offered an app that lets you upload images from your mobile devices, even though that app doesn’t let you place an order. You have to go to the website on a computer to do that. Now that Nations has an app, we didn’t feel the need to keep this recommendation.

Aspen Creek Photo was our top pick in a previous version of this guide. In our testing, we ranked the color accuracy of its images above that of any other service we tested, and we loved its intuitive ordering interface. Unfortunately, after hearing from some readers about delays in fulfillment of their orders from Aspen Creek, changes in the company’s pricing for smaller prints, and conflicting communications regarding the company’s future, we have dropped our recommendation.

Mpix is one of the most popular photo services, with a mobile app that lets you order photos directly from your smartphone. In our tests, however, we were disappointed by its inability to print smartphone photos without significant cropping. Smartphones, along with point-and-shoot and Micro Four Thirds cameras, have sensors that produce images in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and Mpix offers no small print sizes that match that ratio. Sending Mpix a smartphone photo to make a 4-by-6 print, which has a 3:2 aspect ratio, means your image will be enlarged to fill the extra width of the paper, with portions of the image cropped off along the sides as a result.

If you create images with careful attention to composition, this forced cropping is likely a dealbreaker. EZprints, RitzPix, and York Photo, for example, offer a smartphone-friendly print size at a 4:3 aspect ratio, and Printique, Aspen Creek Photo, and Nations Photo Lab give you the option to print your image uncropped, no matter the aspect-ratio mismatch. As of this writing Mpix provides neither of those options.

In our blind print tests, though no company was a runaway winner, Mpix’s photos ranked as a least-favorite choice more than any other contender. With image quality that fell below the competition’s, plus its lack of support for smartphone-format images and its middle-of-the-road prices, Mpix simply didn’t make a compelling choice against our main picks.

Bay Photo offers small print sizes optimized for smartphone photos, along with sturdy packaging of your order, but in our tests its print output was decidedly middling. In our blind print test, participants rarely made it a first or last choice in side-by-side comparisons with our other contenders, usually slotting it as a reasonable second choice. On their own, we suspect the prints would look fine to most people, but we had many contenders that elicited favorable responses more frequently.

No other service we tested offers lower prices than Snapfish, but this service yielded some of the most disappointing results. The 8-by-10 and 4-by-6 prints suffered from harsh contrast (meaning fewer details in shadows and highlights), and our portrait pics had noticeably orangish skin tones. A close look also revealed sharpening artifacts along detail edges. We weren’t pleased with the packaging, either: Smaller prints shipped in a thin cardboard mailing envelope with no additional padding to protect against rough handling. The 11-by-14 print shipped in a sufficiently thick tube, but no padding was placed inside to protect the print’s edges from the tube’s end caps, resulting in a bent print, shown below.

Snapfish shipped our 11-by-14 print in a tube for protection, but with no internal padding supplied, the print suffered a crease along the top edge after jamming into the end cap during shipping. Photo: Amadou Diallo

A print from RitzPix arrived damaged, as well. The company shipped our 11-by-14 print in a flat envelope sandwiched between thin sheets of backing board (the kind you see in the back of cheap photo frames). Because the shipping envelope was only marginally larger than the 11-by-14 photo, the print was dinged in the corner when the package was crushed on its edge during shipping. RitzPix could have prevented the damage by simply using a larger envelope, or better yet, a box, as several other shops did. The inadequate packaging was especially disappointing given that the company billed us a whopping $14. 95 for shipping, more than twice the average shipping cost of the other shops we ordered from.

This 11-by-14 print from RitzPix took damage when its too-small envelope was crushed on the corner during shipping. Photo: Amadou Diallo

EZprints, like Snapfish, was one of the few services whose prints stood out as uncommonly poor. Every print had a hazy, washed-out appearance, as if covered by a veil. These were the least sharp photos of the bunch, and clear areas of tone had a somewhat mottled appearance. Like all of the other services we tested, EZprints uses a wet chemical printing process. The photos were printed on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper. Other services used this paper with much more pleasing results, so we can ascribe EZprints’s poor results only to quality control rather than the equipment or the development process.

Our order from Shutterfly was the second most expensive in our tests, and the print quality was average at best. Our biggest complaint was about the packaging. The small prints came in a thin, flat envelope, and the 11-by-14 came in a tube, resulting in a curled print that would need flattening before display. (Note: The quickest way to uncurl a print is to wrap it around a wide-diameter tube in the opposite direction of the original curl and roll it up. It can take some practice to do this without accidentally creasing or creating ripple marks in the print, however. A much safer approach is to lay the prints flat under some weight for a day or two.)

Though a tube is a necessity for very large prints, other competitors were able to ship our 11-by-14 print flat and still provide plenty of protection. Given the choice, we’d rather avoid having to flatten a print.

Although a shipping tube can offer substantial protection, the print you receive will have a lot of curl. Photo: Amadou Diallo

York Photo sent us prints that consistently had a warmer, less accurate color cast than those from the best-performing shops. Our 11-by-14 print shipped in a tube, and though York Photo did put end padding inside to prevent the sort of damage we saw with Snapfish’s print, we still prefer a flat-shipping option at this size to avoid having to uncurl the print. Also worth noting is that York Photo’s 11-by-14 print shipped from District Photo Inc., the same photo finisher that owns Snapfish.

The safest—though not the quickest—way to uncurl a print is to sandwich it between sheets of cardboard and leave it under some weight (coffee-table books are perfect) for 24 to 48 hours. Photo: Amadou Diallo

Zazzle lets you make photo prints but has a user interface designed for single-order-at-a-time jobs. You can’t upload more than 10 images at a time, and the process of choosing a print size involves dragging each image individually on its own order page over a print-size template. That’s far too tedious to make even a handful of separate prints.

Winkflash has a steady stream of very negative reviews. Apparently the company was sold to new ownership recently, and during the transition many customers lost access to their photos hosted on the company’s servers. That, coupled with the fact that the only customer support available is via a Web form—there’s no phone number or even an email option—made Winkflash an easy dismissal.

FreePrints, as its name suggests, lets you get up to 1,000 4-by-6 prints per year without charge, though you do pay for shipping. Judging from the limited information on its single-page website, you must do everything via a phone app. With virtually no information provided online about the company, the prints, or the order process, we fall back on the maxim, “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

SmugMug is a platform for creating a website that showcases your photography (for a monthly subscription) with photo printing offered as a service to anyone who wants to buy prints of your work. This feature is of limited use to most people, and the actual print services are handled through partnerships with labs like Bay Photo, EZprints, and WHCC, companies you can order directly from instead.

Amazon Prints offers 4-by-6 prints at 9¢ each, matching low-cost rivals like Snapfish and providing free shipping. Amazon Prime members already using the company’s Prime Photos service to store their pics can order prints of those images directly. We placed an order using the same test files we submitted to our other contenders. Amazon’s order process was dead simple. Print quality fell toward the middle of the pack—certainly not the best that we saw (skin tones skewed toward orange), but not the worst. The photos arrived within six business days. We were disappointed in the packaging, which consisted of a flat mailer with two sheets of thin cardboard inside; the entire package bent easily in the hand, so not surprisingly one of the prints arrived with a corner ding.

As of this writing, Amazon’s service has significant limitations. Anyone shooting with a smartphone should know that unlike every other service we tested, Amazon won’t let you print those 4:3-aspect-ratio smartphone images full size (with borders) on a 4-by-6 sheet. Instead those images will have to be cropped, so you may lose bits of heads or limbs if you’ve shot tightly framed portraits.

About your guide

Amadou Diallo

Amadou Diallo is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in Al Jazeera America, The New York Times, Forbes, and The Atlantic.

Photo Sharing/Critique Websites Review - PhotographyBLOGPhotography Blog

Introduction

Editing your own work, whatever you do, can be a hit and miss affair, especially if you're relatively inexperienced. One proven way to combat this is to get a fresh pair of eyes to look at what you've done; friends, family, work colleagues. It's amazing what other people see that you have completely missed.

Now, with the advent of the Web, you can also invite complete strangers to offer their views and opinions on your work! There are a number of websites out there that allow you to share your photographs and invite constructive criticism of them by other more-than-willing photographers.

In this 6 part Review, I'm going to take a look at some Photo Sharing/Critique websites and let you know what I think about each one and the overall concept of posting your photos for review.

I've posted a limited selection of my photographs onto the following 5 websites during the last month or so:

Photo Forums
ShutterCity
UseFilm
WebAperture
webphotoforum
NEW! Dan Bachmann's Update August 2004

My principal aim was to try and get some constructive feedback on my photos. Generally speaking, are they any good? Like most photographers, I'm interested in finding out what other people think of my work. More specifically, what could be done to improve them? Hopefully other people would suggest specific ways in which my photos could be improved. As a relatively inexperienced photographer, I think the more criticism I can get, the better.

A secondary aim was to get people interested in my photos and drive traffic to my websites. I figured that some people would find my URL and make their way to PhotographyBLOG after having seen my photos.

My actual choice of photographs wasn't in any way scientific. I picked what I thought were some of the best photographs that I've taken, and also some more recent ones that I'm using for my City and Guilds Photography Course. I've tended to post the same photos on each of the 5 websites.

Comparison

This table compares certain aspects of each website e.g. price, and it also shows the statistics for the photos that I have uploaded e.g. Total Views for All Photos (as of 13th March 2003).


Free	Free	Free (donation welcome)	Free	Free (£15 to subscribe)
2000Kb disk space	3 photos per week	1 photo per day*	4 photos per 7 days 50 photos maximum	30 photos maximum (no limit for subscribers)
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No (subscribers only)
Yes	No	No	Yes	No
February 9th	February 18th	February 28th	February 18th	February 15th
23	7	6	12	23
27	45	42	47	17
290	213	103	256	148
2	6	6	8	7
3	25	14	48	29
	View My Photos	View My Photos	View My Photos	View My Photos	View My Photos

*UseFilm - Allows 1 upload per day for non-donors who sign up. As you increase your participation the number of uploads you get increases for free as well. Also if a member donates they get 3 uploads per day plus whatever their participation level gives them as a bonus.

>> Next: WebAperture

Overview of 10 Free Image Download Sites

In addition to the quality of the content, you should also take care of its graphic presentation. Adding photos, images is very important, because 1 picture is worth a thousand words.

I try to use pictures in almost every article in order to make the site attractive and pleasant to read the content. There are a lot of images on the Internet. The ideal case is when you use on the site only those that are allowed to be placed.

I'm not going to cover graphics licensing in this article. This is the topic of a separate article. Instead, I am ready to share a list of sites where you can find and download stock photos for free.

The CCO license was issued to the Creative Commons (CC) non-profit organization.

Gratisography

I discovered this site back in 2014 and have fallen in love with it ever since. Unlike other similar sites, here you can download high quality images and use them for your personal and professional projects without providing any credit. The quality of their pictures is very high.

Go to Gratisography and see for yourself.

Pixabay

You should bookmark a service like Pixabay as it offers a wide variety of images from people all over the world. These images are free to use, as with gratisography, even for commercial use. Attribution is not required. Pixabay has a large database of beautiful photos that are full of colors and emotions.

Sample photo from Pixabay

Check out Pixabay.

Pexels

This stock looks very solid. It has a long history of its existence. All photos here are licensed under Creative Commons License (CC0) , which means you can use these images for commercial use. Every month they add 1500-3000 new HQ photos and now they boast over 100,000 photos.

Pexels stock image example

Switch to pexels.

Stocksnap

This is another free stock photography site where you can download high quality pictures for free. All images are licensed under the CCO license (see above).

Sample picture from stocksnap

Watch stocksnap.

Flickr

Flickr is one of my favorite sites for finding and downloading free website images. It has a huge database of royalty-free license and whenever I urgently need a suitable photo for my article, Flickr is the site I visit first.

In order to download any image, you just have to visit the categories you need and search for images. You will get many relevant images in various sizes and you can download any image that suits your article.

Sample image from flickr

Search for free stock photos using Flickr.

MorgueFile

Morgue File is one of the best free stock image sites that makes it easy to find images by category. You can select an image category to make a more relevant search. The site is easy to navigate, which makes it comfortable to work on it. It is possible to purchase a PRO account. With a Pro account, you can edit images directly on Morguefile.com. Add photo filters, make adjustments, enhance, crop and post your work right on their site. Image editing is just one of the many features available to PRO account users.

Image example from MorgueFile

[Link]

FreeRangeStock

You can download images from FreeRangeStock for personal and commercial use. To download pictures you need to go through a quick and free registration on the FreeRangeStock website. In addition to downloading images, if you are a professional photographer, you can also upload images to the stock itself and earn money with Adsense in the revenue sharing program.

Sample image from freerangestock

Link for review.

FreeDigitalPhotos

In addition to downloading royalty free images from FreeDigitalPhotos, you can also download PowerPoint presentations, educational projects, Photoshop projects and more for personal and commercial use. So if you're looking for more than just pictures, check out FreeDigitalPhotos.

[Link]

Photogen

Photogen also provides free images for personal and commercial use. Photogen provides you with image categories such as animals, culture, nature, business, etc. You can select the categories that suit your needs. Photogen provides very up-to-date searches and good image quality. It is easy to use.

Example photo from photogen

[Link]

Graphicstock

This is another popular site that allows you to download free stock photos for personal and commercial use. You can create a free account and start uploading images right now. You can also mark an image as a favorite and upload it later. Royalty-free license.

View site.

Review of 30 Image Hostings for Quick Publishing / Sudo Null IT News0001

A list of image hosting sites is presented, selected according to an unusual, but in special cases important feature - the ability of to publish photos without authorization on the site. Photo hosting sites that claim to be “free”, but at the same time forget about this important degree of freedom, are ruthlessly eliminated, but somewhere at the end of the review, links are still given to the most popular of them. Other important conditions for getting into the list are not forgotten - reliability and duration of storage, ease of use and the absence of intrusive advertising. Subsequently, it is worth choosing from the entire list of 5-7 most worthy and convenient hosting.

UPD 2022-04: out of 30 hostings with live links to images in 2022, two remained: imgur.com and thumbsnap.com.

Special cases for which this review was made - the publication of some image (pictures, drawings, photographs, screenshots, graphics) on other people's (not our own) resources, especially where there are no solutions for publishing photos at all (including Habr) or they are uncomfortable. These are articles on other people's resources or in their blogs on other people's hosting (for example, blogger. com) with inconvenient or flawed image management, on online auctions, comments on blogs and forums.

Hosting for such a publication provides text links in the form of HTML-, BB-codes or direct links to the image and viewing page, previews (they are also miniatures, thumbnails) of various sizes and a number of other amenities. Let's consider them all and arrange the found hostings in descending order of some average convenience. At the end, as a bonus, there are links to some other online imaging resources that also adhere to the optional authorization rule.

Research history

Some hosting was recently introduced for public advertising purposes, which caused a number of non-obvious doubts about its respectability. Meanwhile, ideas of using it as an image service for publications on Habré were voiced. A counter-question arose: which image hosting, in particular, for Habr, is better to use?

First, several hostings were investigated using one picture as an example. It turned out that the convenience of work is different for different hosts, and the results (in terms of the weight of the full picture, the type and weight of the preview) are different. It is not clear that there is a quality standard in this “industry”, everyone strives for convenience and stops at different milestones. There are few hosting reviews [1] (all of them are also important as evidence of their former reputation), they provide an answer to only a part of the questions. Therefore, it was decided to approach testing in more detail, to figure out what is really needed, according to priorities, and what can be sacrificed. It turned out that there are not 5-10 suitable hosting sites, but 4 times more (about 30), despite the fact that 2 times more were screened out (40-60). The list of hostings does not claim to be complete and does not recommend anything for use - it simply provides data on the hostings listed, and the data speaks for itself. It is highly likely that temporary unstable services got here and more worthy ones did not get there. Therefore, in the future, the table will sometimes be shuffled based on the results of checks.

For example, in the future, it is a good idea to load test each of the hostings [4], make download attempts several times at different peak times, and monitor availability for each hosting for months. This, of course, is not done all at once. Let's take advantage of the very fact of publishing in order to monitor services and monitor the quality of storage.

Target niche of services

They are not designed to display small service drawings of site design (some allow), for this, ordinary universal hosting is used. But they try to guarantee the quality and reliability of displaying important graphic information for the user. According to the reliability of the display, even their own hosting for development will lose to them in the long-term existence of the link.

We are interested in hosting with some strict conditions. For example, there is a mandatory authorization - you don’t have to look further (because there are enough hostings with the possibility of anonymous publication). Working only with the client program or inconvenience without it is the same. No preview size options - great reason to choose other alternatives. Yes, and all sorts of restrictions on the free version of the account are not beneficial, because they distract me to unnecessary control: will my old photos stop showing if any threshold is exceeded? Nevertheless, they are worthy of consideration and selection according to tastes.

The searched services are only a part of the overall image processing task. The previous parts (editing, capturing) are deliberately not considered, although some editing may get into the hosting service. Let's not look at too simplistic and integrated services like gyazo.com, in which little attention is paid to the quality of details. They are good for a small group of people to view screenshots once, but lack the publishing tools (for thousands of views and quality requirements). Therefore, by default, we will assume that we have a graphic editor and a screenshot taker, and we can do without what they can do.

Image hostings are divided into photo hostings and technical image hostings. If the former are aimed at photographers and other “ordinary people” who may not have their own website, then the latter involve publishing a photo (or screenshot, drawing) in blog or forum posts, so they do not seek to provide their own gallery service for viewing. The former are fully capable of working in the niche of the latter. Therefore, the strongest hostings in the world are designed for the first type - for everyone. As a retribution - all of them mainly limit free accounts in terms of rights and duration of storage. We are interested in both reliability and unlimitedness, so we will have to consider not only recognized leaders.

Let's list in descending order of priority the necessary and desirable qualities of service. At the beginning necessary, then under the line - desirable.

Finally, the review solves another strategic problem. Such painstaking work would not be needed if it were not for the task of embedding the most successful and enduring services into a plugin for Firefox / Chrome, in the future - for Opera. Not only for Habr, where, of course, it is urgently needed, but in general as a universal plug-in (there are such plug-ins for several Western services [2], but once again, they are of high quality and with a comprehensive analysis). Therefore, we will be interested in the presence of API at the service.

Of course, other ways are possible: 1) just a screenshoter that can edit within the required limits, like Ashampoo Magical Snap 2 + image hosting or 2) an online editor on flash + a plugin for screenshots in FF + image hosting with the "Crop (crop)" function ". They are also sufficient for publications, but due to quality issues, we will consider them beyond the scope of the article and study.

Test preparation

To determine the quality of image processing when saving on a hosting, we will take several pictures of different types and genres. Two PNG-8 screenshots, one animated GIF, two halftone JPGs of different weights, one very large png with texts. In total, 6 pictures. They will measure the quality of compression and preview display. We will get a clear picture of data storage on each of the hostings. If it was possible to draw conclusions from 1-3 pictures, the rest were not uploaded to the hosting, so we have links from 1 to 6.

Choosing only PNG-8 is due to the fact that PNG24 is unprofitable in terms of volume for photos with halftones (in most cases it is better to choose JPG), and hosts tend to save the PNG type in PNG24 rather than PNG-8, so testing PNG-8 will help identify more bugs in save operations.

1-test-shotChromeExt.png - PNG-8, small screenshot, 892 h 1014, 37`452 bytes;
2-test-oak.jpg — small photo, 517 x 317, 41`844 bytes;
3-test-elfim.gif - test animated avatar, 128 x 96, 58`697 bytes;
4-test-GerdArntz.png - PNG-8, large long screenshot, 1002 x 11`862, 1`099`246 bytes;
5-test-river.jpg — big photo, 1996 x 2649, 1`272`068 bytes;
6-test-austria-hungary. png - PNG-8, 2 color, wide map, 4463 x 3330, 828`732 bytes;

UPD 2022-04: Hosting radikal.ru for placing files, photos and videos stops working from 03/10/2022. Therefore, the pictures displayed by him disappeared from the table.
(2) Also, deactivated other broken links for such short-lived services that were once relevant and useful.

It would be tempting to put all hosting previews on the page, but we won't do that - even 1 preview (50 pictures) is a lot for 1 page. Therefore, for clarity, we will place here 6 previews from one good hosting [ UPD is no longer working], and all other links to images from other providers will be through . The reader at any time will be able to manually check the existence of the picture on the selected hosting by clicking on any link.

We will give the types of links: direct, to a screenshot, to the view page, and, if any, some interesting features: gallery, preview options.

List of researched hostings.

Some well-known, reliable, but not passed by some parameters hostings were not included in the comparison. A little more about them below [3]; some names: Yandex Photos, Flikr.com, Google Picasa…

In order not to repeat the list below again, it is sorted according to the results of this study in descending order of functionality and convenience. In accordance with the incoming data on reliability, the list will be sorted if possible. All links to pictures in the tables are made principally without authorization in order to check the reliability of storage in the future.

Attention is given to each differently, it depends on the degree of interest and the opportunities offered. Unpromising restrictions stopped the study after loading 1-2 pictures. After the list there will be more detailed reviews of three interesting hostings. (When clicking on links 4, 5, 6 be careful: traffic for each is about 1 MB ! They are needed to test the storage and quality of large drawings on different services. Links 4, 5, 6 with "Preview" inscriptions are usually 5-50 KB.)

Links

Notes

host.fotki.com - "Sorry, but Fotki hotlinking service has been suspended indefinitely." (2022; root site is working, but links to images and image hosting are not; links are deactivated!)

1 2 3 4 5 6
preview 1 2 3 4 5 6
page 1 2 3 4 5 6

From the main page of the site, the page of anonymous download is not found immediately, in 2 clicks. Next, don't forget to clear the checkbox for optimization and resizing (there is a stepwise resizing). There are no other settings. Gives a number of texts for insertion, preview (120x91), no statistics, no deletion. Preview hassle-free, easy. Those. the amenities are minimal, but everything is there, and the hosting is very large, which deserves attention. If the image on the viewing page is reduced using html, then the cursor on it is a “hand”, and you need to click to view it in full size.

The restriction on the number of anonymous downloads and the size of pictures is explicitly stated. Misleading with extension ".jpg" and similar when displaying ".htm" pages. Enough for publications, should be stable for impressions and should not have unnecessary details on the view page.

The registration mode provides a number of other conveniences: flash widgets for the site with a variable preview size. But for some reason it is not clear how to upload a photo to an album (via the site) without shrinking the size and without processing. Other than that, the site looks like a 2005-2006 level communication site plus blogs.

imageshack.us - there is hosting, but no images, in addition - redirects; (links to pictures are deactivated!)

1 2 3 5
preview 1 2 3 5
page 1 2 3 5
other design 1
gallery 1-2-3
player 1-2-3
A separate review is at the bottom of the article.

The richest in terms of capabilities of the considered services.

A simple listing takes up a lot of space, so it's been moved down. The service has been around for a long time, there are programs for downloading and an API, a widget and even a torrent service. The language of the FAQ is English; The interface has Russian. Storage limit for unregistered - deletion if the file has not been accessed for a year.

Among the shortcomings: cannot load "4" and "6", freezes (Flash 10.0.45.2). GIF out of proportion during slideshow.

pikucha.ru - hosting ceased to exist

1 2 3 4
preview 1 2 3 4
page 1 2 3 4

Ultra-minimalism, but with all the features, even the inscription in the preview (fig. on the right). Easy to edit; multiboot. Preview - jpeg under *.png extension, when needed. The file name is in the URL of the pictures. It's worth seeing what the loading bar looks like. The ratio of power to the number of parts is maximum. And there is nothing else on the pages, except for a few links.

Under the word "Friend" is hidden unobtrusive authorization. The issuance of links after multiloading is also minimal, but each letter is useful (fig. on the left). Next - 5 links, preview, statistics, except for the upload date. In gif "3", you can see a flaw in the preview: the inscription with dimensions is only in the first frame of the animation, so it flickers [small minus]. But on the page for viewing the gif, for some reason, a typical failure (more than one hosting): the proportions are distorted, the system decided that the dimensions are 61 x 91, although the picture itself is not distorted.

radikal.ru UPD 2022-04: Hosting radikal.ru for hosting files, photos and videos stops working from 03/10/2022.

Direct links 1 2 3 4 5 6
Preview
page 1

Monitored, 1 week.
Below is a more detailed description of the features of the work.

The main page shows a concise text that perfectly matches what is there.

Neither subtract nor add.
Official text:

The service allows you to easily and quickly publish your pictures on the pages of any Internet forum, blog, chat, bulletin board (the necessary preparation of the image is performed automatically). You only need to select a picture on the disk, click the UPLOAD button and then copy the link to your message.
In addition, this service has many advantages:
— Does not require registration
— The storage period of pictures is unlimited
- The maximum size of the uploaded file is up to 10Mb
- Ability to upload images using:
— programs Radical-Photo client
- programs Radical-Photo ShellExtension (Does not require the installation of dotNet Framework)
— The service is completely free

Newly added online editor (requires Silverlight).
[minus] With each editing, the end addresses change, you need to change the inserted texts so that changes take place there.

imageshost.ru - hosting ceased to exist

1 5
preview 1 5
page 1 5

JPG previews are referred to as *.png. Your comment up to 250 characters. Adjustable preview size, caption on the preview, caption on the photo. Statistics on the view page. Anyone's rating. Adding comments to the view page from anyone without authorization (hardly a plus). There is no hint that you can click on the image to enlarge it to full size [small minus]. "Send me an email with a link to the image and a link to delete." 6 embed texts, no separate direct link. There are many pluses.

picamatic.com - reports "Country not allowed" (from .ru) or hosting has ceased to exist

1 5
preview 1 5
small preview 5
page 1 5

Very ergonomic loading: there are 16 places to show previews, on which 3-4 texts drop out (see the picture on the right). Three, without a direct link - if the weight is more than 300 KB (the direct one goes, but in 2 steps).

Finally, all the data from this 4 by 4 matrix is easy to save by sending it to your mail in 2 clicks (why only mail, and not text display, is not very clear (for spam?), an inconvenience). Preview up to 240px, very uneconomical for PNG - 38 KB for figure "1", for example. JPG for this size is also too big - 23 KB for picture "5". Enough quality 60-75% with 9-12 KB. There is a small preview, but it must be calculated (remove the word "big") or taken from a 4x4 matrix of images.
From a statement in the FAQ: "We're committed to keeping pictures forever." Hidden registration by cookies. The size of each picture should not exceed 2MB. In recent days, according to information from the guestbook, there have been many days of interruptions, moving, the disappearance of some pictures from the hosting, but with the promise of restoration. Does not transfer its name without the prefix "www." - [minus].

uploadingit.com/public - hosting (images) has ceased to exist

1 3 (4 is not uploading) 5
preview big 1 3 5
preview small 5 (undocumented)
page 1 3 5

Files up to 50 MB, 1 file each, no settings, previews up to 500px.

In addition to images - "Supported file types jpeg, jpg, png, gif, bmp, mp3, txt, avi, wmv, mpg, mpeg, doc, zip.". Called "Direct Link" the browsing page, not the real "Direct Link". Too long picture "4" could not upload. You can guess about the existence of an undocumented preview (change the word in the URL) up to 150px in size. In total, there are a lot of pluses, but there is everything necessary for pictures, plus other files - texts, archives, music, video.

imgur.com - hosting and links to images work, but not all (2022)

1 2 5
preview 1 2 5
big preview 1 2 5
page 1 and 2, 5 (not available in 2022)

Below is a more detailed description of the features of the work.

Short URL like imgur.com/tCkFz.png
Large preview - up to 640 px, small - square 90x90px (they differ in the last letter). Single page view: imgur.com/tCkFzs (missing in 2022) (Group view is possible if a group of images is uploaded at once).

imgur.com/bQo0C.png - published from under the account, for verification.

View statistics available: number of views, traffic, download age.
Links of 6 types, including tags with previews.
API
Force compresses if over 1 MB (eg "5" compressed from 1.2 MB to 700 KB).

savepic.ru - hosting (images) ceased to exist

1 2 3 (4 not in size), 6
preview 1 2 3 6
page 1 2 3 6

If the figure is larger than 768, then you need to go to the "add. Options" and cancel the size reduction. There are 3 gradation previews (good). You can sign your own or "Increase" + weight of the image. You can send a link by email. The animation in the preview is preserved. Show statistics on the page. "Size no more than 5000x4000 pixels and 4 MB." All in all, there are many pluses. “Images…are removed if they are not accessed for 24 months.” - also a pretty good rule against the background of typical "3 months."

themghost.