This article presents a non-exhaustive list of notable image-sharing websites.
Name | Location / Owner / Hoster | Description/Focus/Registration requirements | Other | Registered users | Storage Space Allowed Per User (standard) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
500px | Canada / Amazon AWS (hosting) | Free, registration required | Yes | Yes | Yes | ChromeOS | 13,000,000 [1] | 7 uploads/week free plan, unlimited for paid accounts |
Album2 | Oslo, Norway / Sveinung Dammen | Free 30 day trial, registration required | 2,000 [2] | 150 prints/year | ||||
Dayviews | Sweden / Dayviews AB (Bilddagboken AB) | Free image hosting, registration required | Yes | Yes | Yes | 1,291,500 [3] | Unlimited storage for 547×410 pix reduced images, also unlimited resolution and size for paying BDB HD users, costing approximately equivalent to $10.50 a year. | |
DeviantArt | United States | Free image hosting, registration required. Subscription option provides additional services, and unlocks hidden features. Generally allows art-specific content only, as the service is not a generic image hosting service. | 44,000,000 [4] | Unlimited uploads with 30 MB limit per image for all account types. | ||||
Dronestagram | France | Free, Dronestagram is a photo sharing community dedicated to drone photography. The site that has been described as "Instagram for drones", allows hobbyists to share their geo-referenced aerial photos and videos. [5] | Yes | No | No | 30,000 [6] | ||
United States | Yes | Yes | 1B | Unlimited | ||||
Flickr | United States / SmugMug | Photologging/hosting Free registration/Pro service | Yes | Yes | Yes [7] | 112,000,000 (May 2015) [8] | Since 20 May 2013, 1TB free, 200MB per image, all photos display, original files downloadable. Starting January 8 of 2019, free accounts will be limited to 1000 images. The 1TB limit for Pro accounts will be removed. [9] | |
Fotki | Estonia [10] / Fotki, Inc. | Free registration photo sharing service and communication portal. | Yes | Yes | 1,250,000 [11] | 50MB for free, unlimited storage for $30/year. [12] | ||
Geograph Britain and Ireland | United Kingdom / Geograph Project Limited | Geo-located Geographical Images whole of Britain and Ireland, free, registration required | 12,634 | Unlimited | ||||
Google Photos | Image and video hosting service. | 500,000,000 [13] | Files use a storage quota (15 GB free). | |||||
United States / Facebook | Photologging/Social networking . Registration is required. | Yes | Yes | Yes | 100,000,000 [14] | Owned by Facebook | ||
Imgur | United States | Free image hosting, no registration required. | Yes | Yes | Unknown | From 9 Feb 2015 all Imgur accounts are treated as Imgur pro accounts. No limits. [15] | ||
Ipernity | France [16] | Photo, video & blog sharing. Operated by the world's largest non-commercial photo sharing community, without profit interest, advertising, data trading or sale of any content. | No | Yes | 2,500,000 [17] | 100 GB for €44,90/year (Standard), including unlimited uploads, geo-mapping, picture processing (PicMonkey) and the worlds best integrated translator (DeepL). Basic subscription with reduced limits and features for €22,90/year. | ||
jAlbum | Sweden [18] | Free hosting of galleries created with Jalbum software. | Yes | 340,000 [19] | 30MB of space given for free accounts, upgrade to 1GB space for €19/year. | |||
Photobucket | United States | Free registration service. As of July 2017, payment of $400/year required if hosted images are to be displayed on external sites [20] | Yes | Yes | 50,000,000 [21] | With a free account, the user can use up to 10GB of bandwidth per month and 2GB storage. Unlimited free storage, 1MB per photo and 10 minutes per video (with image size restrictions). No size restrictions with Pro account. | ||
United States | Photo sharing/social networking | 11,700,000 [22] | Unknown | |||||
Pixabay | Germany [23] | Sharing of high-quality public domain photos. Free to browse and download, registration required to contribute. Includes social networking capabilities. | Unknown | Unknown | ||||
SecureTribe | United States | Free registration service | Yes | No | No | No | 13,800,000 [24] | Secure photo/video sharing |
Shutterfly | United States | Free registration service | 2,000,000 [25] | Free, unlimited picture storage. Shared Albums are limited to 1,000 photos. Full resolution downloads only possible via purchase of archive DVD. | ||||
SmugMug | United States | Free search, subscription hosting | 315,000 [26] | "unlimited" storage | ||||
Snapfish | United States / Hewlett-Packard | Free registration service, also provides services for Costco's online photo processing store. | 90,000,000 [27] | unlimited, pay per download | ||||
Unsplash | Montreal, Quebec / Unsplash, Inc. [28] | Free, registration required to upload pictures. Unsplash license only. It's similar to CC0, but the user can't use the pictures to replicate a similar or competing service. [29] | Yes [30] | Unknown | Unknown | |||
VK | Russia | Free, Russian social network | Yes | Yes | Unlimited | |||
Wikimedia Commons | United States | Free, Creative Commons license, Public domain [31] | Yes | Yes | Yes | Unlimited | ||
Name | Location/Owner (if any) | Description/Focus/Registration requirements | Date closed | Status/Notes | Registered users | Storage Space Allowed Per User (standard) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Zooomr | United States / BlueBridge Technologies Group | No registration service since 2007. | 2007 | Users are no longer accepted. | 100,000 | Unlimited uploads and unlimited storage for ALL users. | |
Radar.net | Free registration. | May 26, 2010 | Radar shut down on May 26, 2010 at noon (PDT). [32] | Unknown | ? | ||
GazoPa Bloom | Flower photo sharing service | 2011 | Unknown | ? | |||
Fotopic.net | UK/Snappy Designs Ltd | March 8, 2011 | Unknown | ||||
Ovi Share | Finland / Nokia | Nokia's multimedia sharing service, formerly called Twango. Service closed on May 30, 2012. | May 30, 2012 | Other Nokia services still available with the registered account. [33] | 20,000,000 | unlimited, pay per download | |
MobileMe Web Gallery | United States / Apple Inc. | Subscription service. Ended June 30, 2012 | June 30, 2012 | For an advertised "limited time", data was still able to be retrieved from MobileMe until July 31, 2012, when the site finally closed completely. Services moved to iCloud on June 30. | 180,000 [34] | 10GB (standard level) | |
Kodak Gallery | United States | Free registration service, archiving photo service for $25/year. | July 2, 2012 | (Closed down on July 2, 2012; all accounts moved over to Shutterfly) | 20,000,000 [35] | Used to be unlimited low-resolution, paid users can download high-res images that they've uploaded. New minimum purchase requirements 3/09: $4.99/yr for 2GB or less, $19.99/yr for more than 2GB. | |
Webshots | United States | Free registration service. (Discontinued on December 1, 2012, including paid service.) | December 1, 2012 | All old user photos from accounts not migrated to Shutterfly were deleted. Webshots still operates in other fields, and is owned by Threefold Photos. | 32,000,000 [36] | One 800×600 image per day | |
Pixorial | United States | Personal photo and video sharing platform. Registration required. Free subscription available. | July 18, 2014 | No new accounts being accepted. | 636,000 | Free subscription available with 7 GB of storage for photos or videos. No limits on resolution of images or length of videos. Additional paid subscriptions available with increased storage. Unlimited uploads of photos or videos. | |
Lockerz | United States | Free registration service | 2014 | 19,000,000 [37] | Unlimited uploads for all users; 5MB per image | ||
Bayimg | Sweden / The Pirate Bay | Free image hosting, no registration required, uncensored | 2014 [38] | Temporarily reopened in 2016 for file recovery. [38] | |||
imm.io | United States / Autodesk | Free image hosting, images removed if not viewed in the last 30 days. | February 3, 2014 [39] | Unknown | |||
Streamzoo | United States | Mobile photosocial game, free registration service, unlimited storage and sharing, available on Apple iOS, Android and Web | March 21, 2014 | All services stopped and photos deleted. | Unknown | Unlimited | |
Trovebox | United States / Wide Angle Labs, Inc. [40] | Free image hosting, registration required. Subscription option provides additional features. | March 31, 2015 | Unknown | 100 photo uploads per month for free users, unlimited for Pro accounts. 30MB per photo. | ||
Panoramio | Headquartered in Switzerland / Google | Free registration service | November 4, 2016 | 4,700,000 | Unlimited provided the photos comply with the Google Earth Photo Acceptance Policy. | ||
Phanfare | United States / Carbonite | Subscription-based photo sharing | May 28, 2017 | Phanfare and SmugMug have worked out a transition plan. [41] | Unlimited storage. Subscription accounts only. Bought out by Carbonite. | ||
yfrog | United States / ImageShack | Twitter photo sharing. Registration required. As of 2011 [update] holds approximately 29% of the Twitter photo sharing market. [42] [43] | ? | ||||
TinyPic | United States / PhotoBucket | Free image hosting, no registration required | September 9, 2019 | All services stopped. Uploaded photos downloadable up until September 19, 2019. | Unknown | No known limit, but largest image dimension limited to 1600 pixels. | |
Legend:
Name | File formats | Upload | Folder/ album structure | Limitations | IPTC support | Tags/ keywords | Comments | Rating | Download originals | Notes | Geo- tagging | Friendly URLs | API | Custom layout | Subscriptions |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Flickr | JPEG, GIF, PNG, (TIFF displayed as JPEG, compressed up to 58:1 for a 16bpc TIFF) | collections contain albums | After 20 MAY 2013, 1TB free, 200MB per image, all photos display, original files downloadable. | Some [48] | Yes | Some | Some [49] | Some [50] | arbitrary notes | Yes | No | Flickr Services | No | RSS | |
Fotki | Animated GIF, [51] JPEG, PNG; [52] BMP and TIFF are converted to JPEG | e-mail, FTP, Java, browser (mass/fetch from URL; upload one photo at a time), desktop app (basic), desktop image viewers | hierarchical folders contain folders or albums | 50MB for non-paying users; can get 20MB extra/month; filenames are truncated to 34 characters | Some [48] | Yes | Yes [53] | No | Some [54] | No | Yes | Some [55] | Fotki full help | registered users [56] | RSS, [57] Web [58] |
ImageShack [ needs update ] | JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, mkv, mp4, MOV, AVI, MPEG, wm, 3gp, flv | browser (one at a time), browser (multiple, zipped) | flat slideshows | free users: 5GB storage 5MB/image limit; subscribers: 3MB/image limit | No [59] | Some [60] | Some | Yes | No | No | Some | ||||
OneDrive | JPEG, ? | HTTP, Silverlight | albums | 100MB per photo [61] (7GB total) | No | Yes | Some [62] | Some | Yes [63] | Yes | No | No | Yes [64] | No | No |
Picasa Web Albums | Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG | browser, Google+, Picasa, Exporter for iPhoto, the Aperture to Picasa Web Albums plug-in, Uploader on Mac OS X, [65] or F-Spot on Linux | flat albums | Unlimited for photos smaller than a certain resolution; 1GB free for larger photos; Additional storage for monthly fee. [66] | Some [48] [67] | Yes | Some | No | Yes [68] | face recognition | Yes | friendly album/path, numeric filename | No | RSS | |
Shutterfly | JPEG only | Flash batch | flat albums | No, even Exif support is incomplete | via desktop app (Shutterfly Studio) | Some | No | No | multiple templates | ||||||
SmugMug | JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, Video | 12MB per Photo (Standard/Power), 24MB per Photo (Pro and during 14 day trial) | Some [48] | Yes | Yes [69] | Yes [70] | Yes [71] | No | Yes | Yes | Yes [72] | Yes | |||
Snapfish | JPEG only | No | No | ? | No | $0.25/photo | No | ||||||||
Webshots | JPEG, ? | 5,400 photos, 540 videos | No | Yes | Some [62] | Some [73] | Some [74] | No | No | No |
CodedColor is a bitmap graphics editor and image organizer for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, and is published by 1STEIN.
Exchangeable image file format is a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras, scanners and other systems handling image and sound files recorded by digital cameras. The specification uses the following existing encoding formats with the addition of specific metadata tags: JPEG lossy coding for compressed image files, TIFF Rev. 6.0 for uncompressed image files, and RIFF WAV for audio files. It does not support JPEG 2000 or GIF encoded images.
Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing website, originally created by a company named Lifescape in 2002. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the word casa and "pic" for pictures.
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a common way for amateur and professional photographers to host high-resolution photos. It has changed ownership several times and has been owned by SmugMug since April 20, 2018.
Fusker is a type of website or utility that extracts images in bulk from a website by systematically loading and downloading images following a pattern in the website's URL scheme. Fusking or fuskering is often used to extract private and nude photos without consent of the owner.
Image sharing, or photo sharing, is the publishing or transfer of digital photos online. Image sharing websites offer services such as uploading, hosting, managing and sharing of photos. This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images. The term can also be loosely applied to the use of online photo galleries that are set up and managed by individual users, including photoblogs. Sharing means that other users can view but not necessarily download images, and users can select different copyright options for their images.
Photobucket is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community based in Denver, Colorado, United States. Photobucket once hosted more than 10 billion images from 100 million registered members. Links from personal Photobucket accounts were often used for avatars displayed on Internet forums, storage of videos, embedding on blogs, and distribution in social networks. Images hosted on Photobucket were frequently linked to online businesses, online auctions, and classified advertisement websites like eBay and Craigslist.
digiKam is a free and open-source image organizer and tag editor written in C++ using the KDE Frameworks.
An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image. Some examples are Flickr, Imgur, and Photobucket.
The Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is an ISO standard, originally created by Adobe Systems Inc., for the creation, processing and interchange of standardized and custom metadata for digital documents and data sets.
Windows Photo Gallery is a discontinued image organizer, photo editor and photo sharing program. It is a part of Microsoft's Windows Essentials software suite. The product has been unavailable for download since January 10, 2017, as the Windows Essentials line of products have been discontinued.
An image organizer or image management application is application software for organising digital images. It is a kind of desktop organizer software application.
Picasa Web Albums (PWA) was an image hosting and sharing web service from Google, often compared to Flickr and similar sites. The service links with Google's photo organizing desktop program Picasa. It was discontinued in May 2016 and succeeded by Google Photos which does not support sharing photo albums on the public world wide web.
Picnik was an online photo editing service which was acquired by Google in 2010. It was headquartered in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States.
Eye-Fi was a company based in Mountain View, California, that produced SD memory cards with Wi-Fi capabilities. Using an Eye-Fi card inside a digital camera, one could wirelessly and automatically upload digital photos to a local computer or a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer. The company ceased business in 2016.
Ipernity is a non-commercial photo sharing community which is financed exclusively by membership dues without any intention of making a profit. By means of the Ipernity Members Association (IMA), the community operates its own website for the protected private exchange of digital content such as photos, videos, audio files and blogs, as well as for the worldwide publication of selected content.
Fotki is a digital photo sharing, video sharing and media social network website and web service suite; it is one of the world's largest social networking sites. As an image hosting service, Fotki licenses photo-sharing software for global companies such as Telecom Italia, Alice.it, Sears, Mark Travel, Vegas.com, and Funjet.com, among others.
Phatch is a raster graphics editor used to batch process digital graphics and photographs. Phatch can be used on the desktop as a GUI program or on the server as a console program.
Upload components are software products that are designed to be embedded into a web site to add upload functionality to it. Upload components are designed to replace the standard HTML4 upload mechanism. Compared with HTML4, Upload Components have a more user-friendly interface and support a wider range of features.
PicaJet is a digital photo organizer software. Photos, located in various places on hard drives, can be located by date, category, rating or other user-defined custom criterion. PicaJet can assign images to categories without limitations to category nesting levels.
Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos. If you need unlimited storage, you'll need to upgrade to Flickr Pro.