What is the best way to share images online with family and friends? I’ve heard so much hype about flickr I thought it would be the best  so I tried it first. I tried uploading images online and found it to be a a somewhat slow process so I downloaded the flickr uploader software and tried it out. Uploading was still relatively slow. I sent up about 34 images and it took about 9 minutes to process and uploads to my flickr account. On image 32 it said sorry your out of space for the month please upgrade your account (see above yellow circle). I quickly discovered that flickr limits you to about 35 meg (not sure the exact number) of uploading per month. Again I stress this took 9 minutes and less than 40 images for me to hit the wall.

Next, I tried out Picasa. I downloaded the google app and I was instantly impressed. This software does much more than the flickr uploader. The flickr uploader doesn’t do much but upload and rename files. Picasa is wonderful. It can retouch, correct red eye, auto adjust contrast and so on. It’s also a wonderful image brower. I already had a google account so I selected on my images and clicked upload. My 36 files uplaoded in less than five minutes and occupy about 9 meg of space. Google provides you with one gig of storage so it should last a long time.

For a free online file sharing service I recommend Picasa. It’s faster, more powerful and you won’t run out of space for a long time.

Tags: flickr, photosharing, picasa