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I couldn’t find a good comparison of the upgraded versions of the best online photo album so I decided to write one myself. This was originally meant for a friend but I thought everyone could benefit from this. Now lets get on with the reviews.
Space
One of the most important and basic features of any image hosting or web album service is the storage limitations. First, lets see the free accounts. In Flickr, there is a 100Mb upload limit per month but not storage limitations or thats what people think. There is a limit of 200 images with a maximum of 5Mb per image which means the limit is around 1000MB for a free account. In Picasa Web Albums, there is a specified limit of 1024MB or 1GB, and a limit of 10MB for each image. Picasa wins here because we can store as many images as we want within the 1024MB.
Now, lets move to paid accounts. Flickr has a fee of US$24.95 a year for a Pro Account. With a Pro Account, all your limitations are removed and you can upload an unlimited amount of images. Even if your Pro Account expires, the images will not be deleted and can be recovered if you pay for the next year. Picasa Web Albums has a slightly different approach with a increasing price for increasing storage limits. For US$25 a year, which is about the same as Flickr, we can buy upto 7GB of storage. This increases in 4 levels upto 251GB at US$500 a year.
Sets/Collections/Albums
A simple way of organizing your images is by putting similar images together in albums. This is very helpful in sorting out images. Once again we’ll observe free accounts at first. Flickr has a limit of 3 set in a free account and collections (a group of sets) are available only for Pro Accounts. Picasa Web Albums has no limit and you can add as many albums as you want but you cannot add sub-albums. But you only add 500 images per album. For paid accounts, there is no difference in Picasa but in Flickr, you can add as many sets and collections as you want. Sets can be defined as sub-albums and the collections can be albums.
Organizing
Flickr has a interactive AJAX Organizer for organizing the images. In this organizer, you can add or modify sets and collections, tag pictures, share your images with your groups, add geo-location tags for the images, edit the permission and captions for the images and do minor editing like rotating, etc. A batch editing feature is also available. Picasa also features a AJAX organiser for arranging images within an album. Adding of image captions is pretty simple and the images do not require a separate image title.
Layout / Viewing
In Flickr, you can alter the layout of the pages to a certain extent with pre-designed layouts. You have an option of 4 layouts for the free version and 6 layouts for the paid version. The visitor can also choose to download different sizes of the same image. Picasa Web Albums does not allow you to change the layout but while viewing the albums, anyone can dynamically change the size of the thumbnails which is pretty good and useful feature.The visitor can also choose to download an entire album which saves time. Even while viewing a single image, you can zoom into the image and scroll around it within the browser itself.
Slideshow
In Flickr, the Slideshow is displayed via Flash and you can choose to display it in a pop-up window or withing the browser itself. It does not cover the entire screen and you have access to basic Slideshow controls. In Picasa Web Albums the Slideshow is displayed via AJAX and HTML and you choose to display the captions. The Slideshow covers the entire browser viewing area and also has the basic controls.
Uploading & Comments
In Flickr, images can be uploaded through the browser, mobile phone, email or Flickr’s software for PC, Mac or Linux. The commenting system is fine, you can also subscribe to the RSS Feed of your comments. You need to be registered to post comments. In Picasa Web Albums ,uploading can either be done through Picasa or via the browser, a plugin is also provided for Mac users. The commenting system is basic but does its job. You need to have a Google Account to post comments.
Misc. Features
In Flickr, you can add notes to individual pictures which will be displayed when the user hovers his mouse over certain areas in the image. Flickr has a API which is useful for integration into websites. Picasa’s most remarkable feature is that it also supports the uploading of videos which can be viewed as a streaming video. Picasa has just released a API Feature so it will take some time before services are developed for it.
Verdict
For free accounts, go Google and use Picasa Web Albums. It supports more images and albums and even though it lacks a few features, one can manage without them. So, if you do not wish to pay and have a simple and good web album, use Picasa. You may opt for Flickr for a feature rich but limited album.
If you are willing to pay $2 per month, then Flickr is your best friend, with unlimited images and sets, there is virtually no limit to what you can do with Flickr.
Another different alternative is DeviantART although it is not intended for usage as a web album but rather as a showcase for your art. You may try it out but it will not have features like Flickr or Picasa Web Albums since it was not meant to be an photo album.
The choice is yours to make depending on your requirements and thoughts.
Thanks for reading this review, I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you feel that I may have missed out something that is worth mentioning, please feel free to post in the comments.
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