I have a couple thousand photos we want to share online with other family members. The backstory is long, but it's the culmination of a scanning project we undertook as part of no longer being the couple charged with storing and moving a bunch of recent and historical photos around the country.

We'd like a way to share these online with a number of family members, but don't want a site like Imgur or others that only allow for uploading photos in a shared format for all to see, not a by-invitation only model.

In other words, we'd like to be able to set up a dozen or so specialized folders by topic, upload the already scanned photos, and share those folders with others by name/email but without you Sigforum yahoos being able to peak in.

I have an Amazon Prime account and it seems like that may be the easy solution, but interested in others that y'all may have found. With Prime, the space for photos is unlimited, I don't have any videos.

It does look like to be able to access/join the shared folders on Amazon the invitee also has to have an Amazon account and be logged in. That's not a huge deal and most probably do, but if there was a way to avoid that it might be easier for some "senior" members of this group. Again, with the objective of it not being a publicly shares portfolio but by invitation only.

Ideas or suggestions?

Google Photos.

If you have a Gmail account, you have unlimited space (I believe?) in Google Photos for your pics. Once there, they're only accessible to those people you allow access.

I've looked at Google photos. The challenge I see is while I can add albums and organize there, I can't find a way to add an entire album to a "new share".

IOW, I can't share an entire album. Instead when "sharing" it looks like I have to go through and tag each individual photo from what is essentially a giant pool of 4213 photos but not arranged by album. Obviously, that's not practical.

I only want to organize them once, and already have on local PC. I can set up albums/folders in same names/groupings, and upload all to each one respectively. No way can I go back through all 4K again and tag some to this shared group, those to another, these to yet another.

Amazon Prime Photos does that I think

Google Photos or Flickr. Both free. Upload photos and create albums. Share individual albums with whomever you want. Each album has an email link.

To share whole album in Google Photos, you need to be in the album but not on a specific pic.

Flickr allows you to set Albums or individual photos as "Private", requiring individuals to establish their authorization, or to "Family and Friends", which has a looser, but still private, setup. It is possible to have multiple Albums for different subject or groups, and would probably be satisfactory for your needs.

flashguy

I use and like Imgur.
Relatively easy to use and lots of nice features.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Google Photos.

Yes, this. Google Photos has unlimited storage and you can share with whoever you want.

I have about 15,000 photos on Google Photos in many different albums and share them with whoever that album may interest.

Pbase.com is what i have used for more than a decade.

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:
I've looked at Google photos. The challenge I see is while I can add albums and organize there, I can't find a way to add an entire album to a "new share".

IOW, I can't share an entire album. Instead when "sharing" it looks like I have to go through and tag each individual photo from what is essentially a giant pool of 4213 photos but not arranged by album. Obviously, that's not practical.

I only want to organize them once, and already have on local PC. I can set up albums/folders in same names/groupings, and upload all to each one respectively. No way can I go back through all 4K again and tag some to this shared group, those to another, these to yet another.

No, you can share albums with Google Photos. Follow this process.

1 - Organize your pics in albums
2 - Open an album
3 - Select 'Share'
4 - Select 'Get Link'
5 - Copy the link
6 - Post the link you generated into an email to whomever you want to see the album.

i do this all the time and it works great.

^ Yes, I have had numerous private albums in Google Photos over the years, and toggled the Public/Private option on a per-Album basis - never had to do it Photo by Photo.

So with Google Photos, I see that while the default is to select photos from those already uploaded there is also an option to Upload from Computer. That may just work and allow me to bring them in pre-organized from existing folders on PC. Thanks to you all.

So for our tin-foil-hatters; any leaning away from one or the other for eventual privacy or use concerns? These aren't top secret pics of our family gold mine or new perpetual motion machine, just a bunch of pics of family, dead and alive.

You can also use Google drive. Load your albums on there and share via links. Text links to family ..

I set up a Synology NAS (Network Attached Storage) on my home computer network and put all my photos in there in folders setup the way I want them. Using Synology's software, anyone I want can connect directly through to my picture folders via a web browser and view, download, or add pictures. Of course, the bandwidth is dependent on my Home internet connection's upload speeds, but it works well to share and be fully in control of how I want to share it. Can also share any other files I want to. Not the cheapest solution, but it's a NAS first, and internet sharing of photos/files, is just a side benefit. Family can even use there cell phones and directly save pics to my NAS for safekeeping.