I use ImageShack.com to host my photos – $19/year for “unlimited” storage and avatar support. With unlimited storage you’ll eventually have a lot of uploaded photos, making it hard to find the one(s) you want, unless you have a good system.

ImageShack provides “Album” organization. That’s some help, but it’s a weak system, not a good system. So I rely on a multi-sheet spreadsheet for cataloging my ImageShack photos. Here’s the structure of my spreadsheet:

Photos (sheet 1)
A row for each photo.
Columns:
ID *1
Photo date
Color (e.g. B&W, Ektachrome, default)
Source (e.g. Sony RX10, iPhone X)
Upload date
Description

*1 – ImageShack assigns a unique alphanumeric identifier to each uploaded photo. E.g. “pm3mF5OYj”. It’s the photo’s “handle” on ImageShack.

Postings (sheet 2) *2
A row for each posting.
Columns:
[ID]
Date posted
HxV (e.g. 720x540)
URL (where the photo was posted)
[Description]

*2 – ImageShack has a facility to post a reduced size (e.g. 720x540) version of a photo to a forum without the bother of uploading the reduced size photo. The “Postings” sheet keeps track of those. A photo may have 0, 1, or several postings.

Albums (sheets 3 through n) *3
A row for each photo in the album.
Columns:
[ID]
[Photo date]
[Description]

*3 – A photo may be in 0, 1, or several albums.

Items in square brackets are links to the corresponding cell in sheet 1, rather than literal text. So if I revise the description of a photo on sheet 1, the revised description automagically appears on all references of that photo on other sheets.

OK, I can easily find a photo of interest in my spreadsheet. E.g., sort a sheet by Description or Date posted, or by searching for a text string that I know exists in the Description. But how do I then find that photo in my ImageShack account? Here’s how:

I use the BASH shell in my Mac Terminal windows, and I’ve created a BASH function named “IS” (ImageShack abbreviation). I open my spreadsheet, find the photo of interest, click on its “ID” cell, then <cmd>c, which copies the ID value to the Mac paste buffer. Then, in a Terminal window, I type: IS<CR>. E.g.:

bash{23}> IS
bash{24}>

That opens that particular ImageShack-hosted photo in my browser. There, I can copy the URL of the full size photo.

Or I can copy the URL of the reduced-size photo, which includes its default dimension spec, 150x100, which I can subsequently edit to the dimensions I want. I can copy that edited URL into my paste buffer, then paste it into a forum post, bracketed by “[IMG]” and “[/IMG]” to make the photo appear in the post.

Here’s my “IS” function, which I edited into my ~/.bashrc file so it’s available in all terminal windows that I open:

function IS () {
PhotoID=$(pbpaste)
open /Applications/Safari.app http://ImageShack.com/i/$PhotoID
}

This system works well for me. I think that I’d lose track of many photos if I didn’t have it.

I also use Imageshack to store about 1000 images.

My photos are categorized into fairly specific albums, and I add short descriptive titles to my photos. You can sort images in an album alphabetically by title.

So it's fairly easy to go to the album I want, sort by title, and scroll down to find the image(s) I want.

I've been using FotoTime for several years, but $19.95 a year for unlimited storage is pretty good. There are a number of members with blurred-out (Photobucket) or sad-faced egg with legs character (Tinypic) avatars who need to get this message. Buncha cheapskates if you ask me.

free-i use imgur & have created several albums.

as a trial, I quit the inevitable migration of photos from one server to another, and abandoned them all about 5-6 years ago.

No one seems disappointed. The ones I want to keep are on back up drives at a location near my mountain boonker.

I moved to PostImage since Photobucket got shitty with its users.

I use Apple's Photos Ver 5.0.

Works really well. Camera roll,Albums strips etc.

But, all my stuff is Apple.

I post my photos on Flickr. I have had a paid subscription there for many years--I think the current cost is $50/year and it's worth it. Flickr stores photos at full resolution, but provides a tool to adjust the size for posting elsewhere (and it's against their rules to post elsewhere without including the information that the tool includes). Flickr keeps photos in a Photostream in the order uploaded, but it is also possible to attach them to one or more Albums, and paid subscribers can then organize Albums into Collections, and Collections can also be organized into higher level Collections. Each level (Album and Collections) permits a descriptive title and significant space for some notes about the photos referenced therein. Photos can be "in" more than one Album, an Album can be "in" more than one Collection, and a Collection can be "in" more than one higher-level Collection. I have my photos organized as much as 4 levels deep, making finding the one I want a simple matter of drilling down. I am not aware of a limit on the number of levels allowed--I've never run into one. Each photo has a title and an optional description, and those carry through to all levels. It is possible to allow others to comment on photos, but that can be denied. It is also possible to restrict viewing to only selected persons, and to prevent downloading. (But, as we all know, if a photo can be viewed, it is possible to capture it using screen save.)

I have 44,000 photos hosted on Flickr. Without the hierarchical structure it provides I'd never be able to keep up with them. There are currently 46 high-level Collections organizing more than 1000 Albums. I think the cost of a subscription is well worth it. If you're curious about how I use it, this is a link to my high-level Collections: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8712554@N02/collections (sorry about the blank boxes--the Mosaic function has yet to be restored after the buyout by SmugMug).

flashguy

I use and love image shack. But I can't imagine depending on it for anything more than the temporary web post usage I need it for. For long term storage of photos I care about, I use Apple's Photos and backups, and then Google Photos which is amazing, though unfortunately is troubling to me from a privacy perspective. I didn't think about the circular nature of their intel gathering and in particular, facial recognition, until after I'd let that cat out of the bag.

That said, they sweep this stuff up from all corners of the web. We are arriving at the point where you must intentionally be a hermit if you want to "try" to retain some sense of privacy. And even then, I don't think it's possible in all practicality.

BTW – Currently, all of my images on ImageShack are from various digital cameras. The EXIF file goes along when I upload one (nice!).

If Para posts a review of his new Epson V600 flatbed scanner, and if it’s positive, I’ll probably buy one myself. Then I’ll be uploading a lot of ancient images from film cameras. I haven’t had my Leica slide projector out in years. And I can get rid of stacks of seldom-viewed prints and slides after they’re safely online and easily viewable.