Photobucket and 3rd Party Hosting

[hartpaul]

Just saw a report from Photobucket that they are going to stop 3rd party hosting for free and low end paid users. 3rd party hosting is where I upload an image, copy a link and then post that link between img tags on this forum site and people then see just that image.
I have been doing this for a number of years and as a result of their changes many of the images used in the posts will disappear. To maintain continuity I would have to pay Photobucket approx $399 per year which would cover setting up a domain name and hosting for at least two years as an independent site. Seems that Photobucket has lost touch with many of its users and or I am guessing that many opther free sites will probably follow suit and do similar.

Does anybody know of other hosting sites for free or very low realistic cost that allow 3rd party hosting? Or is it better to put all images up on the Corel site?

[JoeB]

In my opinion, unless you have a need to publish a high quality large image for others to work with then just posting examples of what you're trying to illustrate in this forum seems like the easiest and more direct way to do it. I don't use any 3rd party hosting sites so can't help you with that. However, some ISP's tend to allow you to set up a relatively small website, so if your provider allows that then it might provide sufficient storage for the purpose of posting a few larger, high quality images if necessary to make whatever point you are making in your forum posts.

[LeviFiction]

ImageShack is the first thing that comes to my mind. $3.99 a month or $37.00 a year, ulimited pace, direct linking, statistics. Limit of 25MB per image. And a limit of 30GB/month access for hotlinked images.

I used to have a website with 1and1.com. $5 a month for unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hosting, and a dedicated URL. So I could self-host my images, hot link them if I wanted to, or just make my own tutorial site and link people to the articles. Probably do the same thing with a blogging site like Blogger.

Google Photos should also be able to do it, It's not an actual feature of the service but if you go into your album, click on an image to view it, then right-click and grab its address you can hot link it. For example

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/r9Svy ... 12-h984-no

It's too big to actually use here but it shows it can be done. Though any images hotlinked like this will not have any viewing statistics and other people can use it without your knowledge.

I do agree with JoeB. And would add that unless you have a desire to use the image in multiple places, hosting somewhere else might be overkill. When uploading your images here, they will be here until Corel decides to stop hosting these forums.

[brucet]

My understanding, from threads on other forums, is that not everyone is affected. Yet! But here hides the weak link in having anything online. Cloud storage, software etc. Those paying for subscription beware. This maybe the future cash cow for many would be get rich schemes.
Corel. Don't even think about it.

Regards

[JoeB]

My understanding, from threads on other forums, is that not everyone is affected. Yet! But here hides the weak link in having anything online. Cloud storage, software etc. Those paying for subscription beware. This maybe the future cash cow for many would be get rich schemes.
Corel. Don't even think about it.

I certainly agree. Just like I don't use third party hosting sites I also don't use Cloud storage. And while it might be helpful for some who use it for syncing across lots of platforms it definitely should not be used as a "last resort" for backing up files. Those important backups should be stored on your own removable media - twice if it's vital - and that media stored safely in separate locations.

I don't use subscription software either. For those who use the software constantly it becomes prohibitively expensive after awhile, and most people (except perhaps the most finicky of professionals) don't need the constant updates to such software. Think of the hundreds of thousands - in some cases maybe millions - of people still working contentedly with older versions of Windows, PSP, PS, etc., and who have been using them for years. Most of these "innovative" ways of using the internet for storage or software are simply new ways that the proprietors of those platforms have come up with to separate people from their dollars and sense - not a typo!

[photodrawken]

In my opinion, unless you have a need to publish a high quality large image for others to work with then just posting examples of what you're trying to illustrate in this forum seems like the easiest and more direct way to do it.

I agree.

Every problem, explanation, example, tutorial, etc., can easily be illustrated with small images that fit forum posting guidelines.

Having said that, there have been a few times when I felt that making the high-quality final result of a procedure available would drive home the point I was making. Also, there are occasions when I need to supply other types of binary files , such as Visual Studio projects, which are larger than accepted by forums. In those few cases, a Dropbox free account works for me....

hartpaul,
Some of the example images I used in my early participation in this forum were uploaded to a 3rd party service (don't remember which one) which subsequently stopped providing the images. So, a couple of my mini-tutorials are now rather difficult to follow. I share your pain....

[hartpaul]

One of the reasons I used Photobucket was that I belonged to another forum site (now defunct) that had limited space and they were asking users to avoid direct uploads of images and if possible for those images already uploaded to see if they could remove them from the site and third party host those images. While doing this for that site I did the same for Corel. Is there a limit to the space available for uploads of images to the Corel forum , (I know there is a limit to size) but will there come a time when Corel will say - too many images remove older ones or find a third party hoster. Or even a payment plan if you want to upload images ( and many times the image is worth a load of text explanations).

[JoeB]

Given the size limits on images that can be posted to this forum, and the fact that most posts don't even upload images, I would think that there's nothing to worry about in terms of overloading the forum server with images. And lengthy text accompanying photos is negligible - a few drops in the bucket compared to even the size of a smaller image posted here.

[Cassel]

Amazon S3 being so inexpensive (literally pennies), it can also host your images.
Here is one from my Amazon bucket:



You pay for usage so it can vary up or down, every month. I have hundreds of videos hosted on Amazon S3, and it usually costs me between $2 and $4 in a month.

[hartpaul]

Just found the problem with this forum when uploading images as attachments. It is not that Corel might run out of space , but that the number of attachments in a post is limited to 4 , so a complex explanation using >4 images is a no go unless you split the original post into a number of posts one after the other.
Will be looking for another solution. I suspect this will backfire on Photobucket as others refuse to pay the $399 / year and go elsewhere .. pity.

[Zantara]

In The Netherlands and Belgium PSP is very popular, not so much for photo-editing but for making creations using masks, plugin effects and tubes from tutorial websites.
There are many forums which link to those tutorials and members show their version, using Photobucket to upload and link.
So many of them now show this message:


If you used Photobucket to show a message as I've just done, there are free alternatives.
One of which is: imgbb.com
You don't even have to register, you can directly upload images and use the provided links to paste in a forummessage or on a website.
If you register, you can sort images into albums.
Option for privacy where the image is not visible to visitors of the site.
Also possible to edit the uploaded image.

Another one is imgur.com
Looks a bit like Pinterest, but if you set your images to private, you don't have to participate in the social media site of it and images will only be visible to those who have the link
Also possible to upload images without registering.

I'm not sure if the quality is good enough if you use it for photo's, though.

Photobucket is still usable as a backup for photo's. You just can't link them anymore.