Photobucket is one of many internet image hosting and photo sharing sites. It is in direct competition with a number of free and pay sites including Snapfish, Picasa, and Flickr. Photobucket allows you to upload, organize, tag, share, edit, and print digital photos. Much like its competition, Photobucket provides a myriad of services that any photography novice, intermediate user, or professional photographer could find useful.
I have used several photo sharing sites, but I have been a Pro user of Flickr since 2006, so I will be comparing Photobucket to Flickr for the purpose of this review.
All of the major image hosting and sharing sites have the same basic set of tools:
- Upload functionality from the browser
- Album creation and organization
- Basic photo editing (cropping, resizing, rotating)
- Limited storage
- Sharing and viewing permissions
Since these tools are ubiquitous among photo sharing sites, there is not much point in reviewing them. The key to choosing a photo sharing site is to find out what sets it apart from its competition, and what features will make your job easier.
Uploading and Management Tools
Photobucket allows you to upload photos to your site using the Flock browser, Windows XP Publisher, email, FTP (Pro users), and their web-based upload interfaces. As a Mac user, I was instantly disappointed that I could not upload photos directly from iPhoto to Photobucket, yet I could upload photos directly to Flickr, Facebook, and Apple’s MobileMe site. I used Photobucket’s web-based uploader, and was flabbergasted by how long it took to upload two RAW images from my Canon Digital Rebel. Photobucket also automatically forced me to reduce the image size to 1024×768. Flickr uploads of RAW images are quicker than Photobucket’s upload of reduced sized photos, and Flickr does not impose a maximum image size on free users.
Ultimately, Flickr wins this category easily. It is more Mac friendly, uploads are quicker, and the variety of tools you can use to upload is just as robust as the tools you can use with Photobucket, and there are Mac and Linux-friendly tools.
User Interface
When it comes to interfaces, I believe that less is more. I find the Photobucket interface completely ineffective. It bears a vague resemblance to a Xoops Content Management System site. There is a row of minimizable blocks down the left side of the screen, buttons across the bottom, three levels of menus and a large search box across the top. Every inch of the screen is cluttered, and it distracts users who are looking at or manipulating photos. Just navigating around Photobucket caused me to cringe, because the user interface was so busy.
The Flickr interface is much more minimalistic. There are two rows of menus at the top of the screen, but there are no other dark colored menu backgrounds that interfere with you when you are viewing pictures. It allows you to look at your photos on a white background with very little to distract your eye.
Flickr wins this category by a long shot. It is by far easier for new users to learn, because not every feature and function is in your working space all the time. The color scheme does not detract from the beauty of your pictures, and it is generally easier to use.
Pro Features
Here is a summary of the differences between the Photobucket and Flickr Pro account features. Essentially, Flickr pro is much more cost effective if you shoot many photos, but do not work with much video. If you create and share many home videos, Photobucket may be the right choice for you.
- 10 GB of storage
- 5 MB max image size
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 10 minute max video length
- $39.99/yr
- Unlimited storage
- No maximum file size
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 90 second max video length
- $24.95/yr
Photobucket is easy enough for the average user to get accustomed to, and has features that would suit novice digital photographers. At the rate that digital cameras evolve, and as the image sizes balloon, Photobucket will not remain relevant unless it increases its storage and image size quotas. Furthermore, the upload speed was atrocious compared to Flickr, and this will prove to be frustrating to intermediate and professional photographers. Photobucket is best suited for people who just want to casually share, store, and organize photos. More advanced photographers and internet users will be thoroughly disappointed.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Pajam 10.23.09 at 12:29 pm
Hi,
The inform. on the photobucket account features are actualy not correct, complete (or up to date), see below. Also as of the flickr website, there is a 20 MB per picture file size limit (same as on photobucket) and there is a 2GB upload limit per month. As such the bandwith for flickr becomes close to secondary in my opinion as batch downloading is not a facility offered by flickr (but 3rd party tools for this exist, haven’t used them though) and non pro account holders can not download high res/original size pictures. Re. videos, flickr doen’t take swf/flash files.
I am currently thinking which account to go for and my impression is that photobucket offers more/better storage and sharing features (on other websites) until we hit the question of discussing pictures within the website with other photographers, where flickr’s unbeatable record lies. I like the idea of the discussion and learning possibileties through flickr.
Tough design, espacialy as so many people in my course now have a flickr account (do to the teachers expressed wish for us to discuss each others pictures online). One thing though, from my understanding flickr keeps your high res pictures when you go from pro to free (although can only ever see 200 pics in low resolution), which is good should you go back to pro later; whilst photo bucket delets or down scals high res pictures after a few month if you go from pro to free (where you can see 2gb worth of pictures, so alot more than 200).
Photobucket Features: Free – Pro
Storage space: 500MB – 25GB
Image size: 1MB – High res images
Traffic bandwidth: 10GB/month – Unlimited*
Image dimensions: 1024×768 – 4000×3000
Custom URLs for albums: Root album only – All sub-albums
Ads in your album: Yes – No
More stats: Basic stats – Full stats
Keep links active: No – Yes
SWF/Flash file support: No – Yes
FTP access to your account: No – Yes
Premium tech support No – Yes
Hope I got all the info above right. I am not working for or extensively with either flickr or photobucket at the moment. I have taken up free accounts with both to test.