Photo albums/sites you visit often

Hoping I can get a few comments/feedback from people here regarding sites with photo galleries you visit regularly. More specifically: social photos & events/gigs where you are looking for yourself or specific pictures.

Can you tell me what sites you visit which you think are good? Why are they good?

Which ones suck and why?

Do you think the Facebook album system is good? Flickr? Whatever others you use that most people would know?

Thanks heaps.

mainly just the ITM photo gallery, or the onion one, depending on which site had people taking pics at the events i went to.

facebook was fine until they added theater mode

Do you like the functionality of the ITM or Onion ones? The Onion one is due for (and is getting) an upgrade. It's annoying having to scroll through the small thumbnails carefully to find the image you want. There's also no way of linking to a single photo which is something that needs improvement.

The ITM one seems OK from a user perspective.

I use a Chrome extension which disables that new Facebook thing BTW. Worth getting - I hate the new theatre thing as well.

itm is flash based and a bit slow. defaults to the first image, would prefer if it went straight to the thumb nails so i could browse instead of having to click through one pic at a time. cant right click and save the pic if you were in it and wanted to keep it for yourself.

that scrolling thumbnail bar on the onion site is out of control. flies through pics way too quick.

ITM is actually jQuery (a popular and advanced javascript library) but they've made it look like it's flash based. Do you reckon many people would be wanting to save images?

And yes, the scrolling thing is a big reason why it's getting changed. It doesn't get good feedback. 

ahh ok, saw the spinning loading circle and thought flash

i have had to use the old print screen a few times to grab pics of there. i imagine others probably wouldnt mind saving pics from the site if they didnt take a camera, or just want more pics of the night they went to.

I am just doing research trying to find a good gallery/image replacement system. There are so many out there but there are lots of things we have to cater for when building something for a site like this. 

Might have to have a chat to the team about the larger images. That's a separate issue I guess but I am sure having larger images available to download would attract a lot more visitors.

I am just doing research trying to find a good gallery/image replacement system. There are so many out there but there are lots of things we have to cater for when building something for a site like this. 

Might have to have a chat to the team about the larger images. That's a separate issue I guess but I am sure having larger images available to download would attract a lot more visitors.

Could always separate them or implement a "view larger" button of some kind which links to the full res photo.

Back on the old ITM I found a way to download the full res versions off the server by knowing the filename of the thumbnail, good times.

Yeah. I will definitely talk to them about it. First thing is to sort out a good new way to display the albums and navigate through them though.

I'll make sure you can't do anything sneaky like that with any system I build. Might even let people try then show an error message "Trying to do a DirtyRohan eh? Bad!"

Yeah. I will definitely talk to them about it. First thing is to sort out a good new way to display the albums and navigate through them though.

I'll make sure you can't do anything sneaky like that with any system I build. Might even let people try then show an error message "Trying to do a DirtyRohan eh? Bad!"

Well you tell me when you're done and ill have a field day trying to manipulate it

Any chance I can get any more input here please?

i end up checking pics via twitpic/lockerz etc when checking pics posted on twitter. might be worth checking them out too?

Ended up redoing the rip it up and onion galleries using the good old lightbox system

So far everyone's pretty happy with it, see here for example:

http://www.ripitup.com.au/album/854

 

no right click and save?

no right click and save?

Right click on the image "Save Link As" and you're done!

tried that. failed.

wants to save it as 854 (the gallery id) .html

tried that. failed.

wants to save it as 854 (the gallery id) .html

Ahhh just realised no scripts was blocking the lightbox and just displaying the actual picture.

I can still right click on the image and save link as and it comes up as a JPEG file, i'm using chrome though...

Alternatively ctrl+u and find the source file (you'll need to know the file number .jpg) in the list under <div id="gallery_block">

facebook was fine until they added theater mode

In the new mode, press Alt + F5 (pretty sure it's F5, just don't try F4!) and it will show the pics in the old format. I do like that Facebook has added a Download button now, as well as higher resolution shots. Facebook is definitely my most commonly used photo viewing site.

Agreed, RIU/Onion viewer is shite. I'm looking forward to seeing the changes you speak of!

What several of the photographers I know in the US seem to be doing is offering a low/medium resolution picture that you can download, as well as a link to purchase the image in high res or even printed (photo paper, canvas, poster, etc.) and posted to you. At least then there are options for the viewer, as well as the opportunity for the photographer/site to fund itself in new ways.

This page belongs to a mate, Chad Smith (Chicago). I love the simple structure, the easy-to-navigate galleries and the extra options for purchasing the images. I'm not sure what infrastructure is used to run the site, but hopefully you can work that out! http://www.jambandsjam.com/Music2011/JamCruise9/

no right click and save?

Ooohhh good point. I will bring it up with them and make sure it's cool (pretty sure it will be) then implement that feature just for you!

Agreed, RIU/Onion viewer is shite. I'm looking forward to seeing the changes you speak of!

You looked at the new one?

Ooohhh good point. I will bring it up with them and make sure it's cool (pretty sure it will be) then implement that feature just for you!

 

Somehow I didn't pick up from the earlier posts that the RIU photo page had already been changed! Looks nice and it's sooo much more usable than the previous set-up. A save (or at least purchase) option would be nice!

I am waiting on a reply about that.

mega bump but for those who are interested the rip it up and onion sites have just had a galleries upgrade. people can save photos more easily and comment/like on single photos now.

e.g.
http://www.ripitup.com.au/p/33127

much better than what it was, massive improvement.