Photobucket users beware.

[ExpertTools]

I just pay for the 100GB storage (20 quid a year or something) and upload at full quality.

Even if you pay for extra storage and upload at "full quality" I do not believe they keep the full resolution of the original picture files; only enough to satisfy the resolution needed to post on the internet, or print a modest sized photo.

Google keep the original file.
The normal free upload using their new compression and you don't really loose anything.
Especially for normal photo's.

Of it's a Professional DSLR camera then maybe. I've not read anything for a while but the comparison with quality compact ultrazooms (like panasonic TZ) is to use Googles compression.
It is however recompressed, so there must be some loss.
Still you can pick and choose.
(If anyone knows of any recent reviews?)


Though that's not what photobucket was about, that like imgr etc and for posting picks easily, if crapply, on forums and such like)

With Photobucket, even a photo taken on a cellphone will be significantly reduced in quality. As an example, I recently uploaded an image from my iPhone 5s (newer phones are even higher resolution,) and it was 1.67mb. I just downloaded the same image from Photobucket and it was 287k. In addition to the resolution loss, the image colors were significantly distorted. But what you can link to is still perfectly adequate for posting online. Keep in mind that they want to sell prints, so what you can download once it's online is limited. As an example, here's the iPhone taken Photobucket photo:



Now if I wanted to print a large copy of this photo, if I did not have the original file, I'd be screwed. And for images take on my DSLR, the loss of resolution is MUCH greater.

So anyone who uses Photobucket of Flicker as a primary source for photo data storage needs a better understanding of what it can and can not do. It's for file sharing on the internet; period. Perhaps Google has a better service, I haven't used them. Any true cloud service that keeps full files could conceivably be a good place to store photos, but only as a backup to what you keep at home. Your photos are perhaps the perhaps the most irreplaceable thing on your computer, and need to be stored and backed up with care. For me, no compressed or compromised storage will do, and for anything I might want to ever print I keep .raw files as well as .jpg.

 

[mattr]

Yes, Google has better service.
I Upload to Google drive (not Google photos) at full quality, and pay for it.

If they were compressing that much, I'd not expect to pay for it.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Re:

We were talking Google, not photonaff at that point, likes i say photonaff et al. are for quick websnap dodgy selfy images.

You can do both, you can have Photobackup to Drive as well.

 

[Once A Hero]

Just went to post a few pics to thread on here, and they've gone from my Photobucket account
Luckily I have a back up, but it's annoying to say the least.