@Forrest - I am well aware that there are folks here that enjoy the large scale hobby and are financially challenged. No details, but my daughter's family of six are in the same boat you are in, and she has three autistic children to add to the difficulty. That is why I tempered my comments with "..... INVEST in a storage method that suits your stye and budget." Bob has the ability to expand your freight shed substantially for a very reasonable cost, more in your price range. And it has the added benefit of supporting LSC. Additionally I would recommend making sure all your photos, and any important documents, are backed up. I keep them on my web site, periodic DVD's, and several thumb drives. DVD's and thumb drives are very inexpensive, saw a 128 gig in Office Depot for about 40 bucks. That is a bucket full of storage.

Alan Bupp (aka MIK) was essentially in your same shoes - 100% disability, yet he maintained his own web site with a lot of data that was great reference for all of us. Like me, I am sure his hosting and associated expenses were not free. MIK was a master at making a sow's ear out of just about anything.

@Maynard - I don't understand why ALL OTHER USERS of that cloud service would have been cut off from their data. Like LSC, the cloud is partitioned for each user with no available interconnection for the common user. Maybe the PTB (Powers That Be) at your company need to look for a better cloud service. Sounds to me like they were more interested in the dollar than security of their data.

FWIW

Clouds worry me. The cloud our sales department uses was also used for some kind of illegal activity, so the feds shut it down while they mined it for evidence. Our sales department was without all the cloud data and services for over 3 weeks.

Bob Cope said:

Greg said it best in his first post - "There is no such thing as a free lunch." I will say it a different way - "You get what you pay for."

 

If you value your pictures as part of your hobby experience, INVEST in a storage method that suits your stye and budget. I personally have several web domains, so I pay for a hosting service which provides me with both a large storage capacity and the benefit of a backup service so even if there is a catastrophic event at the hosting service, all my data is backed up and recoverable. No, the service is not particularly cheap, but I consider it an investment in my enjoyment of sharing with others.

That is true and the thing is my budget is now Social Security Disability at 11 dollars a month below the poverty level.

Greg said it best in his first post - "There is no such thing as a free lunch." I will say it a different way - "You get what you pay for."

If you value your pictures as part of your hobby experience, INVEST in a storage method that suits your stye and budget. I personally have several web domains, so I pay for a hosting service which provides me with both a large storage capacity and the benefit of a backup service so even if there is a catastrophic event at the hosting service, all my data is backed up and recoverable. No, the service is not particularly cheap, but I consider it an investment in my enjoyment of sharing with others.

As for the myriad of photo hosting services available, I would recommend trying to read the EULA before committing funds. I would bet most, like Photobucket, that storing photos on their site gives them the right to use your photos as they see fit. And as was found out by many hobbyists of all genres, free means you are subject to the whim of the provider.

As for Cloud services, they are a growing storage media, even in the business world. I work for a Government sub contractor, with lots of security and my company has moved lots of our data storage to Cloud services. Tongue in cheek "where is that cloud anyway?". Seriously though, cloud services are really no different than any  other storage medium, you need to do your homework to determine the security and reliability of the service.

These are my thoughts and opinions for what they are worth to the reader.

I have not used any web photo serving sites, is it woth it to save all your photos to a cloud based server like this for $60.00 a year? Curious if it is worth the hassle of moving everything there or if people have it what will happen to all their photos?

not wondering,  they are going down the tubes

This in yesterday's email could lead a person to wondering about Flickr's future;

Dear friends,

Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.

Two years ago, Flickr was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Our company, SmugMug, stepped in to rescue it from being shut down and to save tens of billions of your precious photos from being erased.

Why? We’ve spent 17 years lovingly building our company into a thriving, family-owned and -operated business that cares deeply about photographers. SmugMug has always been the place for photographers to showcase their photography, and we’ve long admired how Flickr has been the community where they connect with each other. We couldn’t stand by and watch Flickr vanish.

So we took a big risk, stepped in, and saved Flickr. Together, we created the world’s largest photographer-focused community: a place where photographers can stand out and fit in.

We’ve been hard at work improving Flickr. We hired an excellent, large staff of Support Heroes who now deliver support with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%. We got rid of Yahoo’s login. We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way. As a result, pages are already 20% faster and photos load 30% more quickly. Platform outages, including Pandas, are way down. Flickr continues to get faster and more stable, and important new features are being built once again.

Our work is never done, but we’ve made tremendous progress.

Now Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough.

We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.

We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.

Flickr is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. It’s the world’s best way to find great photography and connect with amazing photographers. Flickr hosts some of the world’s most iconic, most priceless photos, freely available to the entire world. This community is home to more than 100 million accounts and tens of billions of photos. It serves billions of photos every single day. It’s huge. It’s a priceless treasure for the whole world. And it costs money to operate. Lots of money.

Flickr is not a charity, and we’re not asking you for a donation. Flickr is the best value in photo sharing anywhere in the world. Flickr Pro members get ad-free browsing for themselves and their visitors, advanced stats, unlimited full-quality storage for all their photos, plus premium features and access to the world’s largest photographer-focused community for less than $5 per month.

You likely pay services such as Netflix and Spotify at least $9 per month. I love services like these, and I’m a happy paying customer, but they don’t keep your priceless photos safe and let you share them with the most important people in your world. Flickr does, and a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $1 per week.

Please, help us make Flickr thrive. Help us ensure it has a bright future. Every Flickr Pro subscription goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great new experiences for photographers like you. We are building lots of great things for the Flickr community, but we need your help. We can do this together.

We’re launching our end-of-year Pro subscription campaign on Thursday, December 26, but I want to invite you to subscribe to Flickr Pro today for the same 25% discount.

We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize Flickr for cost savings wherever possible, but the increasing cost of operating this enormous community and continuing to invest in its future will require a small price increase early in the new year, so this is truly the very best time to upgrade your membership to Pro.

If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.

With gratitude,

Don MacAskill
Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek
SmugMug + Flickr

Yeah, when Picasa went, it was bad for a lot of people.... Google "ate" them and then shut it down.... I hate google, chrome, and their invasiveness.... your lousy Android phone does not want to voice dial unless it has access to your google account...

Greg the best one for me was Picasa, but google decided to drop it and then one day I accident deleted the progrsm( don’t ask how I did that ) but somehow I was able to save most of the pictures it held!

By the way, the "snipping tool" has come with Windows since Windows 7. IrFanview is still free 20 years later and you can set the compression, or size in pixels, or even the file size in bytes and let IrFanview figure it out for you.

Point: the tools that were good 10 years ago are still free and still good.

Greg

but are we talking about avoiding using Facebook, since pictures seem to come and go? I know the freight shed is a couple of extra steps, and I end up keeping two windows open so I don't lose my entry in the forum while I'm writing it

John (P), from what I am reading, I think the answer is Yes - avoid cross-posting photos from Facebook to some other site. If you are a "friend" of the poster, you (probably) will see them here, but if not, poof a blank space.

Photobucket causes similar problems - if you look at an old LSC or MLS thread in many cases the photos are unavailable (Photobucket fuzzes them out if you don't pay an annual fee.)

Greg Elmassian said:

Yep, to underscore that, John Bouck just posted a FB picture on the testing sub-group, and all of his previous pictures from FB are now blank in that same thread.

 

In the long run, there is still no such thing as a free lunch!

 

Greg

Greg,

FB didn't take them down. I did.

I cleaned up my FB Album as well.

The picture of this box cab

https://www.largescalecentral.com/forums/topic/29438/pic-test-from-fb

is hosted by the 7/8 group I'm in.

Pete Thornton said:

Only way I have been able to make mine on there. Have not ever tried to link from facebook, although I wish I could move photos from my iPhone to LSC freight shed

 

FB does make it ridiculously easy to post photos.  GScaleCentral in the UK has a "drag-and-drop" option which is very convenient (not sure if it works on a phone!)

 

LSC's Freight Shed upload is very cumbersome in comparison.

I totally agree Pete, I just posted 5 pictures on a HO site in the UK using possibly the same software, similar posting method.

I posted them directly from the memory card of our camera with no resizing etc. just click "Upload a file", click on picture from SD card, then select either display as "Full Image or Thumbnail" and finally "Post Reply" easy as.

No idea of the hosting arrangements etc I am just a user and there are hundreds possibly thousands of pictures and youtube videos on there.

As for BookFace words just fail to describe it.

Pete Thornton said:

...

I think we are digressing from my topic, but as it is mine you can't be blamed!

...

 

   Hiya Pete...I don't understand all of this exactly to tell you the truth, but are we talking about avoiding using Facebook, since pictures seem to come and go? I know the freight shed is a couple of extra steps, and I end up keeping two windows open so I don't lose my entry in the forum while I'm writing it, but I live with it; either that or I store pictures on my website and link from there even though that doesn't help Bob out any. I'm all for supporting Bob and the site, so I sponsor one of the forums and I don't use Adblock Plus here.

to get the image and then save it in a good screen resolution, say 76, takes up only a little room, and put it in your freight shed.

I think we are digressing from my topic, but as it is mine you can't be blamed!

I do not see how your little program makes it easier to put the images in the Freight Shed in the first place.  Uploading on a separate window is tedious.  Using the image is easy, and with a subscription, to keep this site going, I get enough space for my 100-400Mb photos.

   You could use Faststone Capture (the greatest, most useful program ever; they want $20 eventually and I sent them $50 it is so good) to get the image and then save it in a good screen resolution, say 76, takes up only a little room, and put it in your freight shed. Then "Copy Image Location" from there (not "Copy Image").

    This is what I do, not in the least to prove I'm outsmarting the guys who run Facebook. Ha!

    edit: so here's one I grabbed; it's only 67 kb, takes up practically no room (the original image is a little fuzzy, don't blame the process, by the way):

   ]

Only way I have been able to make mine on there. Have not ever tried to link from facebook, although I wish I could move photos from my iPhone to LSC freight shed

Pete L has a FB account (because he is friends with me!) so if he is seeing the photos on my thread it must have something to do with that.

I have an FB account but I ain't gonna 'friend' all of you just to see your photos.

Perhaps they meant they didn't see them because they are focused on other things and didn't see the thread ?

Rooster - I have no idea what that means.  When Craig asked if I had seen it, I went to it and looked (again) and I still can't see any photos. 

Yes, those pics are from my FB album.

As far as older posts of mine, I cleaned up my freight sheds and albums.

It must be FB. Now I am seeing ALL your pictures. Is FB screwing with us?

It almost seems that there is a "timer" on files linked from FB.