My Flickr Pro account just expired recently and rather than paying them another $24.95 to keep my photos on their website for a year more, I've been looking at another option. Google's Picasa.
With Google+, Picasa has become a great option for photos. I've always liked the Picasa application, but even more so now that I can easily upload photos there straight from the application at a maximum 2048x2048 resolution. And of course the ability to sync folders and tweak the photos online using Picnik.
The sync part will come in handy for when I'm saving 'before and after' video edit pics and screen capture shots from Sony Vegas. If I save those images to a folder that's synced with PicasaWeb (the photo sharing Picasa site) or Google+, those images will automatically be uploaded without me having to do a thing. Embedding them from PicasaWeb is easier too, and even more so if I'm writing my articles using Blogsy.
I've also found a great Picasa gallery Wordpress plugin that's simple to implement. I've included an example of it below.
[picasaview album='WalkToTheCityJune162011' instantview='yes']
[picasaview album='WalkToTheCityJune162011' instantview='yes']
The downsides of using G+ or PicasaWeb for storing photos?
The image quality is still no match for Flickr. If you view the images in the gallery above, you will see the odd compression artefacts, that you would never see on Flickr unless they were in the original uploaded photo.For convenience though, I'm going to try the Google option for a while and see how I go. G+ is already a great community for photographers.