Photographs are the repository of memories. They offer us a sort of a time warp when we look at them, recalling cherished instances of the past. Sharing photographs has therefore, become an indispensable part of our lives. Especially with the smartphone cameras getting smarter by the day, it has become easier to capture moments that matter and save them conveniently on your device.
Consequently, sharing photographs with your friends, family and relatives has become an important aspect of fostering connections. Photo sharing apps and softwares come to the rescue that allow you to share photographs to different social media platforms with the convenience of a click. These applications allow you to organize, arrange, edit and store your images and add a personalized touch to your photo album collections.
- Flickr
- 500px
- Canon’s Irista
- Unsplash
- SmugMug
- Zenfolio
- Behance
- Google Photos
- Photobucket
- Pexels
- Pixabay
- Shutterstock
- Flickr
- 500px
- Canon’s Irista
- Unsplash
- SmugMug
- Zenfolio
- Behance
- Google Photos
- Photobucket
- Pexels
- Pixabay
- Shutterstock
Here is a list of the best photo sharing & storage apps and websites:
Flickr
Get It On Google Play
Get It On App StoreThis is probably the most popular photo sharing app of all time. It has an engaged and enthusiastic community of eighty million plus people who upload and share their photos in an easy-to-use interface.
It offers a sizeable storage space and the option to view and download photographs in a variety of resolutions. Also, it allows the users to share their photographs in a particular category or group such as Illustrations, Photos and Screenshots and even offers groups such as Still photography, Macro photography and many others.
This is one of the reasons why this app is the most popular among professional photographers. Beginning from January, 2019 the storage capacity for a free account has been limited to 1000 photos or videos, while the paid Pro account has unlimited storage, is ad-free and allows streaming videos of upto 10 minutes.
This app, that was originally launched only for iOS, has gained popularity among millions of users worldwide after it has been introduced for Android as well. It offers a range of amazing filters that enhance the quality and beautify your photographs ‘instantly’ and you can also edit them using the various formatting tools that the app provides.
Instagram is much more than a photo-sharing app; it also offers private messaging which has made it a popular social media platform for it makes sharing of photographs among people easier. If you’re looking to widen your reach and audience through this app, remember to use hashtags. You can also create collections or photo albums relating to a particular category like travel, fashion, pets and so on.
500px
Yet another photo-sharing community, this app is also a marketplace for businesses to sell and purchase from a range of photographs. It is also one of the favourites among professional photographers. Like Flickr, it also comes in both free and paid memberships.
The upgraded version has many useful features – insights of photo views, sharing your photography services with clients, marketing your photography events and much more. In fact, the highest priced membership level comes with an included subscription of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan. The app has plenty of customization options and gives global recognition.
1x.com
‘Curation is our DNA’ says the masthead of this photo-sharing website and the online platform claims to offer the best photography of the world in one place. Quality is their priority and so before uploading, your photographs would be approved by a list of photography professionals. Several photos, art prints and illustrations from their website have won in International contests.
Also, you may purchase prints from their sites for your personal home decor purposes! The site prohibits right-click direct downloading and also has tools to critique your work and photography tutorials.
Canon’s Irista
This photo storing and sharing site was launched by Canon to effortlessly store your collection of photographs. It has uploading options for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS and does not require a Canon camera device for access.
It also has options to sort your photos by using tags, camera type and based on which social media channels the photos are shared to. It has cloud storage service that gives upto 15 GB of free storage space. You can upgrade to a premium account to increase the storage upto 100 GB. Unfortunately however, Canon is closing down Irista at the end of January, 2020.
Unsplash
This site is dedicated to share, modify and distribute stock photographs and that too, completely free! It is copyright free and is available for commercial use under the Unsplash license. This site is ideal for emerging photographers who are seeking exposure and recognition and the number of downloads on a particular image can strike a deal for them.
You may create your customized profile but the number of photo uploads are limited to a maximum of 10 per ten days. (However, they can pull up the limit for special contributors!) The tagline of the site reads ‘Photos for Everyone’ and indeed, the collection of pictures on this site testifies to it.
The ranges of photos include travel photography, nude photography, food photography, portrait shots and countless other genres. The site promises ease of access and shareability. They also accept submissions that if selected, are featured on the homepage.
Exposure
This is a great platform to create dynamic photo effects that appear professional and artistic. It provides numerous tools to enhance your photos such as adding text, embedding text from other websites, applying filters to a selected part of an image, adding colour effects, depth effect and many more.
The most unique and exciting feature of this app is that it provides iPhone filters for your images! After editing the images, you can save it directly to your phone storage or share to various social media channels.
SmugMug
This is the best alternative for everything related to photography. It offers users to create a personalized and completely custom photo gallery for showcasing your professional photographs. You can modify the homepage template according to your aesthetics and stand out with your photography skills.
Besides photo storing and sharing, it also provides an e-commerce market to monetize your images. They preserve pictures in high resolution and maintain great image quality. The biggest drawback is that it only comes in paid versions. But, putting money is worth a shot given its unmatchable features.
Zenfolio
This app provides complete management tools for your professional photography ventures. Users can organize, arrange, display and sell your images. Moreover, you can create your personalized photography website with custom domain name and the option to curate SEO friendly blogs within the app. They have free web templates and photo slideshow viewing options.
They also support offline photo viewing. The designs are mobile-friendly and all this constituted in a free package! If you’re a professional looking to make a sale, this is your perfect destination. The app boasts of a seamless shopping experience on both ends and the best part is that you can set your own price!
Pixpa
This is a popular mobile photo gallery application wherein you can customize your gallery to attract clients. Every image comes with an option to share on social media channels with your contact and branding information. This makes it a popular choice among professionals to create personalized portfolios to showcase their best work and in fact, create their very own brand of photography.
Some of its other features include sitemap, real-time publishing, visual style editor, Google fonts, customized site labels and much more. The app gives a 15-day free trial and has two levels of paid subscriptions with minor differences in features.
Behance
This app which was launched by Adobe, is another online platform to showcase your work professionally. From architecture designs to portrait shots, from illustrations to fashion photography, Behance photo app has a number of projects for freelance photographers and artists to work upon and even receive feedback.
Since it is an Adobe creation, all the editing, formatting and enhancing tools of Adobe software are integrated for usage in Behance. It is available on Mac, Windows, Android and iOS.
Google Photos
Google Photos was originally launched as a way to backup photo data, but has now evolved as a favourite among the beast photo editing softwares. It has several editing tools like cutting, cropping and colour effects. Plus, you can also share the photographs with your friends conveniently or categorize them into photo albums.
Like Irista, it also has cloud storage and is completely secure and private. It gives users unlimited storage space but a restricted limit in terms of resolution. Google Photos software also helps you to find a particular image from the bulk of your collection simply by typing a keyword. You can also upgrade to a paid version for improved features.
Photobucket
This website is more of a photo storage space than a sharing platform; however, you can always share your uploaded photos to social media channels. Its unique quality is its extensively sizeable storage space that can go upto unlimited with a paid subscription. For a free account, the storage is limited to 250 pictures.
However, the minus point of a free version is that it comes with several advertisements and pop-ups. Paid versions have a clean layout and very accessible interface and are also ad-free and have many organizational tools. From this site, you can purchase individual photos prints or photo albums and even objects with your chosen images imprinted on them!
ImageShack
This photo storing software allows massive storage space of about 10 GB per month on a free basis. Images can directly be uploaded into the app from the computer or by copy-pasting the link to the image.
It can then be organized into separate photo albums or edited before sharing to social media handles such as Pinterest and Facebook. It also allows users to add comments and like the image; they are also available for direct downloads. After the first registration, you would be given a 30-day free trial, post which the membership would extend through paid subscription.
Pexels
This is the ultimate photo sharing network that gives some commendable options for customizing your photographs. The app allows you to create your own personalized collection and also has some amazing filters. The app layout can be customized with a choice of wallpapers and offers high performance output even while uploading and sharing images in bulk.
It enables liking and comment system and you can also follow other photographers. It is SEO friendly, which means that the images automatically has a wider reach and are Google search-friendly.
Pixabay
This is one of the leading photo sharing platforms that boasts of an ad-free interface and no in-app purchases. Users can easily upload images from their device for sharing and download already-existing images for free with the convenience of a click. You can like and comment on the photos and create an album of favourites. Each picture is accompanied with camera information and category tags and can be explored through easy swipe model on a quite accessible and intuitive user interface.
Shutterstock
This photo sharing app comes with an inbuilt browser to search from a selective range of photographs and featured collections. Image collections in the app are available as both free and paid download options. Its features include image resizing tools, orientation adjustment and keyword search.
The collection includes HD images and all of them are available for one-time purchase, royalty-free. Shutterstock has acquired an active customer-base since it was launched in 2003 and since then, it has also expanded to marketing of stock videos.
This list would help you to curate and manage your photographs as per your needs. Besides sharing and formatting your photos, you can also monetize your images or create your customized brand of photography among professional circles.
Technology has managed to produce some best services of all times and indisputably, photo sharing apps is its best child!