Photobucket is now charging $400/yr for sharing photos with forums

[Dennis Glazener]

Dave,
I suspect you are right about the free PB accounts and it would be a monumental job to relocate them to another host.
Dennis

[SingleMalt]

Dave,
I suspect you are right about the free PB accounts and it would be a monumental job to relocate them to another host.
Dennis

Dennis, I plan to move my pics from PB in groups of maybe ten.  There's about 250 pics there, so it won't be too bad.  Like eating an elephant, one bite at a time.

[Majorjoel]

I have been paying for PB services for several years now and got a message from them about the 3rd party linkup's.

I have recently sent them a message to please cancel my account.

Pretty sure that they will not have time to reply back to me as they will be too busy taking care of all of the flak that they have made for themselves.

Most all of my pictures are on my computer's file folders and will stay there with all of my back up's.

A few I will miss that were from my beginnings in computer digital photography that were incorporated in laptops now long gone.

[smart dog]

Hi,
I just read some posts on a Photobucket blog site saying that even paying subscribers are now have their photos locked out until they join at the $400/yr fee.  Some are even saying they now blocked from downloading  their photos from the site.  I suspect this issue is still developing so even if you paid them, you may want to check on your posts over time.

dave

[Joe S]

Jose,

That will work to capture the text, but at some point the links to pictures on Photobucket will be terminated.  Try reading a tutorial with no pictures.

-Ron

When you copy a post with both text and a photograph, and put them in a Word document, the photo is stored locally and cannot be deleted by Photobucket or anybody else.

Then you have a MS Word file, fine for looking at yourself but its best to do a right click on the photo and do a "save image as" which allows you to download that image to the folder of your choice. Plus it remains as a .jpg image that you can post, email to others.
Dennis

If you want to share the photo from the Word document, right click on the photo and select Save As Picture from the dropdown menu.  A photo that has been saved directly as a picture, and one that has been extracted from a Word document are identical in size, so there is no loss in resolution due to passing though the Word document.

[Mark Elliott]

To save a photo off the web to a local folder/drive,  just right click on the photo and select "Save Image As" and specify a local location.    In order to keep things nice and neat ,  you need to think ahead and setup a logical folder structure and file name scheme.   For my photos, I organize by year, then a folder name with a date string (YYYYMMDD) followed by a short description of the client or subject.   Another scheme might work for you.   

If you are able to view an image on the web,  it has already been downloaded to your browser and stored on your local computer in the cache.   You only need to save it to a location where you can easily retrieve it.

[KentSmith]

AWS S3 is the way to go. Put them up on the cloud

[Mike Brooks]

AWS S3 is the way to go. Put them up on the cloud

Cloud?

[Keb]

Some time ago there was a discussion on photo hosting on this forum. The topic was "disappearing photos". Anywho, I remember someone being miffed about photos not showing up. I casually mentioned pretty much what Mark Elliot said above about free ain't necessarily free. I stated I buy my own web space for posting purposes and complete control of my internet property. Sorry boys, but you get what you pay for.

[smart dog]

Hi Keb,
With Photobucket you may pay but not get what you paid for.  It seems they are working their way through paid accounts now.  I guess they want everyone at $400/yr. 

dave 

[Mike Brooks]

Hi Keb,
With Photobucket you may pay but not get what you paid for.  It seems they are working their way through paid accounts now.  I guess they want everyone at $400/yr. 

dave

If that's the way this ends up that will be the end of my website and my tutorial.

[Long John]

Friends,

Being terminally stupid, I never understood why the software that is used to create a site like ALR didn't just accept jpegs from our computers rather than going through all the rigamarole (sic!) of storing the photos to some other site and then copying the link over to ALR.  The real solution is for the software that supports a site like ALR to allow direct importation of photos, JPEGs, from the participant's computer.  Everything that I have a PB is a copy of a photo that is in my computer, along with archive back-up.  So I won't "loose" any photos.  But you all are telling me, it seems, that all the posts we have made in the past using PB will now be missing the photos.  Doesn't going to some other photo storage site just set the stage for a future replay of what we are all discussing here?

Best Regards,

JMC
John Cholin

[smart dog]

Hi Mike,
Keep an eye on them.  From comments on one PB blog site, it appears some who paid the new subscription fee still have not had their shared photos activated.  Others have only a portion of their photos activated.  I think the key problem with PB is they are combining a ruthless business decision with technical incompetence.  The technical incompetence part apparently has been widely commented on in photo blog sites for a long time. The tragedy is they pulled in many users in the early 2000s because they were the only game in town and now they are punishing those users.  Moreover, probably most forums encouraging members to post photos, directed their members to "free" image hosting sites with PB always being mentioned.  Our own tutorial for posting photos on ALR prominently mentions "free" image hosting on Photobucket unless you need to pay for more storage capacity.  So to admonish folks with "you get what you pay for" is not very helpful or even appropriate.  It's an old saw without the proper context in this case.

dave   

[44-henry]

I would be very leery of paying PB anything at this point. The whole situation strikes me as a "take what you can get and run" sort of affair. It is the last gasp of a dying company trying to pull in a few bucks before their inevitable demise, in other words, if you pay them don't be surprised when they still go under in a few months taking your money and photos with them. I was just on their site this morning downloading all the photos that I have stored (that were not already backed up), I suggest others do the same thing while they are still able to.

[Ray Settanta]

I have downloaded some tutorials and web pages that still have photos on them as a pdf file to my computer since the photos from Photobucket have disappeared. Will this allow me to view these photos in the future if something like this happens again?

[Kingsburyarms]

If you have the PDF files - you can then see the images on them. it's a good way to store images if you can not get the originals to download.   

All - if you have a bunch of images on Photobucket, you can "mass download them to your computer:

http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/201892970-Downloading-Albums

You can do this by albums - makes it a lot faster.

I will do some more "hunting"  on how we can save all we can. and some other options,

Mike: Get those tutorials downloaded on your computer!!!!!

[Mike Brooks]

Mike: Get those tutorials downloaded on your computer!!!!!

Wouldn't have a clue.

[SingleMalt]

My photos haven't disappeared, but a pop-up that won't close ask, no, urges me to upgrade my account.   

[Eric Krewson]

OK, I downloaded an album from PB to my computer but don't know where it went to or how to find it.

[Bob Roller]

I would tell them they would have to "charge it"because there is no way
I'd pay $400 a year.

Bob Roller

[smart dog]

Hi Eric,
Check to see if you have a new folder in your main computer directory (probably your "C" drive).  When you move your pointer over the folder, it will say folder contains compressed or zipped files.  Then copy it to the place you want it to reside and click on the folder. You will see and option to extract files.  Click on that and the photos will appear in your folder.

dave

[smart dog]

Hi,
Here is a good link to information about what is going on.  I have been familiar with PC mag since I began using PCs in the 1980s and coding my own software for spreadsheets, word processing, statistics, and graphics as a poor graduate student who could not afford the commercial products but had to do work relying on that software.   That is why I taught myself BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and "C++" and more recently "S+" and "R". 

https://www.pcmag.com/news/354711/photobucket-breaks-image-links-across-the-internet

You know, it is sad.  Our society promotes our children to be lawyers, investment bankers, video game programers, and celebrities but makes it really hard to be scientists and engineers, the people who are the best, brightest, and most important in our modern world.

dave

[jerrywh]

 On other forums there is talk about a law suit against photo bucket.  This sort of like extortion. One person said that photo bucket it reconsidering this.

[Dennis Glazener]

If you have the PDF files - you can then see the images on them. it's a good way to store images if you can not get the originals to download.   

All - if you have a bunch of images on Photobucket, you can "mass download them to your computer:

http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/201892970-Downloading-Albums

You can do this by albums - makes it a lot faster.

I will do some more "hunting"  on how we can save all we can. and some other options,

Mike: Get those tutorials downloaded on your computer!!!!!

Mike's tutorial is safe. I converted it to a PDF a couple of years ago and have a copy on my hard drive as well as one on my website.
Dennis

[Daryl]

Every firearms forum I frequent, is discussing photobucket at this time.