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Great Photography Tools and Resources Available Online
Photos are everywhere on the web. From sharing with friends, to editing, printing, buying, selling, searching, remixing and free hosting, we’ve lined up a plethora of great photography tools and resources for photo fiends.
Online Photo Editors
Sometimes you’re not home and need to edit a photo quickly – luckily there are plenty of online tools for you to use. Here’s our list of the best.
OnlinePhotoTool
http://www.onlinephototool.com/
This simple but effective editor allows you to edit photos that you upload as well as photos already posted to the Internet – please respect other photographers’ rights, however, when using posted photos.
MyImager
A powerful and flexible image editing site that allows you to do a lot of quick but professional-level work anywhere in the world.
Pixenate
There are a lot of filters and effects available with this powerful online editor, and you can embed it into your own web page to allow visitors to edit your photos.
Phixr
Edit photos and upload them to Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa and Smugmug with the built-in integration tool.
Pixer.us
Edit and save your photos with this straightforward but reliable editing site.
Picture2Life
Another solid editing sight that offers no-cost simple photo manipulation and allows you to grab photos from your other online accounts easily.
Preloadr
Designed to integrate directly with your Flickr account and improve your photos with simple preset filters for maximum effect.
Photo Sharing
If a photo isn’t seen, does it exist? Avoid existential headaches like that by posting your photos to one or more of the following photo-sharing sites.
Zorpia
Create a landing page, upload your photos and you instantly have a professional, attractive place to display your work.
Snappages
Although not strictly a photo-sharing site, Snappages allows you to easily create awesome-looking websites for free and allows you to upload your photos and instantly have your own gallery site – all for free.
SlideShare
Although geared for the professional to upload and share presentations, you can create photo galleries and then share these easily with anyone.
DPhoto
DPhoto allows you to maintain some control over who sees the photos you share, all while providing an attractive, secure, and professional-looking interface that makes it suitable even for a professional photographer.
Flickr
The Grandaddy of photo sharing sites, Flickr continues to be a major presence in the photography world, and one of the most popular choices for casual photo sharing.
Picasa
Recently integrated with Google+ (which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view), Picasa has a first-rate interface and a healthy dose of tools for editing, filtering, and displaying your photos.
Free Photo Hosting
It’s not as big an issue as it used to be, but we all still run up against the high cost of bandwidth on our personal or professional websites, and free photo hosting can be a life-saver.
Photobucket
One of the oldest and most reliable photo hosting sites, you can upload a huge number of photos and you get a healthy dose of traffic for free, making it an ideal place to store photos if your web hosting doesn’t include a lot of storage, or if you post a lot of photos to social media.
ImageShack
Similar to Photobucket, and just as easy, with slightly lower limits on file size and traffic.
ImageHosting
With Imagehosting you get more or less what other hosting sites offer, but you have the option of uploading multiple photos at once, which can be handy when you’re creating galleries of your work.
TinyPic
Still going strong because its URL-shortening feature is ideal for posting photos to Twitter.
BayImg
Free unrestricted photo hosting with a maximum file size of 100MB means you can load some serious hi-res photos to this site and link to them from anywhere.
FreeImageHosting.net
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/
While size and storage is limited, you can host your photos here for absolutely zero cost.
ImageVenue
Similar in scope and service to FreeImageHosting.net, with the option of uploading up to five files at once.
ImageCross
ImageCross was once known as the go-to hosting site for MySpace, but today remains a solid offering in the free hosting milieu.
SmugMug
SmugMug is an all-in-one site, offering hosting and editing. Upload, edit, save, and share your photos all on one site.
Photography Blogs
No matter how far along you are in your career or hobby, there’s always more to learn – and these sites are where you learn it.
Digital Photography School
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/
One of the oldest and most-respected online resources for learning about photography in all its aspects, with a range of articles covering fundamentals as well as more advanced topics.
Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk is a household name in photography circles and just about any photographer at any level can learn something from his fascinating and insightful website.
PhotoCritic
In order to truly understand photography you have to be able to discuss photos intelligently and with a sense of history – PhotoCritic is a great place to learn how photos are deconstructed and discussed in the real world.
FlickrBlog
Flickr’s staff doesn’t always post or even directly discuss photos, but when they do it is often illuminating and well worth your time.
DPreview
If it exists as photography equipment, you can be sure it’s been reviewed in detail on this site. Whether you’re gearing up for the first time or replacing your worn-out stuff, this should be your first stop.
Chromasia
A few minutes every day absorbing the amazing images posted here – no descriptions or other distractions – will leave you inspired and refreshed.
Stuck In Customs
http://www.stuckincustoms.com/
When it comes to HDR photography, this is one of the most entertaining, interesting, and useful resources online.
Mashups
A ‘mashup’ is when two things are combined into unexpected awesomeness. Here are some of our favourite examples.
FlickrVision
See what people are uploading to Flickr around the world by clicking on a Google-like map.
Retrievr
http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/
Need a photo but can’t think of the keywords? This sites allows you to doodle a drawing and will attempt to locate photos online that match.
Flickr Logo Maker
Like the clean, modern look of the Flickr logo? This site will turn any text string into a Flickr-like logo.
Spell with Flickr
This is just a fun little toy that lets you ‘write’ using photos from Flickr. (We all need a distraction now and then!)
Fastr
http://randomchaos.com/games/fastr/
A game where you’re presented a collection of images and you try to guess the tag they have in common – useful in training yourself to see photos the way your audience does.
PictureSandbox
Searches for images based on licensing terms; can be incredibly useful when you need images for a project with certain rights.
FlickrFling
http://www.nastypixel.com/prototype/cms/myfiles/pages/flickrfling/
Another fun toy that accomplishes very little: this will render an RSS feed as Flickr images. Useful for inspiration.
Colr Pickr
http://krazydad.com/colrpickr/
This tool searches Flickr photos based on colour palette – which is one of the most useful things we’ve ever seen.
Photo Tag Mashup
This tool quickly retrieves a collection of images based solely on the tags you provide, making searches very fast and efficient.
Mobile
The world is mobile these days, and almost everyone is using one or both of these mobile-centric tools.
Snapchat
Send photos, drawings and short videos to a list of friends and set a viewing period – once the viewing period is over, the photo disappears forever. Ideal for the modern mobile age.
Still the top of the heap in mobile photo sharing, Instagram makes it easy to take photos, apply simple filters to them, and share them with friends and family instantly.
Photo Mixing, Slideshows, and Book Creation
Get crafty with your photos and turn them into books, slideshows, or other gifts or personal collections using these sites.
Mixbook
Create photo books easily from your diverse collections of photos on several sharing sites. For the time this site will save you alone it’s almost priceless.
Snapfish
Store your photos and get prints and gift items with your photos printed on them at low prices. Ideal for events and parties, or just for fun.
Fotki
If you’re a casual photographer who doesn’t mind the idea of selling their photos, Fotki can be perfect: It integrates well with your blog, has some pro-level features like FTP access, and you have the option of selling prints. It’s a win-win in many ways.
Shutterfly
If you still like to get prints of your photos, Shutterfly combines new-fangled photo hosting with the ability to pick up your photos in Target stores.
Photo Search
Sometimes you need photos that you can’t take yourself – and searching the infinite number of images out there is never going to be easy. These sites at least make it possible.
PicSearch
Powerful image search with plenty of simple options to restrict the search to something focussed and useful.
Google Image Search
We all know Google and its image search. Not always the most useful image search, actually, but a good starting point.
EveryStockPhoto
http://www.everystockphoto.com/
There are a lot of stock photo sites, and this service attempts to index them all so you can find what you’re looking for with one efficient search.
Stock Photos
Stock photos are life-savers when you’re building something that needs images. These are some of the best sites for getting low-cost or even free stock photos.
iStockPhoto
Don’t let the ‘free’ in ‘royalty free’ fool you – there are no free images here. All stock photos require a one-time payment, but all of a very high professional quality.
Fotolia
A huge collection of royalty-free images means you can always find what you need here.
FreeImages
A huge collection of completely free stock photos, although the quality varies tremendously. The site is free to join but requires that you register before you can download files.
MorgueFile
Similar to FreeImages, but with no registration required.
PixelPerfectDigital
http://pixelperfectdigital.com/
Thousands of high-quality and 100% free stock photos.
StockXpert
The prices are low, but none of the images here are free. They are however royalty free and are generally of a higher quality than the free sites.
Alamy
A search engine focussed entirely on stock photos from a wide range of sources. The site has done a great job of organising everything so you spend less time searching and more time building your projects.
