photo sharing websites, which ones allow visitors to download high res files?

We recently had a family reunion and I was the photographer. Six years ago at our last reunion I made CDs of the photos and mailed them out. This year I've been wondering if the internet photo sharing sites can simplify this.

I haven't used any of the services before. I've gone to the Flickr, Smugmug, Photobucket and Snapfish websites. All of them talk about sharing photos, letting viewers see the photos I post, but it's not clear to me whether any of them will allow a family member to not only view the photos but download the high resolution file.

What I want is to post the reunion photos, allow family members to view them, then allow them to choose whatever photos they like and download the full resolution file.

Could anyone with some experience with these sites help me out?

I personally don't use Flickr, but when I go to see the image that someone has posted, it allows you to view it in a small version, but with the option to download it all the way up to it's ORIGINAL SIZE.

There will be a small magnifying glass that is in the upper left hand corner of the image, click that, and you should have no problem.

The only problem 'might be' is that if you have a lot of traffic in the same day, you 'might' get cut off, but they can try it again the next day.
I don't know how much traffic they allow, but it should be on their site.

I hope that's what you meant.

Randy

Flickr will let them allow them to download the original size, but you may still need to send a mass email with instructions if your family isn't extremely computer literate. "View photos, click "all sizes" click "Download Original" to get picture to print". Pretty simple.

Thanks, I'll give Flickr a try.

Zenfolio also claim to allow high res images, if wishing to sell via the site. It is "suggested" that for simple viewing, a smaller file size of a more appropriate. I've only got dial-up, and my PC would refuse to download a monster.

Bear your likely audience in mind before deciding. If it were my family, I'd upload small res images and suggest that a CD of better quality might be available if a cash donation was made to charity.

To be honest, if it really was my family, I'd have to forget computers completely!

smugmug allows downloads of original files as well (you can allow/disallow) - One of the reasons I went with them was to share photos with family.

I've spent a lot of time at the FAQs for these sites and they barely address what I really want to do, have a central place for selected people to download my photos. Here's what seems to be the big problem with these sites. Apparently all of them require people to sign up or create accounts to view photos, or am I wrong?

That's a problem because some family have a Flickr acount, some have a Picasa account, etc, etc, and none of them want to sign up for another account with another user name and another password.

As long as you make the pictures public your family can view flickr pictures without any login. And let's face it, who else is gonna care about pictures of your family?

I have Zenfolio and Flikr accounts but the easiest solution for me was to set up an FTP server on my computer then e-mail the log-in instructions to my relatives. If you have a high speed connection its one option to consider.

I use Serv-U FTP server but there are other solutions out there including the free Filezilla Server: http://filezilla-project.org/

I set up a free 2-week trial at zenfolio to do exactly what you want to do. It was very, very easy to get it going. No prob having folks download your original files. You probably could have the whole thing set up in less time than it took to read this thread. You can password protect your gallery of the reunion and have other galleries open to the public or not.

Plus I found the zenfolio slide viewer exceptionally fast, so folks can see an excellent view of a resized photo before they actually download the full-size original.

Kent Clark wrote in post #6004035
I've spent a lot of time at the FAQs for these sites and they barely address what I really want to do, have a central place for selected people to download my photos. Here's what seems to be the big problem with these sites. Apparently all of them require people to sign up or create accounts to view photos, or am I wrong?.

You are wrong. zenfolio does exactly what you want.

Zenfolio certainly appears to require a "Visitors membership" before allowing full -res downloads. Of course it may be possible to circumvent this, but Kent Clark is right as I read their rules.

Thanks for the help and suggestions. Like I said, the FAQs for these sites spend lots of time talking about what I can do, upload, print, share, etc. But they don't spend much time talking about what other people can do.

I was wrong about what I wrote before. All of them will let you look at photos without an account but, like Richard, when I read the posted information they restrict downloading full res files to some kind of membership. I'll look at Zenfolio. What I don't want to do is sign up with the name and password and then find out I can't do what I wanted to do.

Lowner wrote in post #6006276
Zenfolio certainly appears to require a "Visitors membership" before allowing full -res downloads. Of course it may be possible to circumvent this, but Kent Clark is right as I read their rules.

Let's not confuse download and upload. Kent will need to get at least a free trial membership to put his photos on the zenfolio server. After he puts his photos on the zenfolio server anyone with access to them (i.e. anyone that Kent allows) can download them.

Try this. Without registering, can you download the uncropped original picture I just placed at:
edit: url deleted

40Dude, that demonstration really helped, thanks for taking the time to do it.