Photobucket is asking me to take a $39.95/month subscription in order to be able to use their 3rd party hosting feature, which I will not do.

What other options do I have if I want to include a photo in a new thread or in a reply to an exisiting thread?

 

The board hosts pictures directly. 600x600 pixels and 50kb file size.
Get a free pic program where you can resize pics. Some operating systems already have pic resizing programs.

I haven't seen that offer. Photobucket offers 500G of storage and unlimited 3rd party hosting for $399. per year.

I'm looking for most cost effective ways of hosting larger pics.

 

Does Windows 10 have such a program; and if so, what is it called?

 

I use photobucket and have never had to pay anything.

 

It's a new thing. They're doing it gradually.

 

Photobucket still allows free picture storage on their site. It's when you want to link that picture here. That's called hot linking or 3rd party hosting. They want to charge for the ability to do that.

 

Photobucket sent me an e-mail today stating that 3rd party hosting would no longer be allowed with my photos and advised me to subscribe to their $39.95/month plan to get the privilege.

 

Looks like photobucket will be losing a lot of customers soon.

 

Yes... I agree. They recently increased their ad coverage over the pages making it almost unbearable to use anyway.

I'm currently looking into ImageShack imageshack.us/

 

My favorite (Windows) tool for image resizing and cropping is Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Which is high praise coming from me, because in general I think Micro$loth is da debil.

You don't have to buy M$ Office to get the Picture Manager, you can get it free with SharePoint Designer 2007.



Download the entire bundle (~300mb) and run the executable. If Picture Manager is all you want from the bundle, do a custom install and only select that app.

If I have requirements beyond cropping and resizing, I generally use Pinta, a cross-platform, open-source freeware. You can't use M$ Office Picture Manager on Linux, so Pinta is my go-to app in Linux. It's simple on par with the "Paint" program that used to come with Windows before M$ screwed it up (and the rest of the OS with it), but it has quite a few features beyond the old Paint's capabilities.

I generally upload images to an independent host rather than the forum where I intend posting them for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I can't be bothered to learn the different upload procedures for all the forums I belong to. My favorite host is Bild.me. It's free to use and dead simple.

 

I use that everyday and I agree it's an excellent and easy to use program.

I try to locally host as many pics as I can just for the simple reason of this photobucket problem. Now there are at least several hundred missing pictures with that lovely photobucket insert.

Most boards don't have the provision to locally host pictures.

 

Don't forget the old free stand by IRFanView. It works very well and is very simple to use.

 

I know many don't like imgur, but I find it easy to use. That's my choice.

 

The implementation of PhotoBucket's changes has now affected every photo that I've ever posted to this and other Forums over the past 10+ years, so even if I were to transfer my "small" 2-300 album from PB to say Google, it would necessitate opening up and editing every post that I've made during this time period to alter the origin address for each and every photo that was ever submitted . . . . so the work involved would be many times the number of photos in the album; edits numbering in the thousands !

It wouldn't be a small endeavor.

 

I feel your pain. Many forums don't host, and many don't allow you to edit your own posts (here). I've been using PB almost 15 years in a variety of hobby & enthusiast forums and have done a great many how-tos. All are now wrecked.

If I understand the email I got you may link your PB photos in 1:1 correspondence for $30 but to hot-link in a forum--where many people can view and download--you have to cough up $400/yr.

Only high-volume eBay and Amazon sellers who host their product images there could afford that rate, and many of them are livid at the "extortion" and will leave as soon as they can migrate their thousands of photos to another free platform. PB has cut their own throat with this idea. There's growing sentiment that they can't undo the damage of this announcement.