pinemikey wrote:Hi Andrys;
. . .
I'm not advocating Google+ photo albums for showing off my images and/or replacing Pbase. I'm using it as a vehicle to access Pbase to back up my images. It is strange that the online gallery has no full size view of the transferred images. Its understandable that you would conclude that only reduced size images are transferred. Something, Google+ needs to work on.
They've changed this somewhat. Picasaweb gets worse and worse because images are always compressed and, get this, they shrink OR 'expand' the photo (which means poor resutls) depending on monitor display setting and chosen web browser setting and it always looks fuzzy to me. But the backup part works.
BUT, the Google Plus version of it (improving each day) adjusts the photo sizes while keeping the images clear no matter what. I was impressed with this last week.
I keep my uploads now to 1024 pixels on the long side, and those are free-storage at google plus. (Anything under 2 MB each)
Their thumbnails page is a fun layout which I think makes the gallery look more interesting.
I made 4 galleries visible and hid 95% of the rest because it's just a backup place for me, essentially, as PBase has the best image presentation I've seen. No need to go hiding things etc., at PBase.
https://plus.google.com/103294150628333950341/photos The 'shared albums' are somewhere in the middle left.
But I'm experimenting anyway in case. And it will double as an alternate place for newer stuff. Also, with my size of pic, 1024 x _____ there's no storage fee.
The single-image pages are always clear at google plus (while horrible at picasaweb) but there's an ugly glaring white info column to the right (on both). I found out that someone viewing can get rid of that info box at google-plus galleries by clicking on the double-headed diagonal arrow in the bottom right of the single image.
And although the caption displays, then, at the bottom of the image and disappears after a couple of seconds, you can hover at the right over the lower option and read it. Clicking on something at the right brings back the info box if wanted. So it toggles, which is nice. Default image is against black background, which I really like. People can comment on that page too but only if they're Google+ members.
ADDED:
ONE nice thing I hope PBase does someday: a mere right or left arrow key moves the pics to Next or Previous. Much easier for the person viewing...
The Google+ Photo Albums online have the captions that I wrote for the images but none of the comments. The image titles aren't as they are in our Pbase galleries. Goliad Mission Espiritu Santo becomes Goliad%2520Mission%2520Espiritu%2520Santo.jpg when downloaded and no captions are carried over and the gallery image order isn't the same for the test PBase gallery I used. I know that would cause trouble for quite a few of your travel galleries.
It took my 'captions' ok but if there was a date with slashes "/" it cut off anything that came before the slash.
The PBase Image Titles are actually under "Filename" at google-plus which makes them hard to find/see, so I copied any I wanted from the 'filename' to the front of the GooglePlus Captions
Considering its been almost two years or so that PBgrab stopped working on new albums, this is a good development for Pbase Members.
Yes, i like being able to download the entire set of PBase pics in one zip file to a hard disk. No sub galleries of course. They're all one level. But at least I won't worry about losing albums I worked on anymore.
I didn't like that the transfer process from PBase does not follow image order. I tried Zenfolio but it makes it almost impossible. GooglePlus (with some editing having to be done at picasaweb still) is easier for me to deal with so far. Zenfolio's options are almost like Greek to me. And they're supposed to be much easier than Smugmug.
But at least, with google-plus galleries you can choose date (and time) order (works for Travel galleries) and then make small changes as you like.
But I've not found a photo-display place that has a better image presentation layout than PBAse. The others seemed FILLED with distracting things.