Kodak Gallery is one of the older photo hosting sites. While most people are using Flickr and Photobucket, there is still a healthy number of subscribers at Kodak Gallery. Unfortunately, Kodak Gallery is forcing those who have free accounts to spend money yearly.
Kodak has decided to alter their Terms of Service agreement. Within this new agreement Kodak has the rights to delete your photos if you do not adhere to the new requirements:
1. If your online photos use less than 2 GB storage, you must make annual purchases of at least $4.99 from Kodak. Seeing as in the past 5 years, photo storage has been on a sharp rise, I will a assume that those who are in the 2GB or lower range represent the minority.
2. For everyone else, the minimum purchase requirement is $19.99 and this is annual.
A bit steep considering the store Kodak Gallery users have to purchase from. In the event that you are one of the unfortunate that wants to migrate your photos from Kodak Gallery there is even more bad news. Kodak Gallery is a closed service. There are no widgets or 3rd party applications made specifically for someone who wants to batch download their photos from the site. This is not a [complete] knock against Kodak. Their business model has changed. It is still pretty awful the predicament this puts a longtime user.
Here are your options:
1. You could upgrade to a Premiere account which would allow you to download full resolution photos from your account. This would set you back $2.50 a month. You could download all of your images and burn them and/or save them to your hard drive and cancel your account. Fairly inexpensive when considering your second option.
2. You can have Kodak creat a Kodak CD in which your entire collection of albums would be stored on however many discs they would charge you for the service.
*Risky Tip: If none of these options sound logical to you, there is a riskier chance you could take and use a generic program that essentially is an image finder. These can be found by scouring metafilters through Google or Yahoo Answers. Here is a good example. Be warned, you are not guaranteed to get that high quality image you posted on Kodak Gallery. Furthermore, Kodak Gallery may not take to kindly to you removing content that is both yours and possibly theirs according to the new Terms of Service.
Fellow photographers, let me know if there is a better alternative for batch downloading an album from a site like Kodak Gallery in the comments below.
I don’t know anyone who actually uses them. I think I have an account, but have not logged in in ages. What does Kodak make money on anyways.
Most sites charge something. Flick costs me at least $20 a year. I realize people will migrate away to a degree but most pro’s expect to pay, and any pro that depends on an online service like Flickr, Kodak, Smugmug or any other is taking a huge risk. Even a non pro for that matter.
I look at all these sort of things as an ends to a means. If I need to change I do because I don’t put my reliance on them. It’s too bad Kodak is such a walled garden. That will drive away serious photographer and it won’t help sustain them in the long term.
Yeah, It is pretty much expected from any photo storage site that their be a premiere account or membership. I am not knocking Kodak’s business model seeing as it is a model that every other major site of its kind has ALREADY adopted. I am merely pointing out that even if you wanted to do a ‘mass download’ from a site like Kodak Gallery [which not many pros I know use, but may still have an account] the option isn’t even there for you to migrate your photos free of charge.