I have no idea whether to post this or not.
I'm sure it will be dealt with.

Got some info about the "new photobucket"
Haven't had a chance to digest this info yet but thought I'd throw it out there.


https://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004314254?utm_source=ga&utm_medium=email&utm_content=subscriber_id:13036327&utm_campaign=2018-06-03%20141000%20Free%20User%20Rollout%20(6%20months%20active)

I'm sure others have also received this information

Power to the Consumer!  Will have to look at the New Coke at a later date!

Why would one use Photobucket when loading pictures here direct is so easy?

Well, I'm not certain that I will use photobucket to load new photos.
However, I now have easy access to all of my prior photos stored in photobucket.

At least I should be able to download all of my pictures I saved to photobucket. That will be my last interaction with them, ever.

I can access my old photos - that is, they come up in my Library and Albums.
But I can do anything with them.
I can't email them. Nor can I post the images here in Pelletfan. Probably would be able to if I paid the fee.

I am not paying them Jack. I just went to each photo and took a screen shot using the snipping tool. I now have a bunch of photos that I lost when my SD card died on my phone 4 years ago. I know the images will look horrible if I ever want to print them but at least they look decent on my computer screen or on my phone. As an example here are a couple pictures of before and after of using electrolysis to remove the rust on the top grate on my Yoder after I got it.

I think the public unfairly harshly judged Photobucket.  The Photobucket business model was based on selling advertising to recover hosting costs and generate profit.  But that model wasn’t sustainable because users blocked the ads.  As a result, the advertising revenue fell below their requirements.

Their only alternative to bankruptcy was to charge for hosting.  They gave users a 60-day notice of the upcoming changes via email (when possible) and changes to their service terms.  Users were immediately allowed to retrieve their stored photographs as a bulk download after the new pricing went into effect.

All of that seems fair to me.  If you were the Photobucket decision maker, what would you have done differently?

I will respectfully disagree. What was that introductory rate they offered? Wasn't it hundreds of dollars per month initially? To go from "free" to hundreds of dollars a month to host my 50ish pictures is utterly ridiculous. Then revoking me from accessing the very pictures they told me on the front end were mine and would always be mine is/was completely unacceptable. I totally get that I am not the customer they wanted to keep. It is not so much that it went from free to paid. I take issue with gouging prices and holding my pictures hostage. By the way, they are still holding my pictures hostage. I cannot get my pictures back from them in the same resolution I uploaded. There were only a handful of pictures I really wanted back. Even if I sign up for 1 month at $30, to get the 5 or 6 pictures I really wanted back, they are charging me $5 or $6 per picture. Nope. Photobucket did me dirty and is a company I will never trust.

And it is not just that. I am on multiple message boards for different interests, one of which is pretty technical. Losing all of the pictures, not just mine, on all of those message boards kind off, (well I probably cannot use the word I would like to use here so I'll just say) makes me mad. There are a lot of "how to's" out there, of important things to me that are now just gone. I have no one to blame except Photobucket and their new business model. 

Slaga,

They didn't revoke my retrieval privilege.  I read their notice and retrieved my photographs.  I don't know why your experience was different.

The only reason that I ever put anything on Photobucket was to facilitate posting them on PH. All of the pictures were copies of things that I have stored on large flash drives so no need to retrieve anything.

Can you right click on your photo images and then click save as?

Slaga,

They didn't revoke my retrieval privilege.  I read their notice and retrieved my photographs.  I don't know why your experience was different.

I honestly do not know if I got a notice or not. I got a lot of junk emails from them over the years. Maybe I confused the notice with the rest of their junk email. I don't recall ever getting the opportunity for a bulk download.

The only reason that I ever put anything on Photobucket was to facilitate posting them on PH. All of the pictures were copies of things that I have stored on large flash drives so no need to retrieve anything.

Me too, except not just PH. I had a bunch of pictures that I lost when the SD card for my phone crashed that I had not backed up in a while. I lost some of my originals.

Can you right click on your photo images and then click save as?

I just tried and to be honest the file I did the "save as" with is on the left below. The one I grabbed a screenshot of was actually better (right side)...

The car in the picture is not nearly as important to me as the person standing next to it. Photobucket has the closest thing to the original and I do not see a way to download it in the original resolution. The screenshot is way better than the nothing I had before today though.

Yeah, I was able to get mine too!  But they screwed the pooch the way they went about changing there revenue stream over, plane and simple. 

Not sure with the ill will they have fostered they will make it, I started with Imgur last September.  I have had the $30 account with them for the last 5 years due to the needs of Pelletheads.  But I will not be renewing in August, 4000 photos for $70...little to steep for me.  I have about 3500 photos on it, I would probably give you the $30/year, even as cheap as I am, but $70, will just move them slowly to Imgur as I need them!

Slaga,

They didn't revoke my retrieval privilege.  I read their notice and retrieved my photographs.  I don't know why your experience was different.

I have a Flickr pro license for 2 years for $45 for unlimited storage.  Will see if that changes now that Yahoo sold them to someone else.  I just use it to put picks to share with others on here and occasionally a few other places.  Every pic I take with my phone gets backed up to Google Photos automatically.