Family Photography How To

Posting holiday snaps to your social media page is quick and easy—but it's hard to control who can view your personal pics. You want to show your family members a great shot of you frolicking in Fiji on December 25, but do you really want to tell the entire world that your home back in Kansas is unoccupied until after New Year's Day? Create a virtual picture-sharing family room online, a secure place viewable only by those to whom you give permission, with Zonerama, a free and easy-to-use platform provided by a folks at Zoner, makers of Zoner Photo Studio X.

I think Zonerama is the best free online storage/sharing platform for most photographers.  It provides users unlimited space and encourages them to upload photos and videos where they're securely stored and shared. You do not have to be a user of Zoner Photo Studio X photo/video editing software. There is no charge for Zonerama and it's simple and easy to use. That said, ZPS X users have additional benefits via Zonerama Premium.

Zonerama Premium
The premium tier of Zonerama, free to holders of any Zoner license (e.g., Zoner Photo Studio X) offers several enhancements and advantages in addition to all of the standard features. Users can upload videos of unlimited length (Free Zonerama users are limited to videos up to five minutes in length). Zonerama Premium also provides a link manager offering editing of existing links plus advanced settings (e.g., link expiration dates) and the highly configurable embedding of HTML galleries in your own website. It also eliminates ads from your albums and on your profile.

Zonerama recently added support for HDR, the latest AVIF & HEIF formats and Raw files. With these exclusive enhancements, all photographers and video creators, from beginner to professional, will find Zonerama Premium the most useful and versatile online gallery available, in my opinion.

Why Zonerama Beats Social Media Sharing
Photo and video files stored on Zonerama are secure and can be shared safely. Uploaders (users) select custom privacy and sharing settings, so they’re in complete control of who has permission to see what. Users can even hide the metadata, so the GPS location info can be concealed. Users can also share albums, so the whole family can contribute to the collection of holiday photos, for instance. It's not just "one-way sharing."

You can share selected images to your social media accounts directly from within Zonerama. One click is all it takes.

Zonerama is 100% free. No credit card needed to set up an account, and there are no hidden charges. All users receive unlimited space—upload as many photos as you want—and never worry about storage charges. Furthermore, all images retain their original quality. No compression to squeeze the life out of your images.

Privacy and security are key issues for me and for everyone. With Zonerama Free and Zonerama Premium, users can password protect your albums and share photos with only those you authorize, and you can add a watermark to your photos to protect your copyright. Authorized guests can download viewed albums in high quality. If you want photographs to be view-only, you can disable downloads in the album settings.

Zonerama integrates neatly with Zoner’s Windows-only photo/video editing program, Zoner Photo Studio X, a powerful but easy-to-use app that's presented as an alternative to Photoshop and Lightroom. Priced at $59 per year (or $5.99/month on a pay-as-you-go basis), ZPS X is very affordable. Zoner Photo Studio X received two prestigious awards for Best Photo Editing Software from the world-renowned TIPA and EISA associations. And it's been downloaded more that 10,000,000 times.

Conclusion
You'll enjoy sharing, exchanging and storing your family's treasured holiday videos and photos, and obviously the pleasure isn't limited to the year-end stuff. Create enduring albums for family events, anniversaries, school plays, vacation travel, company outings—and so forth. If you operate a small business or perform a gig service, share your wares with clients safely and securely. Surprise grandparents and far-flung relatives with albums containing imagery you know they'll enjoy.

Zonerama is free. Completely free. You have nothing to lose except hours of fun sharing photos and video with your friends and family. Open a Zonerama account and begin storing, organizing and sharing photos and video online for free.

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