Alternatives to Instagram
So with Instagram selling your photos for profit whether you like it or not many people are jumping ship. I’ve never been a big fan of Instagram due to the poor quality of its actual pictures but have always enjoyed and admired it’s community. Here are my favorite alternatives to Instagram both as a picture taking and sharing resource.
#1 Camera + : This is an iOS only based app and sharing service. It takes the best image quality by far on your smart phone. This app was developed by pro photographers and it allows you to save images in the higher resolution possible on your iPhone without compression. It has filters and tons of nice editing features. One downside it’s 0.99 not free but very cheap!
#1 Snapseed: This used to be a paid app but after being bought by Google is now free for Android and iOS. Maybe the best editing app you can grab right now. Takes great images and has a wide range of editing features and filters. Also developed by pro photographers it makes some incredible images. Sharing to Google + is an added bonus on this app.
#3: Via.me:Via me is a quick and easy way to share video, pictures, test or sound to all your social networks at once. The filters are very nice but no editing beyond that. The image quality is not nearly as good as Camera + or Snapseed and you end up having to crop many images before sharing. That being said this is the quickest and easiest way to share a photo to FB and Twitter all at one time. Free
#4 Smugmug:This is more of a hybrid service and combines a free app with on-line storage for all your photos at full resolution. I use this service to store all my digital images & videos as a back-up to my home computer and to make slide shows of family pictures for friends. The on-line storage has a annual fee but worth it to back up all your images on all your devices. It has a free app that works very well for editing and adding filters even if you don’t use the on-line service. Camera Awesome is the app name!
#5 Flick: An oldie but a goodie and all around great sharing, storage and image site. With free service and a free app you can do it all. If you want to step it up they also offer a paid pro version which allows for storage and protection of your images. You can never go wrong using Flickr to share your pictures.
I should say that Twitter now offers filters with it’s pictures & sharing but not to the quality of the above services. Like all social media you never know when the terms of service will change and your pictures become someone else’s property. I highly recommend watermarking all your images and using a pay service to store and protect your images if that matters to you. You have to decide how you are using your images and what’s important to you.
Some people could careless about Instagram making money off of their images, “who would want them” you may ask? Well I for one don’t want my kids or me showing up in a digital ad for a product I’m not confortable with. My picture next to a Viagra bottle doesn’t sound very appealing to me. 
