As of mid day, imgur (on mobile) no longer provides the direct image link to allow for mirroring on Beehaw using .
I always try to upload directly first, but tend to share pictures at the same quality I’m using for our business - which is to say at the highest quality image my device can capture. Those images rarely play nice with pictrs limitations so hosting elsewhere and mirroring are the best way for me to post plant and animal photos I take, and provide the best fidelity so others can enjoy them.
So, do folks have some suggestions for other image hosting that would let me accomplish this easily (I’m not particularly tech savvy)? Do I need to just spin up a pixelfed account and mirror/crosspost? I’d love for you to share your thoughts
If you don’t mind imgur keeping the images (
doesn’t mirror them, just links to imgur), then you can share from imgur to a browser, long press on the image, and get the direct image link from there.
Most free image hosting services require links to their page so they can show ads to visitors. Imgur seems to have started slightly enforcing that requirement. Pixelfed may or may not be an option depending on how trustworthy is the instance, and how much you care about it not disappearing out of the blue. Self-hosting a service is not all that complicated, but requires some commitment.
Imgur has been going downhill for years and keep making it more and more difficult to just host images, since the original owners sold it to a sleazy marketing outfit they no longer want it to be an image hoster but “a community” to sell ads for.
I for one plan to self-host on my own server space. The requirements for this are basically not the same as for “Photo Gallery” kinda software (so no Immich for this), you want someplace to quickly upload images, then easily find the one you’re looking for and get a direct link to the image, like Imgur used to be.
Initially considered PictShare since it would be dead simple to set up (no database makes this super simple) and those filters are a neat feature, but in the end decided i also wanted tags and metadata which requires a DB, so for now I’m inclined in the direction of Chevereto, although it’s not set in stone. If someone has a good suggestion for software to self-host images that fulfills these requirements, is easy to set up and maintain and is not too heavy I’m VERY willing to hear it.
Agreed. Most of what kept me using the service was familiarity and the behavioral inertia that brings, but making sharing to message boards difficult (even comparatively) is a deal breaker for me
My recommendation as well.
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that IS easy enough even for me
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I can’t express how honored I feel seeing you reply, it’s like a rite of passage
Happy to help, thank you for your kind words!
He’s an all-round good egg and a credit to the fediverse.
Who is blaze
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I use Imgur mobile and have not been having this issue. I uploaded something this evening and was able to share it.
Interesting. I made another attempt this morning but all the links are to the site and not directly to the image address
Are you including the file type?

Vs

Vs (without markdown)
The only url I’m able to get through the app is
https://imgur.com/a/7sSZfrH#fAh9k4C
If you touch the image so it opens where you have black bars above and below and get the share link from that it should be the direct image link.
The link you have is to an image within an album. If you drop the a/7sSZfrH# that is the image link (you need a file extension to be able to embed it).
First and foremost, I appreciate how patient and helpful you’ve been; thank you.
That’s how I’ve been doing it for a while. Two years at least, as that’s when I first bumped into the pictrs limitations. I’d done it before on other message boards but made full use of it since landing at Beehaw. As of yesterday it started giving me the album links instead when following the steps as you’ve outlined.
The alternative mentioned by Blaze and seconded by PenguinCoder does what I need very conveniently