Online photo sites have steadily grown in popularity. Millions of people use Flickr, Smugmug, Picasa, AOL Pictures, and other sites to post and share all kinds of pictures. What many people don’t know is just how many of these sites offer APIs that can be used to build mashups, photo tools, and other applications.
There are many different types of photo APIs, including photo sharing and management APIs, image editing APIs, and APIs that specialize in image slideshows, geolocation, and mapping. In fact, there are so many APIs that there’s now a ProgrammableWeb Photo API and Mashup Dashboard to keep track of them all in one place. In this post, we’ll take a look at the breadth and power of the 36 photo-related APIs and 415 photo mashups in our directory.
About half of the available photo APIs help you manage and share your photos. The Flickr API is the standout in this category, offering API methods that can be accessed using multiple standard protocols (REST, SOAP, XML-RPC). The Flickr API lets you manage and retrieve everything from photos to contacts to comments and geographical locations. The API is well documented and their developer site links to examples in over a dozen programming languages. It’s no wonder that more than 300 mashups have already been developed using the Flickr API.
The 23 API is modeled after the Flickr API, with the objective of standardizing photo APIs and providing interoperability between photo sharing sites. Other popular photo APIs include the Google Picasa API, the Smugmug API, the Buzznet API, and the AOL Pictures API.
If you’d like to offer visitors to your Web site the ability to edit their images online, there are several APIs available that will help you accomplish this. The Snipshot API is simple to apply. You send the API the URL of the image to be edited, a callback URL, and the name of the file to be output (after the user has finished editing the image). The Snipshot Services page provides plenty of example code to get you started.
The FotoFlexer API provides access to a particularly rich online image editor. The API, which can be accessed using standard Javascript, can be extended using server-side scripting technologies such as PHP. The Picnik and Pixenate APIs also provide access to powerful online image editing tools.
There are a few specialized photo APIs as well. The imageLoop API lets you create photo slideshows. imageLoop includes more than 80 well-documented functions, and can be accessed using standard protocols. Developer kits are available for programming in Java, PHP, Javascript, .NET/SOAP, and ActionScript.
The Panoramio API enables digital photographers to geolocate, store, and organize their photos, and view the photos in Google Earth and Google Maps applications. Panoramio uses JSON data formats and the REST protocol. Panoramio was acquired by Google last year.
If you live in Great Britain and you’re wondering what you’re looking at, the GetMapping API is available to assist you. The GetMapping API provides imagery that can be accessed by Web-enabled mobile phones for any location in Great Britain. You can select your location using postal code, town/village, street name, motorway junction, or East and North position. The GetMapping photos zoom to as close as 12.5 cm per pixel, which lets you see details as small as garden furniture and road markings, anywhere in the country.
With more than 400 photo mashups available, there’s a good chance you’ll find many of interest. One of the best known and most popular is Big Huge Labs, home of “fd’s Flickr Toys”. As we reported last year, it’s a great mix of over two dozen toys, games and utilities for your photos.
Some of the other more popular directory listings for photo mashups include:
To give you a sense of the scope, here’s the list of photo-related API entries in the directory:
The spectrum of available photo APIs is broad and continues to grow. Check the new ProgrammableWeb Photo Mashup Dashboard for the latest on photo APIs and mashups.
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18 Responses to “36 Photo APIs”
at 4:07 am
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at 1:17 pm
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at 5:23 pm
Thanks for this list, I will have to check it out, but for now the one I am using seems to work just fine it’s called Joomeo : http://www.joomeo.com and this online photo service has the advantage to be a lot more private than some other ones, a big difference to me.
at 1:22 pm
Would love an API to print photos and photo gifts. Direct revenue opportunity seems like it would be a hit here. Anyone know of any?
at 1:26 am
Hi Trevor, good question. One close one, but maybe not exactly what you mean, is the Moo API: http://www.programmableweb.com/api/moo
at 10:08 pm
Don’t forget about http://www.photodekho.com They provide a great service!
at 6:22 am
most sites are so full of ads and slow like photobucket I use http://www.hogpic.com
at 2:47 pm
Thanks for the great article I am a long time reader and I always find your articles to be great.Thanks upload pictures
at 3:27 pm
I upload my pics to http://www.pikture.net.
at 11:44 am
always a pleasure stopping by your site thanks
at 4:44 am
Pixabay’s public domain image search:
http://pixabay.com/api/docs/
Highly appreciated, if you were adding us to your awesome list of APIs :)
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