I've been a PixelFed user for a few years now after having binned off Instagram a long time ago, but I've always kept an eye on Vernissage's development. Pixelfed has had very little in the way of updates in several months despite having the far larger user base, whereas Vernissage has been steadily releasing updates for its comparatively tiny set of users, and not long ago released an iOS app which I thought I'd try out, which turned out to be superb - it's so much better looking and performant than the official Pixelfed app. The downside for most (I imagine) would be the lack of an Android app.

Whereas Pixelfed is geared towards being an Instagram replacement, Vernissage seems to be tailored more to the Flickr/500px proper-photographer type crowd. While I was in the market for an Instagram replacement, Vernissage is the platform I've found myself increasingly using simply because of how well presented it is.

I was wondering if anyone else who is interested in photo sharing has tried both, and what their opinions are of them. There's tons of chatter on Mastodon around Pixelfed, but a lot less about Vernissage.

Links to the main instances:

https://pixelfed.social/
https://vernissage.photos/

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[–] yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

I love the idea of Pixelfed and briefly checked it out a couple years ago, bounced off it b/c hash tags weren't federated, and other issues that I don't remember the specifics of. For example, when I click on #cats in a photo caption, I want it to show me photos across all instances w/ that hash tag, like the "All" feed in Lemmy.

I don't wanna poo poo on something that is essentially a free service for plebs like myself, but I remember things being just broken/ incomplete enough and it seemed like its original creator had already moved on to other projects that I filed it under "things w/ potential that aren't quite there yet (and may never get there)."

[–] Quicky@piefed.social 8 points 19 hours ago

Yeah, don't get me started on that. The developer of Pixelfed is extremely easily distracted. Every time a promise is made to focus on the Pixelfed improvements or bug fixes, the following day he's working on something else. I feel guilty for complaining, because it's free and he's essentially a solo dev, but when users are being told one thing and they see something else, you tend to lose confidence. He's done amazing work, but there's a lot to iron out that hasn't seemed like a priority for a long time.