Sharing Photos on the Net

Lila: "Hello anyone out there!"
Norm: "Yes, Lila, but what do you want?"
Lila: "I was worried you didn't blog yesterday,"
Norm: "I had a cold ok!"
Lila: "and you did promised to give us some extra ideas on ways to use digital photos. Well I want you to tell me how to share my photos on the web."

Sharing Photos on the net is pretty easy and most software comes with big claims on the box of how easy it is to do. Or should I say easy until you start reading the instructions! Don't despair, There are easier ways. How you do the sharing mainly depends on whether you want to -

• only share with your friends and family
• share with the rest of the world

If you don't really want the rest of the world to see. You should look at an on-line albums like Ofoto. This allows you to upload and organize your photos in albums. Then you can select individual or albums of photos and send an email invitation to others. This email has a link and password that lets the receiver click on the link and see just the photos you have selected to share. Ofoto has been taken over by Kodak and you can order prints easily, making it ideal for special family photos and events, so granny and aunty maud can order their own copies. HP Photo offers a very similar service.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of public photo albums, or more precisely image hosts, on the net, a lot are free. Some of the better ones will offer both private and public folders/albums, so you can control what is public and what is not. As well as the email invite, you will usually be able to use the photo's URL address. To do this display the photo, find its URL via right clicking and looking on the properties screen. This is a great solution for putting your photo on a blog or web journal. Photo Bucket actually shows the URL underneath the photo's thumb nail.

I've actually only tried two such public photo albums, and found both fine.

• XPPhotoAlbum
• Photo Bucket