With the Digital Camera's in hand, we now take 10 shots in a place where we used to take only one shot earlier during film cameras. Digital Cameras gives us exciting quality, option to choose whether to print or not. But since we take more and more photos, it becomes very difficult for us to store. We generally store in our computers / Laptops and if it crashes .. oops .. everything is lost.. Thus backing up the photos is very essential. Not only that these days, not everyone takes the print of photos to show it to friends or relatives. To share photos we use some of photo sharing websites.
Here I will discuss some of the sites that I use and I find these more easy to upload and share and FREE (with limits).
First some of the photo sharing sites I used are
1. Webshots - Free for upto 1000 photos + 100 more each month of membership (No Size Limit - It can be if any MegaPixel Size)
2. Flickr - Free for upto 100 MB Bandwidth of Photos every month, which is also quiet sufficient. Cannot Access full size photos.
3. pBase - Free trial period only. But it is one of the wonderful site. It does not alter the original image.
4. Fotki - Also free with limitations.
5. PhotoBucket - Free Photo Sharing.
6. Picassaweb - A Google's photo sharing service.
and also there are numerous other sites as well.
I use mostly webshots or Flickr. There are other ways to share a photos as well using Windows Live Skydrive or Live Mesh or any other web storage system.
I will discuss on Webshots, Flickr, Skydrive and Mesh options.
Although there are many services out there the way to get the photos to the web is always a difficult thing. You may need to select a file one by one and upload them. Webshots offers a Desktop Tool for Windows & Mac, Webshots Desktop. It is a desktop beautifying tool with account management. You can get the software from here and the tool direct link is http://www.webshots.com/samplers/files/wbsamp5.exe.
After Downloading Install the software, it also includes toolbar for IE (Internet Explorer)
The Main Window Looks like this
If you go the second Tab -> My files Online ->
If you already do not have a account Create a free account.
Login using the registered account and password and you may perform many operations just with this software
You may also view slide show with in this. You can set as wallpaper, view as web and so on, as seen above.
First Create a Album
Select the Album Category and Give a Title for the Album. You can add Description and Tag. You may choose the access level. If it is public everyone on the web can view the album. If it is private., those for whom who you invite to view the album can view, others cannot see the album.
(Sample)
Click on the Image to add title, You may rotate the pictures, Add captions and you may also crop the picture
and then click on upload
After this Click on Finish.
You May Click on Share Online which takes you to this
You can delete a photo. You Can do all organization and all stuff using this tool. You may re-arrange the photos and change the Album Photo all going to the web. Thus webshots offering a complete easy photo sharing solution.
Flickr is one of the most popular photo sharing site. Flickr is now part of yahoo. Yahoo photos has been closed and now has been replaced by Flickr Service. Flickr was the one who made tagging very popular. Also organizing in form of sets instead of just albums is a different technique. The free account although has limitations of creating only three Sets. It is well integrated with many tools. For users who use Windows Vista, The photos can be directly uploaded to Flickr using Windows Photo Gallery or Other users can also use Windows Live Photo Gallery which is part of Windows Live for all users with or without Vista. A desktop photo managing software. Also if you are using AcdSEE 10 (a very popular image viewing and Organizing tool) you can directly upload to Flickr.
a. Using Windows Photo Gallery (only in Windows Vista) or Windows Live Photo Gallery (should download and install from live.com)
Select the photo and publish on Flickr..
on Account Page, you may need to Authorize the software to upload to Flickr. So click on Authorize, Login to your Flickr account and click on YES , ALLOW IN FLICKR. and then you may get your account in Photo Gallery.
B. If you use AcdSEE then Authorize as earlier and upload by selecting a photo and go to file menu--> upload..
C. Or you may download the Flickr Uploader from Flickr Tools and then install the software.
Click on Sign-in to Go to your Account. You need to Authorize
Click and OK which takes to Flickr Website, Sign in and Authorize the tool. Then Shows click on Ready... then shows this..
This shows the Bandwidth left for this month and Bandwidth that will be used in this set of upload. Click on Add to Add images or just drag and drop.
You can create set, Add Tags, Description , Sharing Permission...
and then just upload photos. Upload Progress can be seen like this..
Though there are lots of benefits with Flickr and Webshots, Backup is a problem. If incase your computer / laptop crashes, you might be loosing all your data's inside there. You may store all your photos online and you can recover them as you stored. There is possibility of Flickr and Webshots doing some image processing or compression when you store online. But in SkyDrive those are stored as file and as it is. Thus when you recover you may recover it easily. The problem is still with the upload. There is no upload tool. There is an ActiveX control which enables Drag and Drop of files in Internet Explorer alone. Also it has 5 GB or storage and unlimited bandwidth, Sharing permission etc. You may use skydrive also as a photo sharing alternative. In skydrive you need not just store photos only.
Sign up for Windows Live SkyDrive and then just Create a Shared Folder, Give who should access and access level permissions..
Standard upload
If ActiveX control is installed then..
If you are having multiple computers and you want to make the picture available to different computers and also share across the friends, you may use live mesh (still under tech preview).
This is just some of sharing sites and tips. There are still numerous ways. PicassaWeb is also a good service. You can Also upload to Windows Live Spaces and So on..
Choose which is convenient for you and enjoy sharing..
Barath...