How to Create a Guest Pass for Photos to Share With Friends

Image hosting websites, such as Flickr, have begun to replace photo albums as a way of sharing photos with family and friends.

Photos are one of the best ways to share your experiences with friends and family. Flickr, a photo hosting website, allows you to upload digital images and store them online for free. You can customize your privacy settings to restrict access to your albums and create "Guest Passes" to distribute to the people with whom you'd like to share your album.

Things You'll Need

• Image files
• Flickr account

Instructions

1. Create a Flickr account. Select "Create Your Account" on the main page of the Flickr website. You will be directed to sign up for a Yahoo! ID, if you do not already have one. Fill out the registration form and create a user name. Once you have set up an account, use your Yahoo! ID to sign into Flickr. Click on "Personalize Your Profile" to add information to your account and change your user settings.

2. Upload your images to Flickr. After you add the files, organize them into separate sets. The default privacy setting for all of your newly uploaded photos is "public." If your album is public, you can share it by copying the album's URL that appears in the address bar of your browser and sending it to others in an email.

3. Change the access level of your album sets to "private." Click on an album set. Under the "Batch Edit" tab, choose "Change Permissions." To make your album private, select "Only You" and further specify if you want the album to be visible to friends and/or family. Select the "Change Permissions" button to finalize your preferences.

4. Create a Guest Pass for others to view private albums. Click on a private album set. Select the "Share This" button. Enter the email addresses of the recipients. Add a Guest Pass by checking the appropriate boxes. You can optionally include a personal message for your email. After you click "Send," a Guest Pass to view your private album will be sent to the recipients you specified. The Guest Pass will not expire until you delete it from your Guest Pass history.

Tips & Warnings

• Invite your friends and family to make their own accounts. The easiest way to share all of your albums with a specific group of people is to add them as "friends" on Flickr. Once they set up their own profile, search for them either by username or email address and add them to your friends list. Afterward, adjust your settings to allow them to view your private albums.

References

• Flickr: How Do I Share My Photos?
• Flickr: Guest Pass