How to Navigate Through Photo Sharing & Comparison Websites

No more sticky photos in albums; upload your digital photos to your preferred website.

Twenty-first century photos albums are not your grandparent's albums resting on a bookshelf in the living room. Today's photo albums are located online, safely stored and shared via online photo-hosting websites. Because online photo storage and sharing is the norm, there are many different sites from which to choose. Making the right choice for you means thinking about what details you're looking for. You photos may not be in the living room, but this other kind of space is still important.

Instructions

1. Decide if storage or sharing is more important. All of the online storage and sharing sites allow for photo albums to be shared. However some sites, such as SmugMug, allow the user to operate in a community geared toward photography enthusiasts, with a greater site emphasis on high-resolution photo storage. Social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace center on posting and sharing photos at a lower resolution.

2. Decide the level of search-ability of your photos. Social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace allow for photos to be found easily through most search engines even when privacy settings are in place. The casual or even explicit nature of personal photos is a concern for some people in careers where it could portray them in a unfavorable light. On the other hand, Google's Picasa gives users options to invite friends to view a photo album, but can remain, for the most part, private.

3. Consider the extras a site offers. Sites such as Snapfish give the user options for ordering prints or even high-definition DVDs of your photos. Other sites, such as Picasa, have editing capabilities to allow you to crop, resize and even make a photo black and white before sharing or ordering prints. If you have a website or blog, Photobucket and Flickr create easy HTML codes allowing users to embed their photos with ease.

4. Enroll in trial memberships to test the interfaces of sites you're considering. With all other considerations in mind, narrow your list and see what you like. A good starting point can be a site with relationship to your personal email address. For Gmail or Google users, it's Picasa and for Yahoo users, it's Flickr. You already have the email address so you can bypass registration and start navigating through the website. Pay attention to how photos upload, the upload time, how the albums are viewed, organized and saved.

5. Ask friends what they use for photo sharing and storage. This will allow you to browse the site they use and see what you like and don't like about the options and interface.

Tips & Warnings

• Smart phones offer photo-sharing applications compatible with all of the popular sites.

References

• Flickr
• Picasa