10. Sharing Photos Online

In this chapter, you’ll learn about some of the ways you can share your photos online. Topics include

→ Sharing your photos online from your computer and/or a mobile device

→ Using an online-based photo sharing service to share and showcase your photos

→ Sharing your photos using social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

After you’ve taken and edited your photos, one of the great things about having Internet connectivity from your computer or mobile devices is that you can almost instantly share your photos with friends or family. If you choose, however, it’s also possible to showcase them online in a public forum (known as social media) so virtually anyone can see them.

Other benefits to having your photos stored online is that they become accessible to all your own computers and mobile devices and can be stored or archived remotely (in the cloud), so you always have a backup of your images if something happens to your equipment.

It’s important to understand the different types of online services you can use with your photos, and each serves a rather different purpose. Where it gets a bit confusing, however, is that many of these online service types overlap somewhat in terms of the features and functions they offer.

Before we look at specific online-based services and how to use them, let’s focus on the features and functions you can expect from the various types of online services, so you can more clearly define your own needs and then more easily choose which service type(s) best fit those needs.

When it comes to digital photography-related tasks, these services allow you to upload images to your account, where they can be stored/archived in their original file size and resolution. In your account, you can set up an unlimited number of albums or folders in which you organize and store your digital images.

The biggest benefit to using cloud-based storage for file sharing purposes is that once you set up a single account, by installing the service-specific software or mobile app onto each of your own computers, smartphones, and/or tablets, it’s possible to sync your digital image library automatically, so all your images are available, whenever and wherever you need them.

These services, and others like them, provide a viable and secure online-based backup solution for your digital photos. To make things easier, based on what type of equipment you’re using, built in to the operating system of your computer or device is the software needed to use one of these services.

Built in to Windows PCs (version 8 and newer) is integration with Microsoft OneDrive. Incorporated into the Mac, iPhone, and iPad’s operating system is integration with Apple’s iCloud service, while Android devices have integration with Google Drive built in. That being said, all these services now offer free, downloadable software and mobile apps for most or all other hardware platforms.

Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) is an independent cloud-based file sharing service designed to work seamlessly across all hardware platforms, assuming you install the free Dropbox software or mobile app onto each of your PCs, Macs, smartphones, and tablets.

Chapter 16, “Backing Up and Archiving Your Digital Photo Library,” has more information about these services and how they can be used for image backup purposes.

Several things set these services apart from cloud-based services. For example, these photo-sharing services enable you to back up or share your digital image files with others, but they’re not designed to automatically sync your image files between your own computers and mobile devices. In addition, these services have photo labs associated with them, so you can order prints and photo gifts, which are then shipped to the address you provide.

Online photo-sharing services are ideal for showcasing your images in the form of online galleries, and for sharing them with other people you invite to see your images.

As you’ll discover, social media services, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, can also be used to share images online. However, these are primarily public forums and give you less control over who can see your images.

It’s important to understand that the lines between what cloud-based services, online photo-sharing services, and social media services offer is becoming blurred, and the features and functions that are offered by these various services (all of which are online or cloud-based) often now overlap.

For example, Apple’s iCloud Photo Library enables you to back up, sync, showcase, and share your digital images and gives you control over who can view them. Apple’s iCloud Photo Library is part of Apple’s iCloud service that’s designed specifically to manage digital images. iCloud Drive is another iCloud features that can be used with image files but that works with any other type of file as well.

You’ll discover that the online-based services, such as Flickr.com, tend to serve two primary purposes for digital photographers. First, it’s possible to upload groups of images to these photo-sharing services in the form of online-based albums and then showcase and share those albums with select friends and family whom you invite to see your images. Your photos remain private, except to the people you invite to see them.

Depending on how you set up each album, the people you invite to view it can often download your photos to their computer or mobile device, plus leave comments about or “like” your images.

Second, these services usually have a photo lab associated with them, so you can order professionally created, paper-based prints in many different sizes and have them shipped directly to you or the intended recipient.

Popular online photo sharing services include

• Flickr—www.flickr.com

• iCloud Photo Library—www.apple.com/icloud/photos

• Photobucket—www.photobucket.com

• Picasa—https://picasa.google.com

• Shutterfly—www.shutterfly.com

• SmugMug—www.smugmug.com

• Snapfish—www.snapfish.com

Due to its popularity and compatibility with all hardware platforms, the next section demonstrates how to use Flickr. However, regardless of which photo sharing service you use, how each works and the features and functions offered are pretty similar.

From the Flickr.com website, click on the Sign In button.

When you’re ready to begin uploading photos to your Flickr account, click on the Upload option.

Click on the Choose Photos and Videos button.

Locate and select the images you want to upload using File Explorer on your PC or Finder on your Mac (shown).

Drag and drop the images from your File Explorer/Finder window into the web browser (Flickr) window, and they immediately begin uploading to your Flickr account. Each uploaded image appears as a thumbnail on the web page.

Click an uploaded image to select it.

Click on the Add a Description option to add a text-based description (caption) to that image.

Click on the Add Tags option (optional) to add one-word tags that describe the image.

Enter tags in the field provided. These tags are all searchable and make it easier to find your images. You can add as many tags as you want to each photo.

Click on the Owner Settings option to reveal a more extensive menu that enables you to adjust the privacy settings associated with the selected photo.

If you want to keep your images private, do not add check marks to the Visible To Everyone or Searchable options. Repeat steps 6 through 11 for each of your images.

To organize images into an album, select and highlight the uploaded images that you want to include.

Click the Add To Albums link.

Enter an album title and description.

Click on the Create Album button. The selected images are now placed in that newly created album. You can create as many online albums as you want to store, organize, and showcase your images using Flickr.

Click on the Flickr logo to return to the main Flickr screen.

Click on the You menu to access this pull-down menu that gives you a variety of options related to managing, viewing, and organizing your images.

Click on the People option to share your images with specific people (or the general public) and to view other people’s images.

Click on the Create option to design and order prints, photo gifts, or photo products, including photo books, that feature your images.

In some cases, you can limit who sees your images to just friends, family, and real-life acquaintances, but in most cases, these services are designed to be public forums, meaning that anyone can search for and find (or stumble upon) your images and view them.

People love using social media as a way to share their images and interact informally with other people. However, it’s important that you understand who has access to your images and information once you publish content online.

Before you become active using one or more of these services, manually adjust the privacy settings associated with each service you use to limit your public exposure to a level you’re comfortable with.

The following sections show you how to publish photos on different social networks. Because each network operates a little differently and it goes beyond the scope of this book, the sections do not cover service basics like creating an account or activities other than posting photos.

Beyond posting photos onto your Wall, in the form of Status Updates or Check Ins (an option available from the Facebook app on your mobile device), Facebook enables you to create and showcase custom-named, online-based photo albums.

Each album can contain as many images as you want, and you can have as many albums as you want within your Facebook account. Each photo and/or album can have a title, description, tags, location information, and additional metadata associated with it. For example, you can tag the people who appear in your images or showcase images by the time and date they were shot.

In addition to publishing photos on your Facebook Wall, or within an online-based album, it’s possible to send (or receive) private messages via Facebook that can also contain images. These messages are accessible only to the sender and recipient(s).

On your Wall or News feed, type a short text-based message that you want to include with your photos.

Click on the Camera icon to select one or more photos or video clips and attach them to the Status Update message you’re composing.

In the File Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) window that appears, locate and select the images you want to publish online.

Click on the Choose button. Thumbnails for your images appear in the Status Update window.

Click on the Tag People icon to tag individuals (including yourself) who appear in each photo. This is optional. When you do this, the names of the people you tag in each photo are linked to that digital image, and this information becomes searchable and public.

Click on the Emoticon icon to add an optional action to the message that’s related to what you’re doing or how you’re feeling.

Click on the Location icon to include your current location in the Status Update message.

From the Privacy pull-down menu, determine who can view your post. Options include Public or one of several other audiences to whom you can narrow access to your post.

Click on the Post button to publish your message (and linked photos). What you publish almost instantly appears online.

From the Status Update window, click on the Create Photo Album option.

From the Finder (Mac)/File Explorer (PC) window that appears, locate the images from your computer that you want to upload into this new album.

Click on the Choose button.

From the Create Album screen, as your photos are uploading (or after they’ve uploaded), click on the Untitled Album field and add a descriptive name to your album.

In the Say Something About This Album field, enter a one- or two-sentence description of the album.

Facebook automatically accesses the metadata stored in your image files and collects the date and time each image was taken. If you want to change this date, click on the Pick a Date option; otherwise, click on the Use Date from Photos option.

Click on the Privacy menu to determine who can access and view the album you’re creating. Each album can have different privacy settings associated with it.

Below each image thumbnail, type an optional caption for the photo in the Say Something About This Photo field.

Once all the desired images have been uploaded and inserted into the album, and you’ve filled in all the desired fields and metadata information for each image, click on the Post button to publish the album on Facebook in your account.

Although a Twitter account can be managed from any computer connected to the Internet, most people enjoy using it from their smartphone or tablet, when they’re out and about, to share details about their whereabouts and experiences with their online friends (who are referred to as followers).

Composing and publishing a tweet and managing your Twitter account can also be done from the official Twitter app, or from a third-party app, like Twitterific, that’s designed for this purpose.

To compose a tweet and include a photo using the official Twitter app, sign in to your Twitter account and follow these steps (which are demonstrated here using an iPhone):

From the main Twitter timeline screen, click on the Home icon.

Click on the Compose icon.

In the What’s Happening? field, enter a text-based caption. This can include descriptive hash tags (#keyword), which help people find your tweet who are using a keyword search on Twitter. To alert specific people of the tweet, include their Twitter username (@username) into the body of the tweet message. This will result in that person being notified of your post.

Tap the Picture icon to load a photo stored in your mobile device, or snap a photo using the camera.

Select a photo, and then tap its thumbnail to attach it to the tweet you’re composing. Tap on the “+” thumbnail to add an additional image (optional). (Not shown.)

Tap on the Who’s in This Photo button (if applicable) to tag people who appear in each photo (optional).

If you want to include the location where the photo was taken, click on the Location icon.

To edit the selected photo using the photo enhancement tools built in to the Twitter application, tap on the image thumbnail.

From the Edit Photo screen, tap on any of the special effect filters displayed along the bottom of the screen, or tap on one of the other two Edit command icons, which include Enhance (left) and Crop (right).

Tap Done when you are finished making edits. (Or Cancel if you want to discard edits you’ve made.)

After you’ve composed the text-based portion of your tweet and have edited the attached image(s), tap on the Tweet button to publish your tweet online.

It’s also possible to include the location where the photo was taken and tag the people who appear in the photo. Built in to the official Instagram app for mobile devices is the capability to simultaneously publish your post on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr.

What most people love about Instagram is that when using the official Instagram app on your smartphone or tablet, you can snap photos from within the Instagram app (instead of using the Camera app), or you can choose an image already stored on your mobile device to publish online.

Using the official Instagram app on your mobile device, create a free Instagram account the first time you launch the app, and then manage your account and publish photos to your account from your Internet-enabled smartphone or tablet.

Instagram enables you to publish one photo at a time online. Each image becomes part of your account and is displayed as part of your timeline. All images are public and available to your followers, as well as to people who use Instagram’s Search feature to find photos using keywords (hash tags).

Tap on the Image Selection icon to select a photo.

Select the image you want to edit and publish.

Use a reverse-pinch or pinch figure gesture to zoom in or out, and then reposition the image by placing your finger on the image, holding it down and dragging it around.

Tap on the Next option when the image is framed how you want it.

Make any edit you want to your photo, and tap Next to Continue.

In the Write a Caption field, enter a text-based caption for your image. This can include searchable and descriptive hashtags (#keyword).

Tap on the Tag People option to add the names of the people who appear in the photo. Adding this metadata links the people’s names to the digital image, and their names become searchable.

To include the location where the photo was taken, tap on the Name This Location option, and then select the location from the menu that displays. Your mobile device’s GPS feature is used to determine your whereabouts.

To simultaneously publish your photo on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and/or Flickr, for example, if you’re active on any or all these services, tap on each service’s respective listing to select it.

Tap on the Share button to publish your photo. Once your photo is published online, it is public and viewable by your followers or people who stumble upon it using Instagram’s Search feature.