Once upon a computer time, the rage was to get your own web page. You were really considered a with-it person if you have a web page, even though it was possibly crudely designed, or shared a common “template” look (just like everyone else’s “personal” web page). Still, you could use that web page to share your views, tell the Internet what was going on with your life, and perhaps even share some pictures with your frequent web page visitors. It was a technical thing, but still many people decided they couldn’t live their lives without a personal web page.

The days of needing your own web page are long gone. Sure, you can still have one, but most likely all the things you planned on doing with your own web page are now possible elsewhere. Various free services exist on the Internet that let you share your digital life with others on the Internet. You can write personal thoughts, connect with friends, share your musical tastes, put up videos, and share your digital photographs.

The name of the game is image sharing. Using an image sharing host, you can put your pictures up on the Internet for the world to see.

Contents

Get Yourself an Online Photo Account
 Finding a free site
 Sign Up for the site
 Upload your images
Share your images

Get Yourself an Online Photo Account

There are a few things you need to do to share your digital images with the online universe. First you need to have the digital images to share. Second, you set up an account at a free site. Third, you post or upload your images to the site, which is really a lot easier than it sounds. Finally, you let the world know how to find your images on the site, or you use the site to post your images in an e-mail message, on a blog, or elsewhere on the Internet.

Finding a free site

It’s not a problem to find a free image hosting web site. There are dozens of them. Here are a handful I can recommend:

• Image Shack, http://imageshack.us/
• Photobucket, http://photobucket.com
• Flickr, http://www.flickr.com
• Picasaweb, http://picasaweb.google.com/home

Each of these services lets you set up an account, create an online gallery, and post images stored on your computer to that online gallery. There is no charge, though some of the services offer specials and discounts on related products all of them have advertising.

You might also be able to use an online hosting service with a traditional photo developer. For example, Kodak features the Kodak Easy Share Gallery at http://www.kodakgallery.com. And WalMart has an online photo service at http://photos.walmart.com.

Sign Up for the site

To begin your online photo sharing journey, visit one of the many free photo galleries on the Internet; see the previous section. As an example, I’m going to use the Photobucket service, though the steps below should generally apply to any of the online photo sharing galleries.

After choosing a gallery, your fist step should be to set up an account. I recommend doing this first, even though some of the services may let you upload an image without first creating an account. To create an account on Photobucket, follow these steps:

Open your computer’s web browser.

Type in the online photo sharing service’s URL.

For Photobucket, that’s http://www.photobucket.com

Click the link that says Join Now.

It might also say Sign Up or Create Your Account. If you choose to use Flickr or Picasaweb, then you can sign in using your Yahoo or Google account, respectively.

Fill in the blanks: type in a desired user name and then choose a password, similar to what’s shown here:

Some sites may ask for more information, such as your e-mail address, gender, birth year, and so on. If you feel uncomfortable answering those questions, choose another service. And remember that your username for the image hosting service need not be the same as your Windows user name.

Continue working through the steps as necessary; clicking the Next button.

Be mindful that you don’t accidentally sign up for a service you don’t need: many of the free hosting services offer special partner deals and options that are not necessary to using the service. You can skip those offers if you do not want them.

If prompted to create an initial album, do so.

Call it “First album” or “Hello” or something friendly.

When you’re done signing up, sign out or log out.

Immediately after logging out, go back to the main page for the image hosting service.

Book mark the image hosting service’s page: Press Ctrl+D in your web browser.

Click the Add button to add the hosting service to your browser’s list of bookmarks.

Log in to the hosting service.

The reason I have you bookmark the hosting service is so you’ll not forget which one you signed up for. Especially if you don’t use the service for a while, it helps to have the thing bookmarked. The reason I have you log in again is just in case your web browser has the ability to remember your login name and password for various web sites. When you have such a feature activated, it makes using those sites easier. Even so: Now would be a good time to record your user name and password for future reference.

Upload your images

You can upload images to the free hosting service after you create your account. The process is very simple, though as with anything dealing with images it really helps if you know where the image is saved on your PC’s storage system as well as the image’s filename. So it helps to know the image’s filename, the name of folder in which the image is stored, as well as where that folder is located in your PC’s disk storage system.

As an example, assume that there is a folder titled Vacation in the Pictures folder on the hard drive. Inside the Vacation folder are a bunch of vacation images. One of them is named IMG_4955.JPG, and that is the image you want to upload. (Of course, it works best if you rename the image; in Windows, click on the image icon and press the F2 key on the keyboard to rename the icon to something more descriptive).

Sending an image from your computer to the Internet is known as an upload. Yes, it’s the opposite of download, which is where your PC receives a file from the Internet. The steps to upload your digital pictures works similarly for most of the online image hosting services:

Log into your account on the image hosting service.

If necessary, click an Upload link, as shown here:

Not every photo hosting service features an Upload Link. Some services let you upload directly from your account’s home page. When you see a Browse button, as shown in Figure 2, then you can upload right away.

If necessary, choose or create an album in which the images will be saved.

Some online image hosting services, such as Picasaweb, may want you to install an upload control. Do so when prompted.

Click the Browse button to locate a digital photo on your computer.

You use the Choose File dialog boxto locate the digital photo you want to send to the Internet. At this point you’re merely choosing a file; the sending part happens later.

Go to the folder that contains the digital image.

Remember that the Pictures or My Pictures folder is where those images are usually kept, though you can also use the dialog box to visit a removeable storage device, such as your digital camera’s media card.

Choose the file you want to upload from the list.

You can set the icon size using the View menu in the folder window, which allows you to preview the images in the dialog box.

Click the Open button to select an image.

Repeat previous few steps as necessary to choose additional images.

Most online image hosting services allow you to “batch” upload images by selecting several to upload at a time.

Choose an album, set whether the images are public or private, or set the image’s size, if such choices are available.

Click the Upload or Start Upload button to send the images you’ve chosen to the Internet.

The procedure may take a few minutes as the images are sent and then processed by the hosting service.

If prompted, add tags to your image, or complete whatever additional steps might be presented.

You may need to click a Save button to save the options you set.

Enjoy your image on the Internet.

In some cases, you can use companion software to the online photo hosting service to help manage your uploads. For example, Google’s Picasa application integrates seamlessly with the Picasaweb hosting service. To upload images using that program you choose ToolsUploadUpload to Web Albums, and you’re on your way.

Share Your Images

There’s no point in having images floating around the Internet if you can’t brag about them and share each one with your friends, family, co-workers, and anyone else on the planet who can use the Web. The online image hosting services are set up to meet those sharing demands. In fact, most of the services have buttons that let you quickly and easily sharing your images with popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, blog sites like Blogger and Twitter, or any of a number of popular places people frequent on the Internet.

The basic way to share an image is to know the web page address for that image, or for the album or gallery you have on the free online image hosting service. The method used is subtly different for each online hosting service, but in all cases you start by selecting the image you want to share, then follow the specific steps I’ve outlined for each service in the sections that follow.

Image Shack
Photobucket
Flickr
Picasaweb

Image Shack

If you’re using Image Shack, then follow these steps to share a link to an image:

Click to select the image you want to share.

From the left side of the window, choose Get Code For Email.

Use this Figure as your guide.

Drag your mouse over the URL to select it.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the link. Click the Close button.

Start your e-mail program, or whichever program in which you’re going to be using the link.

Press Ctrl+V to paste the link into the text.

If you’re pasting the link into a blog or forum, then click the appropriate option from the left side of the window.

When you visit the link for Image Shack, you’ll see your photo shown in a window along with the Image Shack logo, some options, and maybe an advertisement. If you only want to share the image link itself, then follow these steps instead:

After selecting your image, choose Get Code For Email

Drag your mouse over the text to select it.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the link.

Click the Close button.

Select the current web page address from the top of the web browser window; drag the mouse over the text to select it.

Press Ctrl+V to paste in the link you just copied.

Press Enter to visit your image on the Internet.

You’ll see the image displayed, along with Image Shack’s ads and other whatnot.

Right-click on the image.

Choose Copy Shortcut from the pop-up menu.

Start your e-mail program, or whichever program in which you’re going to be using the link.

Press Ctrl+V to paste the link into the text.

By following these steps, you copy a direct link to the image, instead of the link that takes your friends to the Image Shack web page (complete with advertising).

Photobucket

To share an image’s link in Photobucket, follow these steps:

Locate the image you want to share in the gallery.

Click the link titled Share, found directly above the image.

A special Share window appears.

Click the tab Get Link Code.

Click the text box beneath the heading Direct Link for Layout Pages.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the link.

Click the Cancel button.

If you click Save, then you’re merely saving your settings at this point, which is okay, but has nothing to do with sharing the image.

Start your e-mail program, or whichever program you which to paste the link into.

Press Ctrl+V to paste the link.

Flickr

Sharing an image saved on the Flickr hosting site is done by following these steps:

Double-click on the image you want to share.

From the right side of the window, click on Share This.

Click the second item down, Grab The Link

Click the link text to select it.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the link text.

Click the X close button to close the Share This area, or just click the Back button to return to the main photo gallery page.

Open your e-mail program, or ready whichever program into which you want to paste the link.

Press Ctrl+V to paste the link.

Picasaweb

While Picasaweb will let you link to your image gallery, it doesn’t really have any simple way to directly link to an image, not like the other image hosting sties described in this chapter. You can still share your images, just not directly. Follow these steps:

Click to view the image you want to share.

You might have to open the gallery first; just click on the gallery’s image.

From the right side of the window choose Link to This Photo.

Click the mouse in the text box beneath the word Link.

Press Ctrl+C to copy the link.

Open the program into which you want to paste the link.

Press Ctrl+V when you’re ready to the paste the link into your text.