Using Internet Tools to Share Photos: Part I, Picasa
When my daughter was born, we were so excited that we could send photographs through email later that day when my husband went home with the digital camera. (When my son was born a few months ago, relatives and friends had photos in their hands within a few minutes. I had set up a mailing list on my pocketpc and took a picture with its camera feature.)
Once we got home and settled with our first baby, the weaknesses of sharing photographs by email became apparent. First of all, you have to know everyone’s email address. My relatives seem to move and change emails all the time, and I am pretty bad about updating my contacts list. Another thing is that you have to resize your photos to be small enough to send, and pick and choose only a few. Even then, Aunt Susie who is still on dial up might have a problem getting your files. Also, you have to figure out which ones of your friends and family actually want to get pictures from you. Most relatives wouldn’t mind seeing the kid a few times a month, but a daily picture email would make their eyes roll. But then you get the grandparents who wouldn’t mind checking out new photos hourly if possible. I needed another solution.
Photo organizing and sharing services come in a few flavors. Some are geared primarily for sharing photographs, some are gear primarily towards making prints and photo products.
Over the next week or so, I will post some instructions on how to use three photo services: Picasa, Flickr and . All of these services are free (though both Google/Picasa and Flickr can be upgraded with extra features for a small fee.) I’ll give you the skinny on ease of use, sharing, privacy, features and my recommendations for which one might be right for you. Later on, I’ll talk about how to use blogs as a way to record your family stories and add photos from these services to your blog.
In brief, I like Flickr for sharing photographs and Shutterfly for making prints. We’ll talk about Flickr later, but the main reason I chose it is because when I started my personal photosharing, it was the only service in town that didn’t require a password for people to view my images. If I was starting it today, I would probably use Picasa.
Let’s start with Picasa. Picasa is a Google tool. Google tools are typically extremely easy to use and very intuitive. Picasa is different from most photo services in that there is a little program you need to download. The Picasa program is extremely handy, and even if you decide not to use the online tools, you’ll like having Picasa on your computer. I like using the online tools as well for ease of sharing and as a backup.
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