Web gallery makes sharing photos easier

Does this ring a bell? A friend or family member wants to see some of the pictures you recently took on a vacation or at some event. So you take a sampling of photos and attach them to an e-mail. You hit the Send button and sit there as your normally speedy Internet connection chugs way at the really slower upload speed until it all gets sent. And just when you’re getting ready to leave or do something else on the computer, the dreaded e-mail notice arrives back saying that the person’s e-mail isn’t large enough to accommodate the attachments you just sent.

So basically, all the time you took getting the whole thing together and sending it was for nothing. When that happens, you don’t know whether to blow your brains out or strangle the recipient for using an e-mail service that doesn’t give them enough storage space. There has to be a better way and actually, there is.

There are a number of Web sites that let you upload your photos to them. Once uploaded, you can then elect to give out the Web site address that points to the special area that lets anyone see what you’ve uploaded. This is a great way to let people see the photos you want to display and they don’t have to waste any time downloading them before they see them. Some of these Web sites charge for these services while others offer them for free. Facebook and SnapFish are two examples of the free Web sites at www.facebook.com and www.snapfish.com. SmugMug.com offers a free 14-day trial and a then it’s $39.95 a year. Go and visit some of them, see what they have to offer and then settle on the one you think best serves your needs and pocketbook.

New from Apple

Now, if you own a Macintosh, Apple has just introduced something interesting within their iLife ’08 suite of applications. Specifically they’ve added a new function within iPhoto ’08 called .Mac Web Gallery. This new feature within iPhoto takes the idea of sharing your photos on the Internet to the next level. IPhoto is Apple’s application that manages, organizes and displays your digital photographs. This latest iteration just introduced by Apple along with three new brushed aluminum iMac models has the ability to export any or all of your photos to the .Mac service to which you must subscribe ($99.95 a year) for this to work.

Let’s say you have a group of photos in your iPhoto library that you want to share with others. You simply create a photo album within iPhoto or use the new Event ability that automatically groups related pictures such as a birthday or graduation for example. After you select the collection, you just click on the Web Gallery button at the bottom of the iPhoto display and things pretty much happen on their own. IPhoto automatically uploads the images to your .Mac Web site and creates a corresponding number of interactive pages to accommodate the pictures. That’s pretty much all you have to do.

When you want people to see your gallery, simply give them the .Mac address to your gallery page and they will see your images in a nicely done, interactive display. You can have for example, a number of photo albums titled with whatever describes the collection most accurately. You can also have your videos there as well. Moving the mouse over the album displays a rapid flashing of all the images contained within that grouping. The number of photos it contains is displayed underneath.

Variety of options

Clicking on any Album first displays them in a grid layout. Moving a slider lets you change the size of the images so you can see more of them on a single page or see fewer but with more detail. You can also display images in Mosaic, which shows one large image with smaller ones to the right. Clicking on any of these makes that one the larger display. Carousel is pretty much like the Cover Flow album display on an iPod or iPhone. Moving the slider below rotates each image to the front of the screen. There’s even a slideshow option here.

The other option that should be mentioned is that if you can allow anyone to download any or all of the images at the full resolution in which you uploaded them. So now anyone can see, view, select and download your photos without you having to do much more than click iPhoto’s Web Gallery Button. And of course, this also all works with your iPhone. In fact, Apple just added a new software button on the iPhone that lets you upload any image on the iPhone directly to your Web Gallery.

IPhoto ’08 is included in Apple’s iLife ’08 that sells for $79 and is available at Apple’s online and retail stores. It’s also available at stores that sells Apple software such as CompUSA and Best Buy. For more information, visit www.apple.com.

XCraig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his Web site at www.computeramerica.com.

© 2007 McClatchy Tribune