How To Upload And Share Photos On Flickr, Picasa, Or Facebook

One of the basic things new computer users want to learn is how to upload and share photos with friends and family. You can help those unfamiliar with photo sharing on Flickr, Picasa and Facebook by forwarding them these simple instructions.

In an earlier edition of this “emailable tech support” series, we showed you how to get photos off of a camera and into a computer by connecting the camera to your computer via the USB cable or by inserting the camera’s memory card into your computer’s card reader. Once you have the photos on your computer, you can upload them to one of the popular photo-sharing sites like Flickr or Picasa, or share them on social networks like Facebook.

Uploading Photos from the Website

Whether you use Flickr, Picasa or another popular service for hosting and sharing photos, most sites have similar features and the uploading process usually looks the same.

Here are instructions, for example, for Flickr:

1. Click on the “Upload” link at the top right to get started (or go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/).
2. Click the “choose photos and videos” link to to browse your computer for the photos you wish to upload.
3. Choose your privacy settings (visible only to you or to your friends/family, or public for the whole world to see).
4. Click the “Upload Photos and Videos” button.
5. In the next screen, you can add tags, which are useful descriptors for your photos (e.g. “halloween” or “new york city”), and add them to a “set”, which in Flickr is like an album.
6. To share photos with others, click on the email icon above the photo. There’s also a dropdown beside the email icon that allows you to share the photo on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Blogger, or you can generate a link to the photo that you can copy and paste elsewhere.

[imgclear]

Picasa: If you watch the video above produced by Google, the process for uploading to and sharing on Picasa is very similar for that service: look for the “Upload” button, create an album, browse for the photos on your computer and set your privacy settings. To share photos with others look for the “Share” link and enter your recipients’ email addresses.

Facebook: For Facebook, there are a few ways to share photos. You can add a photo as your status update, in which case your Facebook friends will see the photo in their news feeds, or you can create an album with many photos and share the album with your Facebook friends. Here’s how to do both.

To upload a photo in your status update, click on the Photo link, then “Upload a Photo” and click the “Choose File” button. In the window that opens, browse to the folder where your photos are stored and select the photo, then click “Open”. Add a comment about the photo and click the “Share” button to add your status update and the photo.

To create an album, click the Photo link, then “Create an Album”. In the new window, click the “Select Photos” button to browse for your photos (you can choose multiple photos at once by holding down the Shift, Ctrl or Command key while clicking on the photos). Create a name for your album and select who you want to share the album with. (You can use friends lists in Facebook to better group people you want to share photos and information with.) Then click “Create Album”. Your friends who you share the album with will see in Facebook that you’ve added a new photo album.

Desktop Programs

Uploading from the website is the simplest methods for getting your photos onto these services, but for quicker and heavy-duty photo uploading, you’ll probably want to use a dedicated tool.

Picasa is a great photo editing and management tool that can auto-upload photos. From within Picasa, it’s easy to select the photos you want to add to Picasa Web Albums and click the Upload button at the bottom or the Email button to share the photos. You can even use a Picasa plugin to upload photos directly to Facebook.

There are also several tools and plugins for Flickr, including a Windows and Mac Flickr Desktop Uploadr for dragging and dropping folders or multiple photos or videos to your Flickr account.

Whether you use either the simple web upload method, a dedicated program on your computer, or another method (such as a mobile app on your phone or uploading by email on Flickr or Picasa, for example), having your photos online and shareable is just a few steps away.