Digital Photo Sharing With All Your Friends
So you've taken your vacation pictures, edited out the junk ones, corrected a red eye or two and done all the other bits of digital photo editing that you want to do. Now what?
All too often, it's easy to let your digital photos languish on your hard drive or on a CD, assuming that you've uploaded them from your camera to your computer. While this is good for knowing that you have got those memories tucked safely away where you can look at them, one of the joys of taking photos is sharing them with other people.
The old way of sharing photos from your vacation or family party was to corner a friend and present them with a big fat photo album and a long commentary (moderately boring), or else to invite people over to watch a slideshow - either digital or otherwise - of all your photos, again providing commentary but this time with not much chance for feedback or questions (really boring).
Those of us who want to be more sensitive when sharing digital photos and who don't want to send our friends scurrying for cover behind a blanket of excuses may want to try something else. Sharing digital photos by emailing them can work, but often these files are quite large for an email - 1 megabyte or more per photo - so they can take ages to send and to download. And that's if you've got a broadband connection - if you've got dial-up, don't even go there! By far the best way of sharing digital photos is online. A number of digital photo sharing companies and websites have been set up. Once again, a range of digital photo sharing services are available. Some digital photo sharing services are free and others you have to pay for. But in general, a digital photo sharing site is one where you can basically post a digital photo album or gallery online - or even start a photo-blog. The free digital photo sharing sites are often linked with advertising sites. This is why these free digital photo sharing sites are free - the advertising pays for the site, not you. And who knows - there may be an advertisement for something you are interested in. These digital photo sharing sites are pretty good quality and are great for those of us who just want to put our vacation photos online where people can look at them when they like. Some digital photo sharing sites sit on the free-paid-for divide. These are the digital photo sharing facilities provided by companies that specialise in editing digital photos. You pay for the photos to be edited and finished to your liking, but sharing the photos online once they're edited is free. This type of digital photo sharing may be the best of both worlds and be the least hassle in the long run. The paid-for digital photo sharing sites are free from advertising, which is much less distracting for viewers, especially if you have added tags or captions to your photos. These digital photo sharing sites often work on a membership/subscription basis. Basically, you pay a membership fee to use the site then upload your photos - as many as you like.
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