Beginner's Guide to Photo Sharing

Turning your digital photos into an online photo album you can be proud to share with friends and family is easy. All you need is a good digital camera, a computer and lots of time for a new addiction. Follow this simple guide for creating photo albums online and you too will be sharing the best moments of your family's life.

Film vs. Digital

You don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money on a digital camera to create dramatic photo albums. It is possible to create albums with photos developed from film. It just isn't as efficient and the cost is higher in the long run considering you have to purchase film and have it developed as well as spend extra money on purchasing a good scanner. The upside to scanning your images is that you can always go back and upload old pictures taken before the digital camera era.

Photos that are uploaded to a computer directly from a camera tend to be sharper and more vibrant. For the novice or amateur photographer even a $50 digital camera produces slightly better images than those taken with film. Unless you have top of the line professional equipment.

Once you've mastered using your digital camera or scanner you're going to need someplace to put your photos if you want to create and share digital photo albums. Here is three of the most popular digital photo album sharing websites.

Shutterfly.com - Shutterfly is an online photo album service that allows you to upload and create on the fly. Their services include features that allow you to create books, postcards, calendars and photo gifts.

Photobucket.com - Photobucket is just like shutterfly. They are an online photo album sharing service that's simple to use and has a really cool community vibe. They've recently incorporated a scrapbooking area on their website and also give users the capability of maintaining a group photo album.

Picasa Web Albums - Brought to you by google this gem of a find is perfect for those new to creating digital photo albums. The users interface is simple to navigate. Albums happen with the click of a button.

The nice thing about using a third party digital photo album service like photobucket is that it's pretty much click and go. To create an album, log into your account at whichever photo album service you chose to use and locate the upload photos function and browse to files directly from your hard drive. Use the provided templates to build visually stunning presentations.

The process and capabilities for creating an online digital photo album is different for each site. Photobucket offers more of a variety of things you can do with your images than does shutterfly. Whereas sites like Picasa offer a simple, straightforward service that is designed with no frills to make it less complicated for the beginner. Look for the help section, FAQ or support section of the website you are using to get help with creating a digital online photo album.

That's all there is to it. Now you can share your photos online too. Go forth and create!