"Regarding the above, in zenfolio, or picasa, or any of the other sites, how can you share a particular album or photo (on a site like fodor's, or even with friends and family), but NOT allow access to all your albums? I like to share some of my travel photos on here, but not photos of my kids' graduations, for example."

I think different sites ay handle that differently but I'll speak from the point of view of Shutterfly that I mentioned earlier. In that case I began with a regular Shutterfly account, to which I uploaded all the photos I wanted online for the purpose of creating a photo book and getting prints. Only I can see them. (After I create a photo book or album I can allow others to see them from there, to share the album online, but I chose not to do that.)

Later I created a Shutterfly Share Site, to which I migrated JUST the photos I wanted others to see, plus I uploaded other photos and videos to the share site that I wanted to share. You won't find many, if any, photos of friends and family or me on my share site.

It would not surprise me to discover that I am not doing this the best way. But it works for me, knowing that my public photos are one place and my private photos are another.

sf7307, You can have public or private albums. Some with password protection if you like.

See demo:
http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/overview2.aspx

Thanks both of you. I know that in concept you can have public and private albums. So if I have half my albums "locked" and half of them "unlocked", if I give a sharing link on this board, a person who opens the link would have access to all of the "unlocked" albums, but none of the "locked" albums?

Can anyone who uses Picasa confirm that's how it works? (I'll check Shutterfly and zenfolio later when I have more time).

Thanks.

Yes, in Picasa Web Albums, each of your albums can have any one of the following three levels of privacy:

1. Public on the web: These albums be found all sorts of ways. They can even show up when someone does a Google search, for, say "Grand Canyon Photos." If you set up an album as public and then later change your mind, it may still show up as a Google hit for several days, maybe even for longer, so be careful about this.

2. Anyone with the link: the album is accessible by browsing to a URL that has a long, difficult-to-guess name. Anyone who knows that URL can see the album. So if you send the URL to a friend, your friend might then decide to send it to a million other friends, or post it on the internet. Then all those extra people could see that album (but only that album).

3. Private: you specify a list of particular Google accounts whose owners can see the album. For example, mymom(@)gmail.com and mydad(@)gmail.com can see the album. They'll need to log in with their Google password to see it. If you want to show the album to someone who doesn't have a Google account, they'll need to create a Google account first.

sf7307

Yes. I post my Picasa public album links and you can browse to my other public albums but not the private ones. You can't even see them on the Gallery page.

Another thing I really like about Picasa is that it's got a nice photo editing program which works well enough that I rarely have to resort to Photoshop. Even using "I feel lucky" works well most of the time.

Thank you both so much. I'm much more comfortable posting links to certain albums now -- before if I wanted someone to see a particular picture, I'd have them email me and I'd send it to them individually.

Several people have referred to making photo books and have mentioned their favorite suppliers. It is very timly that "Popular Photography" magazine's November issue, which I just got in the mail yesterday, has an article providing detailed comparisons and evaluations of 10 different suppliers.

The article rates each one and explains the reasons for high or low ratings. The 3 highest rated were Aperture (requires a MAC computer, I think), Kodak, and MyPublisher.

I began using what is now kodakgallery when it was ofoto. Ofoto was free, simple to use, and gave me a credit anytime someone made a purchase from one of my shared albums. The quality, service, and ease of use have steadily gone downhill since it became kodakgallery, and as previously mentioned, it is no longer free.

Thanks for all of the recommendations......I'll have to check some of them out!

Back to image resizing.

I used a program called Easy Thumbnails.

You can download it for free from:

www.download.com

You can pick an amount to shrink and even tell it to add a certain amount of sharpening.

It's also possible to resize an image without having to download any new programs.

On a Mac, just double-click your image, and it will open in Preview. Pull down Tools -> Adjust Size, and type in the new size you want. Then save the image again, ideally with a new filename so that you don't overwrite your original high-resolution verson.

I'm less familiar with Windows, but I think every PC has a program called mspaint, right? You can open the image in mspaint, pull down Image -> Attributes, and type in the image size you want. I also find that I can get to mspaint in Windows XP by just double clicking the photo, then right-clicking on it and selecting "Edit."

Hi, this is a really useful post. For those that posted regarding making actual books, what should I expect to pay? I'm thinking of them as a possible item for our non-profit's auction. I would want about 30 photos with captions of 1-2 sentences, and about 3-4 pages of type. I have seen these available online at costco and wonder if the quality is as good as those you all cited.

First, NeoPatrick, know your kilobytes and megabytes. Get comfortable with what size your original photos should be, and how many should fit onto a CD-R. Watch for pop-ups during scanning or emailing saying to "reduce size" or "faster transmission." You may in some cases want these options. Our father scanned in 100s of slides to digital but used a really low resolution. Threw away the originals.

Loading to a photo website: one advantage is to have your full-size originals saved off site in case the cat knocks the can of pop onto your hard drive, or a hurricane comes through.

Regarding editing: I like to first do a "Save As" and add the letter A to the end of my photo file "P141359A" and that way I don't destroy my original when editing. Your amended photo should show up in lists next to the original that way. I also figure that some day I (or my child) might be even better at editing a photo and they might want the original to have a fresh shot at it.

Good luck!

5alive, My Publisher has been sending me email adds for months. 50% off of any order over $100 or 25% off any order over $50. The "Classic" hard bound album cost is below. They also do smaller sized, soft cover albums. The discount code is HOLSAVE50 at checkout. Supposedly the deal ends Oct 25, but they have been sending them to me for months and just extending the deadline.

Hardbound albums:
11.25 inches wide x 8.75 inches high
20 pages included in base book price.
Maximum 100 pages.
20-page Classic Book from: $29.80
Each add'l page over 20: $0.99

Soft bound, smaller books:
7.75 inches wide x 5.75 inches high
20 pages included in base book price.
Maximum 100 pages.
All Pocketbooks are printed on premium 115-
pound high-gloss archival-quality paper at no extra cost.
20-page Pocketbook from: $9.99
Each add'l page over 20: $0.49

www.mypublisher.com

This thread has given me such encouragement that I can post my pictures on Picasa.
I tried the Facebook route and it is insufferable (for pictures.)
Entire thread printed and studied and this weekend it will get done! Wish me luck.

juan, WTF?
Oh, yea. I noticed a full moon last night!

Well, I finally bit the bullet and joined Facebook. I did my first photo album there -- of course the most important one -- "Patrick EATING in Asia".

Here's a link. I thought it worked very easily.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?...00001761451767

Glad Facebook worked for you Patrick. The only problem I have with using it as a way of sharing albums, is that to view the album one must join Facebook --- something I have no interest in doing. Alas, I can't see you eating in Asia.

Yes, I was just about to write what TC did. I was looking forward to seeing your photos but not at the cost of joining Facebook. But whatever works for you!

TC, by the way, I looked at your zenfolio Tanzania gallery. AWESOME! Among other things I can't believe you got a great photo of a Malachite Kingfisher. Superb work.

If you are on Facebook, you should set your Facebook privacy levels to "Friends Only" . While this means that only your Friends can see your pictures, it also means that noone is likely to use your Facebook info to figure out when you will be away from home. With any public photo albums, I'm careful not to include personal pictures.

Is an on-line service necessary? Can't a person do everything on their computer, without sending it into the 'cloud'? I get very concerned about my personal photos being accessible to the world, so I just use my Mac to keep them. And I back them up on my hard drive and keep copies on my iPad, too.

PeaceOut, my feelings about privacy may be close to yours. I always assume the worst when it comes to online information privacy, and I would never join a site like Facebook or Twitter, for any reason.

But I still sometimes like to have some of my photos online. For example, I might want to share my vacation photos with a family member who's far away, and emailing all 50 photos from my trip to the Grand Canyon would create a message that's too long to send. Or maybe I'm chatting with a friend at work, and I'd like to show him a photo of something, but I don't have it with me on my phone. If the photos are online, I can just call them up, in all their high-resolution glory, wherever I am.

If you never find yourself in such a situation, then I would agree, there's no need to put any photos online. And, in any case, I would never post or even email to a friend any photo that would be extremely damaging or embarrassing if it were to make its way into the wrong hands.

neo, I clicked on your FB link and got an error - which is a good thing, since I'm not your FB friend! But I then edited the URL and got to your FB page. You might want to lock down your Wall so that only friends can see it. (Since I'm not your FB friend, FB shows me the Info tab, but it's easy for me to click on your Wall tab and see things there. If you lock down your Wall, I would only get the Info tab, and at least your name and sex - FB requirement...) But since this thread is about photos, I can tell you that I was not able to see a single one on your FB!