Sharing Photos Online

There is no questioning the fact that digital photography has changed the way that we experience photographs.  Instead of mailing photos back and forth or having duplicates made, now in just a few short years, we can instantly send and distribute our favorite pictures online.

That being said, there are still lots of ways that we can connect to the people we care about besides email, and some of these methods are amazing at keeping everyone involved.  Let’s check out a few great sites and see what they can offer.

Facebook Frenzy

The site that needs no introduction, Facebook is one of the giants of social media.  People use it to keep track of old friends, ex-classmates, and a wide variety of other associates, but it also features a relatively strong section for uploading and sharing photographs.  Facebook allows you to post pictures, create custom photo albums and connect with your friends and family with facebook accounts in a fast and simple way.  The only major downside is the site’s method for compressing and resizing high-quality images; if you want to take advantages of the site’s other features (social games, status updates, etc) it’s a good choice, but if you want something exclusively for photos the quality loss isn’t worth the tradeoff.

Fabulous Flickr

Flickr is one of the absolute best ways to share photos and caused a revolution with its innovative photo tagging system.  Like Facebook, users can tag other people, however with Flickr you can tag groups, objects or places letting you add great context to your images.  In addition to their ridiculously detailed tagging system, Flickr has a few great options for printing your photographs or making them into gifts and features a pretty robust set of tools for editing your images.  Flickr is also free, which means you don’t have to pay a dime to keep your loved ones up to date.

Have Fun with Photoshop Online

When it comes to photo editing, Adobe Photoshop is the industry gold standard.  Most digital photographers are either familiar with Adobe Photoshop or use it regularly, so it’s not surprising that their online version is more advanced than any other website.  Photoshop Online isn’t just for editing as it also allows you to upload and store up to 2 gigs free with no image shrinking or quality loss.  The other great thing about Photoshop online is that it allows you to export directly to Flickr, Facebook, or a wide variety of other sites. This makes it easy because you can do your photo editing with their online tools and then use whatever sharing method that you prefer.

All in all, there are too many photo sharing sites to count and we sadly don’t have room to talk about them all.  Each website has its own strengths and weaknesses, so see which one best fits your needs and style for sharing your photos.  Some sites offer a more social and interactive approach while other sites offer better photo editors.  No matter which one you choose, just remember that the most important thing is that you’re staying in touch with people that care about you, and in the end that’s the only important thing.  Have fun taking great pictures and sharing them!