Using an Online Photo Management Tool

So after you get your blog set up, you'll probably want to start posting pictures along with your text - or at least add a picture to your header or something like that. But before we do that, we should probably discuss photo management tools. There are hundreds of tools out there. The most traditional ones - like Photoshop or Corel, are super robust photo editing software that you install directly on your computer. These are really for the more professional photographers who want to seriously edit their photos. And if you've never had formal training - make sure to get a good book and expect to spend a lot of time! What these tools lack is actual file management, and can be pretty costly for amateur photographers who are simply looking for a simple way to edit photos and post them online quickly. With the advent of "Web 2.0," online photo management tools have really come into their own. The most well known are flickr, Picasa, Smugmug and Photobucket (the first two are Yahoo and Google owned respectively) but you can also use sites like Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly for great editing and printing options - but they're pretty much limited to those features and aren't as well suited to moving seamlessly from editing photos to sharing them elsewhere on the web. There are also tons of other file sharing locations out there, but there are advantages for sticking with one of the big three. The reasons for using one of the first three include all of the below: 1. Back up - You can use these tools as back-up storage for all of your photos - just in case you get the "blue screen of death" before making that back-up you keep meaning to do. If you're using the tool regularly to hook to your blog or or any other type of web sharing, it just becomes a part of your regular process of uploading photos. 2. Connectivity - These sites link easily with other popular web tools (ie. Blogger, Facebook, iGoogle, Myspace, etc.) For example - one of my favorite content building sites is Scrapblog.com - and when I want photos for one of my scrap blogs I can automatically pull photos from flickr, Picasa, Photobucket or Smugmug automatically. And the interface lets you easily navigate the respective storage system (ex. going to flickr let's you browse your Sets.) 3. Sharing and Printing - Even if you don't post all of the photos you want to share on your blog - you can easily share photos from any of these sites without going through the time consuming process of loading them into a file-heavy email and then expecting all your friends to load those files in said email into their in-boxes! You can just put a link in your post to the rest of the photos, and readers can browse at their leisure. Most of them allow you to easily order prints and other types of printed materials and pick them up at local stores (flickr for example will allow you to order prints through the mail or to pick up at Target.) Now, as far as deciding which service to use, I would recommend just doing some research before you decide, and explore the different features and options. They all offer free usage, just by creating an account which will allow you to explore their features. There are pros and cons to all of them. Eventually you may want to set up a paid account so that you don't hit file storage ceilings, but you should have plenty of usage before you get close to that. I am most familiar with Picasa and flickr, which definitely seem to have the best connectivity with the biggest and most popular websites out there, which is probably the biggest reason to go with one of the two. In the next post I'll discuss the pros and cons of both of these.