How to Share Photos, Mum.

Last night my mum asked me how she should best share photos with my aunt. Actually, she requested to be told how to create a zip file so that she could send photos by email. I'll show how to do that of course, but I'll also give some alternatives.

Creating a ZIP File under Windows XP
One way to email photos is inside a ZIP archive. In versions of Windows prior to XP, you needed to install some additional software (such as WinZip) to give the you the ability to compress and archive files in this way. From XP onwards, this functionality is built in.

Supposing I have a folder of photos on my desktop that I would like to email (or bundle together for some other purpose) such as:

It is incredibly simple to create a zip archive of these files. Right click the containing folder ("Some Photos" in my example) and choose "Send To" then "Compressed (zipped) Folder".

This will create a compressed zip folder:

However, note the size of the ZIP archive. The original folder is 13.5MB in size and so is the ZIP archive! Actually, technically, it will even be slightly bigger as there is a file header to help the ZIP software make sense of the compressed file. Compression didn't happen then? This is because the source files - the photos - are already compressed. You can't further compress something that is already, in this case very efficiently, compressed. So it's not a great way to send photos.

This is especially true when you're going to use email, because attachments to emails are MIME encoded. This means that, essentially, they are represented as huge chunks of text rather than the binary data that they really are - this means that the file actually get about 30% bigger when you email it. For our example 13.5MB file, this means we're really emailing approximately a 17.95MB file! This is not very friendly for the recipient who may find their broadband link saturated for a while as this is downloaded. You might also inadvertently fill their inbox if they are using an email account with a limited quota. This is the reason that most corporates limit the size of emails that can be sent and received.

Photo Sharing Websites

A better way to share photos is to upload them to a photo sharing website such as Flickr, Photobucket or Picasa Web Albums. There are a huge number of other sites out there too of course... Personally, I use Flickr, but to upload a huge number of photos you have to pay a (small) amount for the year.

There are benefits to each site of course. If you're already using Picasa and Googlemail, for instance, it is easy to set up a web album and upload to there. So we'll cover using Picasa Web Albums here.

Sharing Photos using Picasa

I'll assume that you've already downloaded and installed Google Picasa. I'm using Picasa on both my Mac and Windows based systems. The screenshots below come from Picasa 3 on Windows - as this is close to what my mum will have on her Windows laptop. I'm also assuming that you have a Google account set up already. If not, create one. If you're using Googlemail, then use that one.

Picasa Web Albums can be found here and the log in page looks like this:

When you first log in, you need to create a Web Albums username. I'd suggest trying your own name or usual online handle.

Once this is set up, you need to switch into Picasa itself. I'm assuming also that your photos are already imported into Picasa. It's very good at hunting out photos on your hard disk, but if they are not in there, you need to import them using the "Import" button or use the Folder Manager under the Tools menu.

Uploading to web albums is very simple. Select the images that you want to share. (Use CTRL+Click to choose multiple; they get highlighted with a blue surround.) Then click the "Share" button. A pop up window allows you to enter your Google account credentials. It's up to you whether to remember these details on this computer or not - if it's a borrowed computer, then don't. If it's your computer then maybe.

The next screen gives you an opportunity to send an email with a link to your newly uploaded photos. This is much more efficient and friendly than sending the actual photos via email. Your contact will be able to download the photos in their own time.

The important choice is whether you make your album "Unlisted", "Public" or "Require Sign In". Unlisted albums are not linked from your Web Albums home page. Public albums are linked from your home page and allow anyone to access them. Albums which require a sign in will mean that only people with Google Accounts will be able to access them.

Once the upload is completed, you can view them online. Your email will also be sent once the upload completes.

The last thing to show you is the email as it arrives with your contact. Obviously, I sent this email to my own email account for the sake of this article:

And we're done!