Organizing Photos!?

Use iPhoto on a Mac

Hi Sharon: Welcome back to the Helpline, after your Europe trip. Gosh, you didn't even write in to us while you were in Europe (and that's a good thing).

Re your photos: You're taking the wrong approach. Family and friends should be forced to look at all 517 photos you took, it's the least they can do for you.:)

And why only 517 photos, we would have expected way more.

But seriously, Flickr works well with Windows 7's Live Photo Gallery, and Flickr is free if you can live with their monthly file size limit, I say that because the # of pics you're talking about is small.

And again, welcome back.

Thanks! Thanks! I don't have a Mac but will check out Flickr--I thought that a fee had been added but if so, maybe it's small!

What about using a Picasa Web Album? It works very easily from within Picasa since you are already using that. It is free, and friends can view your photos without belonging.

Charlie is right, iPhoto is the best, but if you had a Mac you'd probably already know that. ;) Anyway, I use iPhoto to organize and create slideshows, etc., and to share some of my thousands of photos I do use Flickr. I coughed up the $24.95 (a year) for a "Pro" membership once I found out that with the free membership, even if I delete photos I can't upload more until the next month.

I like the fact that in Flickr you can tag your photos with keywords, put them in "sets" and send guest passes to your friends and family who don't subscribe. They can look at them at their leisure. You can also make photo books, cards, etc. on Flickr so there's no need to upload your pictures to another website.

I second the suggestion for Picasa web albums. Easy to use and you can make adjustments to your photos easily (color correct, straighten, etc) before uploading them to the album. I always leave my Picasa albums "Unpublished," which means only people I send the link to can view them, they won't turn up in any sort of public forum or a Google search.

This is how I organize: first, I make sure the "Starred Photo" album is empty. Then I go through the trip photos and "Star" the ones I want to use in the album. Once that's done, I click on the Starred Photo Album, which is now filled with only the photos I want to share. Next I add captions to those pictures, upload them to Picasa Web Albums (this is where I choose "Unpublished"), and voila it's good to send out.

Welcome home!

You may consider posting a travel blog. Travelpod.com is a great site that is easy to use. You can write about your journey and post photos or videos to share with family and friends, then they can choose to look at as much or as little as they wish. It provides a good documentary of your own travels and it becomes part of a community of sharing for other travelers to gain insight, much as this bulletin board does. If you want to take a look, here is a link to a blog I created for our European trip in 2007.

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/foothills_bears/1/tpod.html

Another good way to share is to create a slide show set to music that keeps the photos changing every 3-4 seconds. You can cover a lot of ground without taxing your viewers.

I would use a blogger. Much easier for others to see from a renote place.
Only 517 photos in 2 countries? lol
I took about 4000 just in Italy in 3 weeks. That after I deleted about 200 of the bad ones.
Well, I shoot everything.

Since you already have Picasa and it is free the suggestion that others mentioned about putting them on the Picasa web album would work for you. Post the selected photos to the web album and then e mail the link to your friends and family. I always suggest they click on "slideshow" just above the first photo and the pictures will advance automatically every 3 or 4 seconds.