March Apps Mania – Photos (22)

Billy has a 35mm film camera. He also has a scanner. He takes awesome pictures, but he’s tired of having to email pictures to all of his friends around the world. What a pain. Billy is sad.

Margaret has a digital camera. She doesn’t take great pictures, but she wants the world to see them anyway. She can’t send the world an email, though. How can she let everyone see her pictures? Margaret is sad.

Ginger has lots of pictures of her kids, but her parents live several states away. They don’t even have a computer or email. How can she get new pictures to them without having to mail printed copies all the time? Ginger is sad.

Stuart has a camera phone and doesn’t want to share his pictures with anyone. But, he’d like to edit them and he doesn’t have any editing software. Stuart doesn’t want to shell out any money to buy it either. Stuart is sad.

Billy, Margaret, Ginger, and Stuart have reason to be happy, though. There are great web applications for photos that meet all sorts of needs!

Let’s start with Billy, he wants to share photos with a select group of friends.
Billy doesn’t have to email all his photos to his friends anymore. He can sign up for an account at a photo-sharing website.

Billy can choose to only share with his friends, so he can limit who can see his photos.

Flickr | Picasa | Photobucket | Snapfish

Margaret wants to share pictures with anyone in the world.
Margaret can sign up for an account with an online photo sharing website too. But, instead of limiting who can see her pictures, she can let everyone see them. The library’s Teen Web uses flickr to share pictures of their programs.

Flickr | Picasa | Photobucket

Ginger wants to send her parents pictures of the grandkids.
Ginger’s parents don’t have a computer, so can she still use a photo sharing website? Yes!

When you register with photo-sharing web sites, like Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Kodak Gallery, you can store your photos there. When you want to send prints to someone, all you have to do is login and tell the site where to mail them. Now, Ginger can use an online photo sharing site to send the latest grandkid antics.

Some photo processing centers also offer online photo albums. For instance, if Ginger used the Walgreens photo sharing site she could go to walgreens.com, order photos, and specify which store would print them. Her parents could pick up photos of their grandkids the same afternoon.

Snapfish | Shutterfly | KodakGallery | Walgreens

Stuart wants to edit photos.
He could install expensive photo editing software, or he could simply pull up a handy web app like Picnik!

Picnik lets you do basic photo touch-ups in a snap. You don’t even have to register! Just upload a picture and start editing. When you’re done, save it to your computer.

Basic: Picnik | Fotoflexer | Wiredness | Phixer

Advanced: splashup | Iaza

We’ve covered a lot of photo applications and we don’t expect you to use them all. But pick one and take it for a spin.

Here’s an image you can play with.

Do whatever you want to with it. You have our permission to alter and distribute it willy nilly.

Click the picture to open the file. Once the full-size image is open, right click on the image and save it to your desktop.

If you have trouble downloading the image, please ask a colleague for help or ask us for help in the comments. If you have your own image, you can use it instead.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: 1. Pick ONE photo web app to try out. You may need to create an account. 2. Save the picture (above) to your desktop. 3. Upload the picture to a photo sharing site where you can log in and see it. Or use a photo-editing site to adjust the picture (crop it, resize it, etc.), then save it to your computer. 4. Take the survey.