How To Share Your Digital Photos Online

Step 1: Online photo galleries

The simplest way to share pictures is to email them to whoever you want to show them to, but as anyone who's tried to email more than a few photos at a time will tell you, it's a lot of hassle. A better option is to upload the pictures to an online photo gallery where you can let as many or as few people see them as you like.

Step 2: Logging in to Flickr

The most popular photo sharing site at the moment is Flickr, which you can find at www.flickr.com. If you already have a login for Yahoo.com, you can use it on Flickr, but if not it's relatively straightforward to get one. Click the "Sign Up" button on the title page and then the "Sign Up" link on the Yahoo page that follows. Fill in the information, follow the steps and you'll be done in a couple of minutes.

Step 3: Uploading photos

Once you're signed in to Flickr, you can start adding your photos by clicking the "upload photos" link. You can upload up to six pictures at a time and you'll notice that each photo has to be smaller than 5 megabytes - don't worry too much about this though, as most digital cameras produce photos that are that or smaller. Click "Browse" to find your pictures, set the privacy settings below - public means anyone who looks at Flickr will see your photos, "Friends" or "Family" means that if they log on to the site and you add them to your list of contacts, then they will be able to see you pictures - but I'll cover that a little more later. When you're done, click the Upload button.

Step 4: Flickr tools

You can also download a tool for you Mac or PC desktop that lets you upload more than 6 pictures at once from the Flickr tools page - you'll find a link to it next to the "Upload photos" link on the main page. On the tools page you'll also find programs that let you do things like send pictures to Flickr from your mobile or directly from iPhoto.

Step 5: Tags, titles and maps

Once your photos have uploaded, you can add a title and a description. The tags window is for key words you can describe the picture with, so that if someone searches Flickr for a picture of a beach, for example, and you've added the tag "Beach" to one of your photo's, it will show up in their search. You'll now see that your picture has been put in the "Your Photo's" section of the site. You can click on it to change any of the information you've put with it and even place the image on a map, so people can see where it was shot.

Step 6: Sharing your photos

When you want to share your photos, click on "Contacts" at the top of the screen and on this page you can either find a person who's already on Flickr or click on "Invite a friend to join", and this is where you can specify if this person is a friend or family - which defines what pictures they can see according to your privacy settings.

Step 7: What next?

Once you've shared so photos on the site, why not explore the other options the site offers and have a look at other people's work. It's particularly fun to use the map feature to see what pictures have been taken in your area. It's great for inspiring you next picture or even just having nose. Done.