Introduction

There are many reasons you may want to create a website:

• Professional (e.g. at SFU – Your CV, your degrees, biography, areas of specialization, etc.)
  • Publish papers and books online
  • Publish class notes, etc.
• Commercial (e.g. advertise your services as a proofreader)
• Personal writings (e.g. to inform others of what you have found to be the meaning of life)
• Family history
  • Stories, genealogy, and photos
  • Photo album(s)
• Countless others....

Building an Online Photo Album

Today I will discuss only websites that consist principally of photos that you want to make available for family and friends.

The first step is to gather together the photos you want in your album. I strongly urge (it is strictly a matter of taste) that each of your albums contain 5 to 50 photos. More than that tends to become a bit tiresome for the folks viewing your album. If you want to make available more photos, create additional albums, preferably each on a theme, e.g. a holiday, wildlife, cityscapes, a birthday or anniversary, etc. 

If your photos are already digitized you can skip the next step. 

For older photos which exist only as printed copies, you will have to scan them. (Epson, HP, Canon, etc.)

Adjusting Your Photographs

You can, of course, use your photos as-is. But your album will look much better if you adjust your photos at least a little bit. 

By adjusting I have in mind

• rotating
• cropping
• removing (the dreaded) red-eye
• brightening (or occasionally) dimming
• adjusting the contrast
• sharpening

I'll discuss the software in a moment, but first let's see what I'm talking about.

Example of What a Photo Gallery Looks Like

Let's see what an online photo album typically looks like. 

What is fairly standard is that an album page displays an array of small previews (called "thumbnails"). These can each be clicked-on, and a larger image appears on-screen replacing the page of thumbnails. 

The variations – background, placement, whether static or automatic slide show, with or without captions, with or without music or voice-over, etc. – are virtually without limit. 

Here's is an example (created by jalbum).

Picasa and Flickr

Let's begin by looking at the simplest, easiest way to create an online photo album.

FLICKR (available from Yahoo)

• You upload your photos to the free Flickr website and then adjust them online. 
• FLICKR is user-software independent. It works with any computer running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc.

PICASA 2 (available from Google)

• You download and install the Picasa 2 software onto your own Windows computer. (There are no Mac or Linux versions.)
  
• You adjust your photos on your own computer. (Features are richer than those in Flickr.)
  
• You upload the finished album to the Picasa free website or to your own personal one.
  
• Then you tell your family and friends where to find your album (and what the password is if you assigned one).

Installing Picasa

Download Picasa 2 from http://picasa.google.com/

When you install Picasa, you will be asked whether you want the program to scan all your hard drives for graphics files or just  My Documents, My Pictures, and Deskstop.

Choose the latter.

Inform Your Family and Friends of your Online Photos

Once you have you photo album(s) installed on the Web (on Picasa, Flickr, or your own website), you'll want to inform your family and friends where to find your photos.The technique is pretty much the same for all online albums. I'll illustrate it with Picassa.

Remember: I urged you to print a copy of the online form "Create an Account" in Google.

You'll need to retrieve the name you chose for "Desired username". The one I chose was swartz.in.burnaby The address for my album(s) is: http://picasaweb.google.com/swartz.in.burnaby Send your family and friends an email like this:

Hi,

I've just placed some photos onine. You can find them at: http://picasaweb.google.com/swartz.in.burnaby.

Hope you enjoy them!