13. Sharing Photos Online

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to share your photos online, using the Web, email, and even PDF technology to create slide show files that anyone can play.

For many of us these days, life happens online—including photo sharing. No longer are most of us hauling a sheaf of photos out of our wallets when we run into a friend. Whether you’re posting photos to Facebook, sharing them on Flickr, or emailing them to your friends, Photoshop Elements has a way to make it easier. And, of course, you can share your pictures automatically simply by linking your albums to Photoshop.com, where they’ll be updated every time you change them on your computer (see Figure 13.1). All this happens in the Organizer, so step away from the Editor for a bit and let’s take a look.

Figure 13.1. Sharing photos on Photoshop.com takes approximately zero effort on your part.

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Share Photos at Photoshop.com

To learn how to sync your Organizer albums to Photoshop.com so that your photos are automatically available online, turn to Chapter 4, “Maintaining Your Photo Collection.” Then follow these steps to view and share the albums with your friends.

1. First, go to Photoshop.com and sign in.
2. Click the My Library link at the top of the page. Your albums are listed on the left; double-click any of them to see a settings dialog.
3. Click the button marked Public to enable other people to see the album’s contents, and then click Also Show on My Gallery Page. Click Done to return to the My Library page.
4. Now, when you click the My Gallery link at the top of the page, you’ll see your shared album listed on the left. Click its name to view its contents, and double-click to view the individual photos.
5. To email your friends a link to the album, click Email at the bottom of the gallery window.

Emailing Pictures

The simplest way to get your photos to a person is to email them—the modern-day equivalent of dropping a few prints into an envelope and handing it to the mail carrier. Photoshop Elements offers two ways to email images: as plain attachments or as fancy Photo Mail.

Of course, you could export the photos manually, create a new email message yourself, and then attach the picture files to the email—but why bother? Photoshop Elements can take care of all that.

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Emailing Photos

In the Organizer, just choose the photos you want to email and then follow these steps:

1. Click the Share tab, and then click the E-mail Attachments button (see Figure 13.2).
   

   Figure 13.2. The paper-clip icon on the E-mail Attachments button looks similar to those used for Attachment buttons in most email clients, making its purpose readily apparent.

   

2. Choose a size in the Maximum Photo Size pop-up menu and drag the Quality slider to set the image quality level you want to use. The lower the quality, the smaller the files, but the fuzzier they get. Click Next when you have finished.
   

   You can attach more photos to your email by choosing them in the Organizer and clicking the Add button, and you can remove photos by choosing them in the Items list and clicking Remove.

3. Enter the body of your message in the Message text entry field.
4. Choose recipients for the email from your contact book by clicking their names in the Select Recipients list (see Figure 13.3). If the person to whom you want to send the email isn’t listed, you can skip this step and add the address when the email opens in your email program.
   

   Figure 13.3. Anyone you’ve sent pictures to before shows up in your contact list, and you can add contacts any time.

   

   If you use web-based email, such as Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, you need to set up a Photoshop Elements’ connection within your email account before you can send mail. Choose Preferences from the Edit menu and click Sharing. Under E-mail Settings, choose Adobe E-mail Service as your email client, then enter your name and email address. Check that account’s incoming mail for a confirmation email; as soon as you verify that the account is correct, you’re good to go.

5. Click Next to create the message and open it in your email client (see Figure 13.4), or if you use web-based email, to send the message.
   

   Figure 13.4. This is how an email message with photo attachments looks in Microsoft Mail.

   

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Sending Photo Mail

Photo Mail is much more fun than regular email. This feature creates an HTML email message that incorporates a graphic background, custom colors, and special graphics and then drops your photos right into the message, instead of just attaching them. The first step, as always, is to choose your photo in the Organizer. Then continue like so:

1. Click the Share tab, and then click the Photo Mail button. Add or remove photos, if you like, and then click Next.
2. Enter the body of your message in the Message text entry field.
3. Choose recipients for the email from your contact book by clicking their names in the Select Recipients list. If the person to whom you want to send the email isn’t listed, you can skip this step and add the address when the email opens in your email client. When you’ve finished, click Next again.
4. Choose a template category and then a stationery type, and then click Next Step (see Figure 13.5).
   

   Figure 13.5. There are enough templates available that it’s pretty easy to find one that suits your mood.

   

5. Choose a Background (if the choice is available), set the size for the photo, and change any of the template’s default settings that don’t work well with your image (see Figure 13.6).
   

   Figure 13.6. On this screen, you can move the picture around, resize it, and manipulate the specifications for the text.

   

6. Click the placeholder text and type your own text to replace it. You can change the font and font size at this point, as well.
7. Click Next to create the message and open it in your email client (see Figure 13.7), or if you use web-based email, to send the message.
   

   Figure 13.7. Most modern email clients display HTML email beautifully.

   

Creating PDF Slide Shows

Another way to email your pictures, with some extra pizzazz, is to create a PDF slide show. This file combines your images and other media files (movies, music, and so on) into a single PDF that people can open in the free Adobe Reader program. It’s a quick and easy way to produce a compact but rich package that anyone will be able to view.

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Making a Slide Show

The slide show wizard offers you several chances to change your mind about everything from which photos you include to the order they’re shown in and the music and special effects that go with them, so don’t worry that your choices will be set in stone during this process.

1. Choose the pictures that you want to include in the slide show from the Organizer.
2. Click the Create tab, and then click the Slide Show button.
3. Review the settings in the Slide Show Preferences dialog (see Figure 13.8) and make any changes you want. Don’t worry about this too much, however; you can change these settings in the Slide Show Editor as you work. Click OK when you’ve finished.
   

   Figure 13.8. If your settings are the same for every slide show you create, remove the check mark from the box at the bottom of the dialog, and Photoshop Elements will automatically use the same settings without asking.

   

4. Now the fun begins! In the Slide Show Editor (see Figure 13.9), you can do all kinds of things:
   

   • Change the slide order by dragging the slides in the storyboard at the bottom of the window.

   • Resize and rotate slides by clicking them in the preview area and then making the appropriate changes in the Properties panel.

   • Zoom in and out on the images.

   • Add graphics, text, and voiceovers using the Extras panel.

   • Change the transition effects between slides.

   • Modify the duration of each slide and each transition effect.

   • Change the slides’ background color.

   • Apply a minimal set of edits to each picture (Auto Smart Fix, Auto Red Eye Fix, and so on).

   Figure 13.9. The Slide Show Editor looks like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker in miniature—there’s a lot packed into this dialog.

   

   Before you get started, however, click Save Project at the top-left corner of the screen and assign your slide show a filename. Just as when you’re working in a word processor or any other content-creation program, remember to hit Save Project frequently as you work so that you don’t lose your work in the case of a crash or outage.

5. Use the controls below the preview area to play the slide show so that you can see how it’s progressing. Click Full Screen Preview to expand the preview to fill the entire screen.
6. When you’ve finished making changes, click Save Project one last time, and then click Output (see Figure 13.10) to turn the slide show into a PDF or, if you prefer, a WMV movie file, which is likely to be much larger and which will only play on Windows. You can choose a size for the file based on how you think the recipients will view it—on a small laptop monitor, on a large-screen TV, and so on. When you’ve finished, click OK to save the file with a name and in a location of your choice.
   

   Figure 13.10. You can even play your slide show directly on your TV if you’ve got the cables to hook up your computer.

   

If you’re incorporating your slide show into a movie, a WMV file is a better choice than a PDF file because you can import it into Movie Maker or other video editing software. Also, you should be aware that a few video features don’t translate into PDF: pans, zooms, and a couple of transition types, which are just changed to fade when you save a PDF. Video clips themselves are also removed from the PDF, making it the best choice only when your slide show includes only still photos.

Creating Web Galleries

If you want to share your photos on your own website, look no further than the Online Album Wizard, located on the Share tab, to guide you through the process of creating a slick, professional-looking web gallery (see Figure 13.11). You can also use this wizard to create galleries for Photoshop.com or to distribute on disc. The wizard takes you all the way from arranging the images for your gallery through the process of getting them online using whatever method you prefer. It’s the do-it-yourselfer’s dream.

Figure 13.11. Choose your pictures, choose a template, and this is what you get.

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Creating a Web Gallery

Start, as usual, in the Organizer, where you can choose the images you want to include in the gallery. Then click Online Album on the Share tab to start up the wizard, and follow these steps:

1. Click Create New Album and choose how you’ll share the album—Photoshop.com, Photoshop Showcase (for those outside the United States), export to CD/DVD, save to your hard drive, or FTP to your website’s server—and then click Next.
2. In the Album Details area, assign your album a name and choose a category for it from the pop-up menu (optional).
3. Click the Content tab to arrange your photos (see Figure 13.12). You can drag any photos you want to add into the Content tab from the Organizer, or click a photo and then click Remove Selected Items to delete it, and you can drag the thumbnails into the order in which you want them to appear in the gallery.
   

   Figure 13.12. Because Photoshop Elements takes a few minutes to recreate the album layout each time you change your settings, try to make sure you have all the pictures you want to use selected at this point.

   

4. Click the Sharing tab (see Figure 13.13) to choose an album layout template and preview the gallery; double-click a template thumbnail to see how your gallery looks using that template.
   

   Figure 13.13. Photoshop Elements automatically inserts photos into your layout.

   

5. In the preview window, make individual settings for the gallery images (see Figure 13.14). You can change the slide title, add a subtitle, and specify a background color for each image.
   

   Figure 13.14. Here’s your chance to tweak the template’s attributes.

   

   If you change the album’s name or contents after choosing a template, double-click the template thumbnail again to see your changes reflected in the preview window.

6. When you’ve finished making changes, click back to the Sharing tab and enter the settings needed for the sharing method you chose, and then click Done to get the album wherever it’s going (see Figure 13.15).
   

   Figure 13.15. When you share your new gallery via FTP, you’ll need to enter the server address, username, password, and destination folder for the uploaded files.

   

Publishing a Map of Your Images

Here’s another fun way to share your photos: You can mark the locations where your images were taken using the Map view in the Organizer and then publish a special album that includes a Yahoo! Maps view with icons showing the picture locations (see Figure 13.16). (Of course, you must have Internet access as you work in order to use the built-in Yahoo! Maps interface.) Clicking one of the icons brings up the picture that was taken at that location. This is a great way to commemorate a cross-country trip or an event that took place at more than one location, such as First Night celebrations around the country on New Year’s Eve.

Figure 13.16. Clicking a pin on the map brings up the pictures taken at that location.

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Mapping Your Photos

Like the Online Album Wizard, this tool creates the files, which are programmed in Flash, and you then upload them to your website. First, you’ll need to provide a location for each photo you want to share. Here’s how to get started:

1. In the Organizer, choose the photos that you want to locate on the map in the Media Browser, and then choose Show Map from the Window menu (see Figure 13.17).
   

   Figure 13.17. Each red map pin represents photos tagged with that location.

   

2. Drag the photos to the correct location on the map. Click Zoom In or Zoom Out to switch to the zoom tools, and then click the map to zoom in or out. Switch to the Hand tool to move the map around within the window. To switch map views, click the Map menu and choose Map (standard), Satellite (aerial photo), or Hybrid (combines map markings with satellite photography).
3. You can also right-click a photo in the Media Browser and choose Place on Map from the contextual menu. This pops up the Photo Location on Map dialog (see Figure 13.18); enter an address, and Photoshop Elements locates it on the map and places the pin there.
   

   Figure 13.18. You don’t have to find locations on the map if you have street addresses.

   

4. To see the photos on the map, hold your cursor over a pin to bring up the thumbnail viewer (see Figure 13.19). Or, when you’re looking at pictures in the Media Browser, you can choose Limit Search to Map Area to see all the photos marked with pins on the map. Or you can right-click a photo or a tag to which you’ve assigned a map location and choose Show on Map from the contextual menu.
   

   Figure 13.19. The thumbnail viewer shows you a quick preview of the photos at each location.

   

5. When you’re ready to publish the map, click Share to bring up the Sharing Your Map and Photos dialog (see Figure 13.20). Here you can choose Share Map with Photos on My Own Web Site or Share Photos on a Map Using Flickr, and then click Share.
   

   Figure 13.20. Map galleries can go to Photoshop.com or Flickr.com.

   

6. If you chose Share Map with Photos on My Own Web Site in step 5, you’ll now need to specify whether you want to put the map album files on Photoshop.com, burn them to a CD or DVD, upload them to your website via FTP, or export them to your hard drive. From there, follow the instructions shown to get the album wherever it’s going. If, on the other hand, you chose Share Photos on a Map Using Flickr, you’re sent to the Flickr website to enter your username and password and authorize uploads from Photoshop Elements.