1. All my photos get dumped onto my PC
2. The images I want to organise get moved to an event-specific folder on another drive
3. I then choose which of those photos I want to publish online, e.g. currently to Flickr

But this just isn’t working for family members who just aren’t IT savvy enough. They get confused when new sets (albums) are created etc, and end up getting lost.

I’ve never found Flickr user-friendly anyway. Nor Picasa – well, not the local app as it completely messes up dates and order.

Have tried using Dropbox and SugarSync but don’t find they work well for albums either.

So, what are you using that allows the following;

– tags
– re-organising of photos so they don’t just appear alphabetically or according to date/time taken
– easy to upload (drag n drop pref)
– easy for IT numpties to find online

Would be great if I could create a new album (or edit an existing one) and then just send a link. I know Dropbox does this buy the others just don’t get on with it.

Ta

EDIT: Would also be handy if family/friends could download an album in one go instead of having to choose each pic one by one.

Flickr pro version will do everything you want it to, including sending a link to an album. Guest passes allow you to send links to albums that are otherwise private as well. What is it that it doesn’t do that means you want to try something else or are you just using the free version?

Adobe Lightroom 4 could do this for you quickly and easily.
Import and Keyword Tag all your images.
Sort through your images by Date or Keyword and Flag or Rate the ones you want to Develop
Create Smart Collections/Albums for all your Keepers-the ones you’ve Flagged or Rated

You can create numerous specific Smart Collections for all of your Events.
Publish these to Flickr as you need to. (Lightroom 4 has this functionality, just link the Flickr Account to LR)

The Smart Collections don’t make multiple copies of the same image they just reference the image from the Filters you set: i.e Keyword, is Flagged, is a Pick, has a particular Rating etc etc. Its VERY powerful.

You can also Publish to a Hard drive and Facebook, (or Picassa with an add on).
When publishing the image you can set specific rules as well: Apply Watermark, Sharpening, Image quality , size etc

Re Flickr Pro, will it prevent friends/family from looking at my contacts’ photostreams? At present, just about anything seems to be viewable by anyone – and that confuses them even more.

Will check out Lightroom although TBH I don’t really want to spend £90 unless it’s intuitive for both me and everyone else.

A mate just mentioned Photobucket but he’s not sure how much functionality it has.

Cheers

flickriver works well for the IT illiterate and has quite a good presentation. Links straight to your flickr set – eg my trip to Torridon this time last year.

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/26693195@N03/sets/72157629930961766/

Some sweet panoramas in that album Steve.

When sharing a link in FR do the pics/sets have to be public. I have loads of family pics that I don’t want made public.

Phanfare.com

I use Picasso web albums for exactly that, sharing my Photo a Day album with IT numpty relatives. They see only that album, dead easy.