Instantly upload your photos to Facebook
jjones | Guides | 09/04/2009 15:33pm
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Not so long ago, digital cameras ran out of puff after a few low-res images. Now even our mobiles are capable of multi-megapixel masterpieces, and even the cheapest cameras take stunning snaps. What we do with our photos has changed, too. Instead of paying a small fortune to get our prints developed, we save them to our PCs – and more often than not, put them online for all to see. However, all that uploading can be a pain in the neck.
Hurrah, then, for the latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery. It makes it easy to publish your pics on Windows Live Spaces, but it also supports plugins – little programs that add useful new features. There are plenty of nifty plugins available already, and one of our favourites is LiveUpload for Facebook.
Face to Facebook
LiveUpload for Facebook enables you to upload your pics from Windows Live Photo Gallery to your Facebook account. Once you’ve installed it, it’s just a matter of choosing the photos you want to upload, logging into Facebook – the first time you do this, you need to authorise the program so that Facebook knows the uploads are from you rather than from a random internet user – and then deciding whether you want to put the photos in an existing Facebook album or create a new one. Once you’ve done that, the uploads happen automatically: no boring web forms to wade through, no Browse buttons to click, no nail-biting wait while you wonder whether the site is still working.
Even better, if you use the new Windows Live Photo Gallery People Tags feature, which enables you to tag photos with Address Book contacts, LiveUpload will keep those tags and include them in your uploads. So when someone you’ve tagged logs into Facebook, they get a link to your album.
Private eyes
One word of warning: uploaded pics will be available to everyone on Facebook by default. If you’d rather not let the whole world see your family snaps or the office night out, it’s a good idea to change your settings. Log in to your account and go to Settings > Privacy > Profile. Click on Edit Photo Album Privacy Settings and you can change the settings on a per-album basis, so if you’ve created different groups for different people – one group for friends, another for work colleagues – you can make an album available to some groups and unavailable to others.
Alternatively, after you’ve clicked the Edit Photo Privacy Settings link, click on Edit Custom Settings. Now you can choose whether an album is available to everyone on Facebook (the default), friends only, friends of friends, or just you. You can even block specific people – so it’s possible to make a photo visible to everyone except your boss. Then again, if you’ve got a photo you really don’t want someone to see, the smart thing to do is to keep it off the internet.
Enough talk – let’s get sharing. Before you start, you’ll need to have the latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery, which you can get for free from download.live.com. Once you’ve done that, just go to www.codeplex.com/liveuploadfacebook, download LiveUpload and install it.
Upload anything, anywhere
LiveUpload for Facebook isn’t the only plug-in available for Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker. You can get LiveUpload for YouTube (www.codeplex.com/liveuploadyoutube), a plug-in to put your photos on SmugMug (www.shahine.com/garage/content/PublishOnSmugMug.aspx), a plug-in for Picasa (picasapublisher.googlecode.com/svn/website/index.html), a plug-in for the Drupal content management system (coldacid.net/project/dplpg), and one for ZenPhoto (www.zenphoto.org/2008/01/zenphoto-add-ons).
Not all big-name services require plugins, though. If you click on Publish > More Services you’ll see an option to upload your photographs to Flickr, and of course the Publish menu also includes an option to put your pics on Windows Live Spaces, while Windows Movie Maker gives you the option to publish to MSN Soapbox.
Put your face on Facebook
LiveUpload makes uploading photos to Facebook LiveUpload makes uploading photos to Facebook a pleasure, not a pain.
1 INSTALL LIVEUPLOAD Install the latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery and then install the LiveUpload for Facebook plug-in. In Windows Live Photo Gallery, select the photos you want to upload. Now click Publish > More Services and you’ll see an option for LiveUpload to Facebook.
2 GIVE PERMISSION You’ll be asked which Facebook account you want to use. Because we haven’t used LiveUpload before, the only option is a new account. Click Next and you’re asked to authorise the plug-in, giving it access. LiveUpload opens Facebook in your browser; log in and click Allow.
3 GIVE APPROVAL Time for another question: do you want to manually approve each and every photo once it’s been uploaded? For most of us the answer is no, so make sure this box is checked before clicking on Next. Inevitably this means another visit to Facebook and another button to click.
4 PERMIT UPLOADS Facebook asks whether LiveUpload should be able to upload or modify your photos without your approval. Click Allow Photo Uploads to continue. You can change your mind later at Facebook’s Edit Applications page.
5 PICK AN ALBUM We’re nearly finished. LiveUpload now asks whether you want to create a new Facebook album or whether it should add the pics to an existing one. Take your pick, then click on Publish.
6 UPLOAD IMAGES Uploads are nice and quick, although if you’re uploading hundreds of pics it may take a few minutes. As you can see, we now have a brand new Facebook photo album containing all the photos we uploaded. If you want to change the order, click on Organise Photos and drag them around.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
