Using XnView and Flickr to see your photos
The slide show facility you get with Windows is very good,
but I think XnView is even better.
Download this free software from www.xnview.com (and from
nowhere else). You should choose the English version unless
you prefer the original French one.
Before downloading any new program, think about creating a
restore point beforehand ...
(Start > Help & Support > create a system restore point)
..so you can restore your computer to its previous state if the
new program is incompatible with your sysytem.
To use the XnView software ... start by clicking on the icon on
your Desktop ... click on the film negative icon near the top of
your screen ... and then "add" (browse) for your photo folder
> Open.
The rest is fairly straightforward. To exit from a slide show,
click on your Escape (Esc) button.
Setting up a Flickr site is a bit more complicated, but I've
found the website to be user-friendly. You can put on up to 200
of your photos free of charge, and you can create up to 3 sets
of your photos. With the Flickr Pro version, you get unlimited
storage space and you can create more sets. The Pro version
would cost you about £12.50 a year.
Various aspects of setting up a Flickr site ...
Go to the main website ... www.flickr.com
Click on create a new account.
Click on sign up, if you haven't got a Yahoo ID.
Yahoo owns Flickr and so you'll need a Yahoo ID or a Yahoo
email account to use Flickr.
Reduce the size of your photos in Photoshop or a similar program.
Smaller photos will load up much more quickly than larger ones.
(It will take you about 1 minute to post a 1 megabyte photo up onto
the internet).
Optimal photo sizes are 700 pixels across (for pics in landscape
view) and about 100 kilobytes in overall size.
Download the Flickr Uploader program for faster uploading of your
pics. Choose your privacy settings for each batch of photos you
upload. There are lots of other features to look at when using
Flickr ... have a look through the list at the bottom of the
main web page (eg accounts, organising your pics, etc.)
Remember to save the URL address in your list of Favourites, and
copy and paste this address in emails to all your family & friends,
so they can look at your photos too.
There are other free photo-sharing sites you can use ... Photo-
bucket is another popular example, as is the Jessops-Snapfish site.
Hope you have lots of fun using XnView and Flickr.
Bye for now,
John
