Sharing Your Photos

If you've taken some photos that you're especially proud of, you usually can't wait to share them with family, friends, or colleagues. Windows Vista and Windows Photo Gallery provide several easy ways to share those great photos.

Printing: Windows provides you with an easy-to-use printing wizard when you're ready to print your photos. Alternatively, via the Internet, you can send the photos to a photo service. You can also copy your photos to a USB storage device and then take the device to your local camera shop for printing. To quickly copy the photos, with the USB device attached to your computer, select the photos you want to print, right-click one of the selected pictures, point to Send To on the shortcut menu, and choose your USB device. All your selected pictures will be copied to the device.

E-Mail: Not only can you conveniently send photos via e-mail directly from the Windows Photo Gallery, but you can specify the size of the photos and thus the size of the files. Be kind, though! Sending small files creates happy recipientsno one likes to wait while large files download, and it's torture for people who have slow Internet connections.

On Your Computer: If other people have access to your computer using their own accounts, you can make your photos available to them by placing them in the Public Pictures folder. You can also share your photos by displaying them as a screen-saver slide show, as a custom slide show that you run from the Windows Photo Gallery, as a slide show in Windows Media Center, or as a static Desktop background.

Network Sharing: If your computer is on a network, you can place your photos in a public folder (the Public Pictures folder, for example); share the folder that contains the pictures; or simply share the individual files you want people to see. You can also share your photos as a slide show in Windows Media Player by sharing your Windows Media Library with other people on your network.

CD/DVD Storage: Whether you plan to send a collection of photos to other people or just store the photos for your own use, you can easily move all your photo files onto a CD or DVD and thereby free up some space on your computer.

Video DVD: Using the Windows DVD Maker, you can create a DVD with an animated slide show of your photos, complete with panning, zooming, and professional-looking transitions between photos. You can even include a soundtrack and video clips.

Multimedia Video Movie: Using Windows Movie Maker, you can take full control of the photos in a slide show, whether you use the AutoMovie feature to create a quick movie with default settings, or build your movie piece by piece: inserting the photos you want, setting customized display durations and transitions, adding music or a narration, and adding video clips. When the movie is completed, you can choose the methods you want to use to save and distribute it.

SideShow Display: If you have an auxiliary display, such as a wireless photo frame or a smartphone that works with the Windows SideShow feature, you can display your photos away from your computer.

There are, of course, many other ways you can share your photos that aren't directly supported by Windows Vista. These include posting photos on your Web site, your Web community spaces, or your blog. You'll need to check on how to do these from the providers of the services.