Cell phone cameras have greatly increased the number of photos most of us have to share. Once you have them how to share them is the next question. There are various options that are pretty good for those that like them but also with some limitation: facebook (I don’t use it), Google’s Picasa (I don’t at all like how rigid Google is in how things are handled), Flickr and Smugbug (along with many others). I ran across a new site that seems like it might be nice: OpenPhoto.

The easiest way to signup is to use your dropbox account, for storage. If you don’t have a dropbox account yet, sign up (it is free).

1. Get an invite code (they are in an early, limited release right now). You can just email them or follow them on Twitter and send them a request.
2. Sign up (select the option to “Store originals in my personal Dropbox account”)
3. You will then be prompted to login to Dropbox to complete the integration
4. Then follow very easy add and upload photo process, that you are taken to.

If you have dropbox already, it should take less than 2 minutes to be up and running.

Good job, OpenPhoto. One feature I would like is to be able to edit the date of the photo (I have photos from the 1970s saying they are 5 months old (when converted to digital images) and I don’t see a way to edit it yet. This project is new, so that isn’t surprising. It would be nice to see that updated at some point.

Overall, it is very easy to use, and I really like how it keeps the photos in your control (to the extent your dropbox [or whatever you use] space is in your control). Very easy to assign rights (all rights reserved – or various creative commons licenses or your own license); on a per photo basis. You can also make photos public or private (for viewing over the web).

Unless you are sharing originals so other can print them out, for archival purposes (or something similar) you are probably wise to save the images in a much smaller file size. There is really no reason to upload 2 Mb images for people to look at on their monitor (unless there are going to zoom in like crazy). You can reduce the file sizes dramatically and what people see on their monitor will not change.

Here are my photos. It took me less than 10 minutes (and most of that was finding the photos and editing the text) for the first 2 I uploaded.

You can make groups, which is nice. Hopefully this allows you to share photos with groups (or will, at some point). I haven’t figured that part out yet. The software is open source, which I like. The idea behind it is to have something like wordpress that provide software that you can run for your own blog but this time it is to manage your own photos.

Related: Amazing New Light Field Camera: Adjust Focus After You Take the Picture – Curious Cat Travel Photo Essays – Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog