It’s only natural to want to share everything from snaps of friends larking around, to shots that deserve to be framed and hung on a gallery wall. And because your iPhone is always connected to the internet, it’s a cinch to beam your creations to a pal on the other side of the globe, or post it online for the whole world to see – and almost instantly!
Here, we’ll describe some of the services that you can use to share your photos. Lots of apps – such as those in our section on applying effects to your photos – let you to send your finished photo to one of more of these services, and so that you can pick the best ones for each of your shots, we’ve explained what each can do and why you might want to use it. Once you’ve chosen which to use, look at the sharing options in your favourite apps – or download the dedicated app for the service, and upload from your Photos library.
Flickr
Flickr is perhaps the most well-known photo-sharing site on the web, with tens of millions of users. Once you’ve uploaded your photos, you can create galleries to organise them, and choose who can see them. You add contacts to your account in much the same way as you add friends on Facebook. You can then mark them as friends or family, and elect to make some of your galleries available only to friends and family, or just family. You can also add photos to groups, or join groups based on topics of interest. You can also order prints of your photos from within Flickr.
To some extent, Facebook has usurped Flickr as the most popular way for most people to share photographs. The logic is simple: most of us know more people on Facebook than we do on Flickr, and so it’s a better way to share images widely. Support is integrated into most apps, and when you add a photo, it appears in your feed. It’s ideal for sharing one-off shots of events, but lacks many of Flickr’s features when it comes to uploading and sharing galleries of images. You can control who can see your photographs in your Privacy settings, and also tag friends who appear in them.
Twitter’s appeal as a photo-sharing medium lies in the ease with which it’s done. Give an app permission to use your Twitter account and, in iOS 5, it grabs the details from your account and configures automatically, including sending pics to the sharing service you want. Depending on the client your friends use, images will either display as links or with a thumbnail. Clicking on either opens the image in a new window. Perfect for showing images that only need to be seen once.
If you want to send an image to your computer and don’t have an account with a sharing service such as Dropbox or iCloud, email makes it simple. It’s also a great way to share photos with just one or two other people. It’s as easy as tapping the option in a photo app and adding the address you want to send it to. Some apps will even populate the subject line for you.
Dropbox
The Dropbox app for iOS is one of our favourite apps. Period. It makes uploading files and copying to your computer or sharing them with others so easy. Just save your photos to your Camera Roll, fire up Dropbox, tap Upload and you’re ready to select the images you want. You can specify a folder to add them to, or create a new one. And when it has uploaded them, Dropbox will automatically sync the image of your Dropbox folder on your computer, so you can save them anywhere you like. Or if you elect to save them to your Public folder, you can share the URL to let others see the photo.
500px
500px is different from the other services here. Think of it as Sunday Best for your photographs. It’s a place to share those pictures of which you’re most proud. You can also create ‘flows’ of photographers and topics in which your interested, and see how many people have viewed and liked each photo. The site itself looks beautiful, but its minimalist user interface means that it takes a bit of working out. There’s an iOS app though, so that would be a good place to start.
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