iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Publishing Photos on the Web

Putting your photos on the Web is the ultimate way to share them with the world. If the idea of enabling the vast throngs of the Internet-using public to browse, view, download, save, and print your photos sounds appealing, read on; it’s amazingly easy to get your photos from iPhoto to the Internet.

Before you can post your photos online—and on your network using iPhoto’s built-in Web tools—you need a .Mac account. That’s Apple’s suite of Internet services: email accounts, secure file-backup, Web-site hosting, and a few other extras. If you don’t already have a .Mac account, see the “Getting a .Mac Account” box on the next page. Follow the directions, and you’ll have one in less than five minutes. (A .Mac membership costs $100 per year; a two-month trial account is free.)

Three Roads to Webdom

iPhoto actually provides three different Web-publishing routes (two of which require a .Mac account), offering varying degrees of sophistication and complexity.

• The easiest, most hands-off approach: Use the HomePage feature within iPhoto. With only a couple of mouse clicks, this feature lets you construct Web pages, transfer them to the Internet, and make them available to the public. (A .Mac account is required.)

  What’s especially nice about the resulting Web page is that it presents a tidy collection of thumbnail images—a gallery that downloads relatively quickly into your audience’s browsers. Then, when visitors click one of the thumbnails, a new window opens up ...