How I Use Dropbox - Photo Sharing

If you have a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc) and a computer you'll probably be wanting to use Dropbox.  It one of the best free apps out there.  I want to write a short series of post on how I use it.

Today we'll discuss Dropbox and the use of photographs.  Dropbox is a great way to sync all your photographs on all your devices and share folders of photographs for people to see.

This demo will be in reference to the Mac but I assume it is somewhat similar on the PC.

Once you sign up for your free account and install it on your computer you will see the Dropbox icon up in the top toolbar.  It's the small blue icon next to the twitter icon.

When you click on it, it will open your folder like this and you will choose the first option that says, "Open Dropbox Folder".  This is your main portal into your Dropbox files:

Once you open it, it will show you a simple Finder window to navigate all your files.  When you install Dropbox it defaults to giving you a "Public" folder and a "Photos" folder.  For today, we'll talk about the "Photos" folder.  (This picture show other folders that I have created in addition to "Public" and "Photos".)

You simply can click on the photos folder and drag and drop pictures into it or create folders within your Photos folder for better organization.  Right now I have two folders with some great pictures of my kids that I want available on all my devices.  

So now this arrangement will show up on all my devices in the Photos folder for quick viewing and sharing.  It's pretty slick.

If I wanted to share these photos publically as an album it's easy to send a link to view these photos.  You have to do this by going to your Dropbox account online.

So you go to Dropbox.com and login.  Once you do that you'll get a view like this:

You'll want to click on the Photos folder and then hover your cursor over the different albums that you have created.  When you do that you'll see and option on the right that comes from the down pointing arrow that gives you the option to click on "Gallery".  

Once you do that it takes you to a page that is created for public viewing and you can copy the URL to send out to anyone you want to have access to view those photos.  

There are tons of other ways to use Dropbox but this is one of the ways that I use it that I find most helpful.  You can download Dropbox for free here.  You get 2GB of space for free.