- The Way It Used to Be: Photo Viewing, Not Really Sharing
- Photo Sharing on Facebook: The New Way
- Uploading Photos to Share
- Viewing and Downloading High Resolution Photos
Photo Sharing on Facebook: The New Way
Facebook obviously recognized their photo sharing shortcomings, and to their credit did something about it. Starting in September, 2010, Facebook has been rolling out three new features that combine to offer a superior photo sharing experience:
- Higher resolution photos. Instead of limiting you to 604-pixel wide photos, Facebook now lets users upload photos up to 2048 pixels wideup to 8X bigger than before. That means you can share pictures with enough resolution to create great-looking photo prints. It’s a huge improvement, one that makes Facebook ideal not just for viewing photos but also for downloading and printing them.
- New Photo Uploader. This update also includes a new Photo Uploader, not to be confused with the old New Photo Uploader. (Yeah, they could have done something more intuitive with the name thing.) The new Photo Uploader uses Flash technology to help you more easily choose photos to upload, and then add information for each photo. It works better than the old uploader, and is easier to use, as well.
- New photo viewer. Not only do you get an improved environment for uploading photos, the experience of viewing photos is also better. The new photo viewer displays the chosen photo in the middle of the current screen, without opening a new page, with an attractive black frame around the photo. There’s also a much-needed Download in High Resolution link (for those photos uploaded in high resolution), which makes it a lot easier to download and ultimately print the photos you like.
Bottom line, Facebook is finally a great site for both viewing and downloading digital photos. You can share all your family photos and be assured that friends and family can download and print the ones they like best.
(By the way, if you don’t have the new Photo Uploader or photo viewer yet, just be patient; Facebook is rolling it out over time to their entire user base. You’ll get them soon enough.)