As photo editors know, one secret to quality is quantity. Tell the photographer to take a lot of pictures so you improve the odds of getting exactly the shot you want.

Professional photographers have long used FTP sites to upload dozens of images for editors to look at. Photo enthusiasts usually sent their editors e-mails with enormous files attached. Now, thankfully, there are commercial photo FTP sites that can put an end to all that aggravation.

Flickr, Snapfish, and Picasa, among others, all let photographers upload, manage, and share their images online. Most are free for the first gigabyte or so.

I am a longtime user of Picasa, the photo organizer from Google. It’s user-friendly and allows me to upload and edit photos with ease. The software is easy to install and use, and the editing features enable everything from minor tweaks, to complete photo makeovers through color enhancement. There are also options to create collages and timelines and post images to a blog.

More important for many users, Picasa software lets you create Web albums on a page of your own, for either password-protected or public viewing. The Picasa uploader is straightforward and fast.

In case you wondered why I need an online storage vault, check out the photos from my misadventures around the world.

Posted in Design, Technologies for publications and Web content