Good news: you can do all of this without learning HTML, without spending a penny on web editing software and without having one puny KB of your own server space.

A hot trend on the Internet is free picture sharing web sites. In exchange for making you and your visitors look at web-based advertising, and by selling optional goods and services online, these sites help you set up publicly accessible photo albums. 

There are dozens of these sites. I didn’t try them all, but let me share my experience with one of them — Picture Trail.

Start by visiting my photo albums  I made two albums, one of my trip to France and another of my brother’s new sunroom. Although each of these albums only has five photos, I could have made them larger.

First, I registered. They wanted my e-mail address and plan on sending me mail. I don’t know what it will be but I have a fast delete finger if it gets irritating. I also picked a user name, and they quickly sent me an e-mail with instructions on how to select my password.  After registration, I started creating my albums. The initial registration includes 20 MB of space and up to four albums. For trading a little more information about myself, I got 50MB of space and an unlimited number of albums. There was absolutely no cost involved. 

The step-by-step instructions are straightforward. First, I created a new album. I could name it and select an album cover and background texture.  Each photo album can be password protected but doesn’t have to be.  Next, I uploaded photos from my hard drive. This can be done via e-mail, but I elected to use their online interface and browsed my hard drive, selecting the photos I wished to upload. I uploaded them, I could rearrange the order in which they appeared. That done, I personalized the photos.

I could rotate each photo, give it a caption, frame it (I sampled several different frames) and protect it from being hijacked from people who right-click on it. You can make a photo or a title “clickable” to another web site — if you click on the gallery photo of John on the Seine bridge, you will be taken to my own web site of French photos. 

Finally, I laid out the main page with some introductory text and a big photo. That’s it. I can go back at a later date and add or delete photos, edit the captions, or change any of the options. And I did all of this without having to know a darn thing about web page design.

There are dozens of these sites. A few others to check out are:

• Photopoint
• Zing
• Club Photo
• Photoloft

• Make sure you retain the rights to your own photos. 
• Do they require that you install special software? 
• How easy is it to direct friends to your albums? 
• What do they do with the personal information they collect about you? 
• Do visitors to your site have to register or surrender any personal information? 
• How much control do you have over the look and feel of your album? 
• How long will they keep your photos up on their site? 
• How much space do you get? 
• How friendly is the interface? 
• Are there restrictions about what you can post?

You do have to put your own photos into a digital format — either by scanning them, using a digital camera or having your film processed onto a disk. With Picture Trail, the photos had to be in a GIF, JPG, TIF, BMP or PNG format. And it doesn’t have to be a photo — some people post digital art!

If you don’t mind sacrificing a little personal information, this is a fast and easy solution for photo sharing. Check it out — and while you’re visiting my site, be sure to sign the guestbook.