by Michelle Hozey

Created on: January 15, 2010

Photobucket is an online image hosting service. Upload pictures, edit them and share them with friends, the world, or keep them private. The service is relatively easy to use.

Getting Started

First, you will need to create an account. Go to Photobucket and click Join Now at the top right of the page. Think up a username and password and type them in the blanks. Re-type your password for verification, then hit Next. On the following page, enter your information into the blanks. They want your name, birthday, gender and zip code. Note that cell phone is optional, so you don’t have to give them your number if you don’t want to. Enter the words in the

captcha and you’re ready to go. At this time they’ll ask you if you wish to upgrade your account to a Pro account. Pro costs $24.95 a year and offers unlimited storage, no ads and a number of other benefits. Try out the free account first. It may be all you need.

Navigating the Site

At My Home, you can see your stats and activity updates, as well as Photobucket news. If you find a user on Photobucket that you want to track, their updates will appear under your activity updates.

From your home page, you can edit your account settings and tags. Under Account Settings, you can choose your privacy options. Do you want to share your pictures with the whole world or just friends? If you choose to share your albums with friends, you can enter in a password that you can give to your friends you want to view your pictures.

Uploading

At the top of your page, you will see the Upload Images and Videos button. Click on the device or service you will be uploading from (computer, mobile phone, e-mail or web URL), then click the upload button. Or, if you have several pictures to upload, use the bulk uploader. To download the bulk uploader, simply click the words “bulk uploader”.

To upload photos without the bulk uploader, after you have clicked upload a box will pop up on your screen linking to files in your computer. On PCs most pictures are stored under My Documents>My Pictures. Find the appropriate folder on your computer by clicking the Up One Level Button or My Documents or My Computer if you have the pictures stored on an external hard drive. If you are unable to see previews of the pictures you wish to upload, from the View Menu in the top right corner select Thumbnails. If you wish to upload more than one photo with the simple uploader, hold down the CTRL key as you click on the files.

Now that you have some pictures on Photobucket you can create an album. After you get the “Success” message, click Add New. Name your album something descriptive, then click Add Album. When you are finished, select Save and Return to Album at the bottom of the page, or you can hit Save and Get Links to copy code that you can paste in e-mails, on Facebook or Twitter or other social networking sites.

After your photos are saved and uploaded, you can choose to edit them with the many options available or leave them as they are. 

Learn more about this author, Michelle Hozey.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.