Journals

Welcome to Photo! For those of you who take interesting photos and appreciate good photos when you travel or around your neighborhood, the Photo app is really ideal.  It is a unique combination of good design, quality images on screen, ease of use, and powerful functionalities.     ( Press Play to see some sample album covers)   The principle behind the Photo app is that, quality really matters.  Your photos are in high resolution on screen , original photos are kept , and you will have a nicely designed slideshow with different templates.  You will be able to tag and rename with one click all your album photos, getting rid of the nasty DSCXXX for good.  Your photos are protected not only by privacy settings, but by Creative Commons as well.  Free drag to sort and dump into tray to manage photos across albums.  Put videos along side photos in your album.  Easily insert photos to Journals and Trips (above and beyond geotagging).  Share your photos to Sosaucers and people outside of Sosauce alike by emailing, link posting, embedding, Facebook Connect, and public, customizable URLs.  We think that these are your unalienable rights when using the Photo app on Sosauce, or any web photo service for that matter.     Beyond your photo rights, it is our burden to keep innovating for you, so you can enjoy the most advanced and easiest to use features on the web.  For premium account members, we have a couple of useful and fun features for you.  If you and friends go on the same trip or to the same event, you can use the Group Album to pool photos into the same album, and then everyone can copy the same album and share photos.  A fun, easy, and powerful Photo Editor is also integrated for you to add fun effects (ex. graffiti, stickers, etc.) as well as do basic editing.    Also, all Sosaucers can order Photo Prints from the printing services of EZ Prints, and we are able to expand the offerings to post cards, folded cards, framed photos, matted framed prints, Lustre finish, larger format prints, canvas, posters and framed posters, eco-friendly notepads and cards, stickers, and travel products such as stainless steel mugs, luggage tag, magnets, playing cards, etc.  If you had photos already on Flickr, you can now Import from Flickr as well.   Let's walk you through some things you'll find useful and fun - Uploading & Managing Photos, Original Photos, Videos, Sharing, Group Album, Photo Editor, and Ordering Prints.     Uploading & Managing Your Photos   Upload To Upload photos, there are quite a few places to help you get started.  When you are at your Home Updates, use the Add Content button and select Upload Photos.     You can use the Header, where you'll see links to upload, new album, and import video under the Photo app.  Within the Photo app, use the orange links at the top, under the page heading:     After you selected some photos to upload, you'll have the choice of uploading to a new album, an existing album, the Purgatory, or a Group Album.  Let's get to Group Journal in its own section later on down in this Guide.  The difference between a new and an existing album is easy enough.  Existing album is an album that you have already created and most likely has photos in it.  The Purgatory is a place for unorganized photos.  Photos in Purgatory are always for your eyes only (Privacy = Private) and can be organized into albums later.   For now, let's click on A New Album to create a new album!   When you see this screen below, put in a name for your new album.  You can also choose the album's Privacy. (Private = for your eyes only.  Friends = for friends to look at only.  Public = for everyone to share.) Done?  Let's continue with uploading!   If you're uploading high resolution and big file size photos, give it a little time and take a coffee break.  Remember, the speedier uploads on some sites come at a heavy price - your photos look like crap.       Now that you're done uploading, you can use Describe Your Photos to rename and tag all your photos with 1 click.  Or you can go straight to your album and enjoy the photos.     We'll get to the Add Contributors in the Group Album section of this guide.     For now, let's explore and take a detour to Describe Your Photos!                 Describe After clicking on Describe Your Photos, you'll get to the Describe page.       At the top of Describe, you can choose to rename, add multiple tags, and apply Creative Commons licenses to all your photos.  Choose what you want to do in the drop down menu, type in the names that you want in the textbox, and click on Apply.  With one click, you can effectively rename all your photos and free them from the nasty DSCXXX naming that they were bounded by.  Don't forget to Save your work of course.     You can of course also write names, descriptions, and tags to your photos individually.  Oh, and be sure to separate tags with commas .  When you Save and Close, you will go back to your album, and now let's look at all you can do with your photos.   Manage Photos     Inside your album, you'll see thumbnails of your photos and management options.  If you want to see big view of your photo, double click on the thumbnail .   In the blue panel at the top right, the things you can do are all for the entire album.  So you can upload more photos, describe again, reset your album privacy, import from Flickr, make it a Group Album, share it (post link, embed, or Facebook Connect), relate or link it to another cotent, or delete the album.       The interesting feature here that is worth highlighting is the Relate button.  If you click on the Relate button, you can start linking different albums, journals, and trips together .  The linked content will display at the bottom of the page as you or friends are browsing.  With this, you can create an entirely new alternative navigation - hopping from one item to the next.       Next to and under the album name, you'll see a button for slideshow, the chili pepper for rating, a Share button to post links or embed, RSS, as well as view and comment counters.     Now, let's see what we can do with individual photos.      If you mouse over a photo thumbnail, the above is what you'll see.  Double clicking on thumbnail or clicking on the Target icon takes you to the big view of the photo.  The curvy Arrows are for photo rotation.  The Pen takes you to the Photo Editor, which we will spend more time in its own section.  The Album below the Pen allows you to set the photo as Album Cover.  The Album with Minus Sign below removes the photo from album.  And the Trash Can deletes the photo from Sosauce for good!  If you mouse over each of these icons, instructions will appear.    Drag & Drop Sorting In addition to your regular ways of sorting photos, like taken time, upload time, by name, etc., there is another.  And that is to sort by however you want to sort!  To do this, mouse over a photo thumbnail, click, and hold.  The highlighted thumbnail is framed in blue.  Then, drag it to the place that you want to drop, between 2 photos, and you'll see a thick blue line.  Once you see the blue line, let go of your mouse, and you'll see your photo order reshuffle instantly.       Note!  When you are dragging and sorting, be sure to be at My Sort as the sorting option .  If you want to turn another sorting option into My Sort, easy.  You'll see a Save button next to Sorting.  Click on Save and whatever sort option you are at becomes My Sort.   Photo Tray - Management Across Albums     There are times when you might need to take photos from different albums to form a new album, to buy prints, to describe, to delete, or even to email these photos out as a separate collection.  For these occasions, you now have the Tray at your disposal.  If there are no photos in the Tray, the functions at the right panel are still available for any photos you select (blue framed).        But with the Tray, you can do things across albums.  For example, try putting some photos into the Tray, and go to another album and put more photos into the Tray.  You'll notice that all the photos are still there.  They will be there until you either Clear Tray or perform an action on them, such as putting them into a new album.    Big Photo Viewing and Management     The big photos are 625x on screen, and if you want to check out different photo sizes including the original photo, use the More Sizes drop down just below the photo.  On the right of page, you can navigate between photos with a slider. You can also open Manage Photo as well as Share Photo functions.  Below the photo, you can edit the name and description of the photo.  When you edit, just mouse over the text area, click, and start typing.  When done, click away and your typing is automatically saved.  Below, you'll see Tagging, Creative Commons, and Photo Information.  To the right of these functions, you'll find all the comments people left you.     Note :  If you want others to access and copy your photos, even the original photos, all you have to do is use Creative Commons.  If you assign a proper license, the viewer of the photo will be able to get the original photo.  This way, we honor Creative Commons licensing while providing ease of use for people to share photos.     Portfolio View for Premium Account Holders     With an Upgrade to Premium Account , your big photo view would default to the Portfolio View.  This is a cleaner, sleeker layout to present your photos.  All the management functionalities are the same.  Photo Scroll calls the slider and allows you to skip ahead.  Fun Options contain Slideshow, More (photo) Sizes, and all the Sharing functionalties.  Description and Comments give you all the photo information.     Original Photos and Copyright At Sosauce, we keep your original photos.  So if you ever need them, you can download them pretty easily.  Also, when you order prints, having originals makes a big difference in the quality of prints.    Keeping your originals DOES NOT mean that others can freely copy them or have rights to them.  Sosauce partners with and adheres to Creative Commons so that you have the power to assign rights to your photos.  You get to see your original photos at default, and all photos that you upload to Sosauce are All Rights Reserved to you at the start.  People who come to view your photo in large view also cannot right click to save your photos.  We built in a feature to disable right click saving in large view where it matters.  If you don't grant people rights or disallow others to see your photos by way of Privacy Settings, others would not get to see or use them.    If you do decide to assign Creative Commons rights to your photos and allow others to use them, just set the Creative Commons licensing to the level that you desire .  Then, others will be able to copy your photos by using the More Sizes options below your large photo on page.    If you feel that someone is infringing on your copyright in any way, you should use the site footer link called Copyright Information to raise the issue right away.       Videos In your photo albums, you can have videos alongside your photos.  So if you've taken both photos and videos on a trip or at an event, you can now showcase a more complete experience.  With your videos, you can insert them into your Journals and Trips on Sosauce as well!  We partner with YouTube so that you can store your videos on YouTube and display them on Sosauce.  The process is pretty seamless for you, and just needs a few clicks of the mouse.   For how to add videos, click here!       Sharing Half of sharing on Sosauce is actually to help you take your photos elsewhere. So some friends and family can get emails, people on other social networks such as Facebook can get linked posts or embeds, and you can feed your photos to other social media or content sites.     Emailing     See the Envelop Share link above?  With it, and by selecting Send Message, you can email your album to friends outside Sosauce by typing their email addresses or using your web addressbooks (ex. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and MSN).        They will receive a post card design in the email, and when they click on it, they can view your photos without having to log in.   Posting Links & Embedding To see how Posting Links and Embedding via the Share button work, click here!   What this allows you to do is to take advantage of the fun and powerful Photo app to showcase and manage your photos, and then take the photos to other web communities that you belong to.    Exploring Sosauce The other half of Sharing is to explore within Sosauce, which is really fun as well.  Obviously, you get to see lots at your Home Updates already.  But there are also additional pages at your disposal for more exploration.     Let's try going to the Photo Home by way of the Header:      Here you'll see the latest, most interesting photos and photographers on Sosauce. From here, you can jump to the featured photos or visit the photographers' pages.     If you really like the photos that you are seeing, you can hit the Broadcast link to feed them to all your friends' update streams.  When you Broadcast, you can also leave your friends a note.     In addition, you'll have pages dedicated for Friends' Albums and your Group Albums.      Group Album For how to setup and use this, click here! If you have a premium account, the Group Album is a one of a kind feature for you to pool photos with friends and copy friends' photos.  With it, you can share travel photos with people on the same trip or event photos with those who went together by uploading to the same online album.  The possibilities are pretty much endless.  So no more receiving 5 different emails from 5 different sharing service with no way to consolidate, or swaping flash drives.  Giving you the ability to create a Group Album is another way Sosauce can help you to relive your experiences and find the easiest and most fun way to share with those you care about.     Photo Editor For how to use the Photo Editor, click here!     Photo Editor is another benefit for premium account holders.  With a totally integrated Photo Editor, you can now cut that annoying bystander out of your photo o r make the color of a photo more vibrant.   With the Sosauce Photo Editor, you can do the standard adjustments, such as crop, exposure, rotation, color, and sharpness.   But it is also a place where you can have some fun!   Try the Artistic section with different effects, such as black and white, sepia, and pencil, or try the Fun section where you can graffiti a photo, add fun stickers, and insert text/word bubbles.     Ordering Prints Now on Sosauce, you can buy prints using the print processing service of EZ Prints!  EZ Prints has the highest print quality, and we have expanded the offerings to post cards, folded cards, framed photos, matted framed prints, Lustre finish, larger format prints, canvas, posters and framed posters, eco-friendly notepads and cards, stickers, and travel products such as stainless steel mugs, luggage tag, magnets, playing cards, etc.    To buy prints, select the photos you want and look for the Print button at the top right of your album page.      When in the big view of a photo, look for the Manage Photo link and the Add to Print Queue link when the menu of functions appears.       These links will take you to the Shopping Cart.       At the Cart, you can select quantity, size of prints, and more print products such as post cards and framed prints.  You can also select which kind of print paper, such as the Lustre pro finish, you want.  You can Empty your Cart or Continue Shopping, which is to return to your photo or album to browse more.   Your sub-totals will be tallied here as well.    Note:  If you see a triangle with an exclamation mark next to a print size of a photo, it means that this photo lacks the resolution to produce a high quality print at the print size .  You can still buy the print of course, but it may not look as nice.     The cart has a memory, and it would only be cleared if you tell it to .  Otherwise, if you close the browser or log out of Sosauce, your items in the cart will still be kept.  This will definitely make it convenient for you to remember what you picked to buy.    When you Checkout, you'll be selecting or editing your shipping and billing information.  You can save addresses and select an address as a favorite.  You can also select a shipping method (estimated shipping price is listed right next to the method), which would automatically estimate the arrival date for you as well.     Sosauce uses Paypal to handle your credit card transactions, and the advantage is that, you can also use your Paypal account if you want to.  After all is done on this page, click on the green button at the bottom of the page to go to Paypal.  After you are finished with billing, you will get a confirmation page and emails about your order for your record.       Import from Flickr For how to import from and export to Flickr, click here! With this feature, you can now grab photos from Flickr for your albums, trips, reviews, and journals.  This way, you don't have to upload your photos again, which can be painful.  The photos you import to Sosauce from Flickr are your original photos, so you don't have to worry about your photos losing quality.     This concludes our tour of Sosauce Photo!   If you have questions or suggestions, you can always write a comment to this guide or write the Sosauce Concierge (concierge@sosauce.com) a feedback.  In the meantime, take it easy and have fun using Sosauce Photo.