Albums are back!

Way back when Microsoft had Spaces and Live the online folders for photos were called “albums”. In time the online store became SkyDrive and the term “album” vanished. What persisted and still exists in OneDrive is “Folder type”. Folders can be either “Document” or “Pictures” folders.  Other than that folders are treated just like folders in a PC.

Now “Albums” are back. First a look at what an album appears like:

As you can see, an album looks quite nice. Reminiscent of Flickr and Google+? Yep, it helps to have competition. Albums are not folders. Like Flickr albums, the OneDrive albums are collections of links to photos elsewhere. For OneDrive albums the photos need to exist in one of the folders. The linked images are nicely displayed.

How do you get to albums and how do you make a OneDrive album?

When you go to your OneDrive you see your folders in the main area. The left pane shows links to other places.

The Photos link opens a page that shows your photos. Somewhat like the Photostream in Flickr.

See the black menu bar? There is an Albums link. Click it and you will see your albums, or, if you do not have any, a blank page and an opportunity to create an album. In create mode, or when adding images, you can do so either from your, pardon the expression, stream, or by selecting from a folder.

The pictures you pick for an album stay in their “home” places but will be shown in the album. Once you have an album created you can share a link just as you would for a regular OneDrive folder.

You can also get a link to the album if you wish to share just a link and not a special email.

Your albums are shown on the album page about like you see here.

Clicking on the live tiles gets you to the album. You can try this with the albums shown here by clicking the images here.

 

Enjoy this new feature in OneDrive! There are more new things, and more are coming!

.:.

© 2015 Ludwig Keck