Facebook Photo Sharing Tricks

Sharing photos is probably the most popular activity on Facebook. Yet with new features being added all the time, you may not know all the ways you can access and share your own pics – and those of others.

Trick #1 – Download a photo from someone else’s page

This one’s easy, and you probably know it already: Facebook has enabled the ability to download high-resolution images from other people's pages  - not just the low-res versions you get by right clicking. Click on a picture to make it full screen, then hit options,choose download and you should get the highest resolution of the photo that Facebook has stored.

Trick #2 – Download a photo from someone else’s page via your smartphone

·     On iPhones (and other iOS devices) tap the photo in your news feed so it goes full screen, then hold your finger on the picture for a few seconds. An option to “save photo” will pop up. Once you choose that option, the picture will be saved in your camera roll.

·     On Android phones, it’s a little more complicated. Best option is to get an app (like FacebookPhotoSave or PicDownloader) to do the job. But you can click the menu button when viewing a Facebook picture, (then “More” on some phones) and then “Share.” You can then opt to save the pic to any image editing program you have installed on your phone – or just email it to yourself.

Trick #3 – Download an entire album on your computer

Downloading multiple images one by one is a pain – much easier to grab an entire album. For that you need Pick&Zip.  You log in with your Facebook account, and it lists all your friends. Click on a friend, then browse that friend’s albums for the one you want to download.

[Related: Facebook Scam Alert: What Really Happens When You Click “Like”]

Trick #4 – Download a video

Pick&Zip also lets you download video posted on friends’ pages using the same method: Log in to the Pick&Zip site with your Facebook account. Click on a friend’s name, then hit the “Videos” tab to browse what you might download. This tool is extra handy since Facebook doesn’t let you download video directly through their site.

Trick #5 – Share an album with people who aren’t on Facebook

Have you ever painstakingly put together an album, and then realized that a few people you’d like to share it with aren’t on Facebook – like your parents? Not to worry; they can still absolutely access it.  Go to your album, click on the gear icon for settings, click “get link,” and you can either copy and paste that link into an email or send it directly from Facebook. The person who receives it can click the link and – without signing in – see all the pics you’ve shared. Note: this trick only works for albums you’ve created, not for individual photos, and not even for images in albums that Facebook generates for you – like your Timeline photos or Mobile Uploads. So if you want to share a batch of pictures with people not on Facebook, you do need to create an album of those images first.

[Related: Where Teens Go Instead of Facebook (And Why You Should Too)]

Bonus Trick –Enlarging Facebook images

Sure, you can always click on someone’s photo to see it big,but a lot of times, you just want a better view of someone’s post as you’re browsing or scrolling. A free extension for your Chrome or Firefox browser called Photozoom for Facebook can help. When your mouse hovers over a picture, the image automatically enlarges. One quibble with this tool – with the default settings,this automatic enlargement happens immediately, which can be annoying, as the zoomed image may hide other items on the page you’re trying to view.Fortunately, it’s easy to change this setting. When you first open the tool, go to “Advanced Settings.” I recommend a 1000 millisecond delay – one full second.

If you have Facebook tricks you’d like to share, please do so on our own Facebook page.