SkyDrive is your free storage and sharing location provided by Windows Live. A number of applications “know” how to upload to SkyDrive and make the process very easy. Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of those programs.

To tell Photo Gallery about your SkyDrive, simply sign in to Photo Gallery. Over on the upper right side there is a Sign in link.

Click Sign in, then sign in with your Windows Live ID. Once signed in, Photo Gallery will remember and you need not sign in each time.

To upload photos, select them – just click the thumbnail image. If you wish to select more than one, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the desired thumbnails. If you have a group of photos in consecutive order you can click the first one, then hold down the Shift key and click the last one. To select all the photos shown in the gallery click Select all on the Ribbon with the Home tab selected (or hold down the Ctrl key and press A ). Be careful with that. This will select thumbnails that are scrolled off the view.

Selected thumbnails will be highlighted so you can see which ones are selected.

To upload the selected photos click on SkyDrive in the Share group on the Ribbon. If you are not signed in, you will get a sign in dialog here. Then you will see a dialog somewhat like this:

There are a number of choices to make in this dialog. Note the Photo upload size – the default is “Large (1600 px)”. Click the down arrowhead for other size options. Note that you can also select Original to upload the photos in their full size. The option Medium (600 px) is ok for photos that are meant only for online viewing. When you select other than Original your photos will be scaled down if the horizontal or vertical picture dimension is larger that the number shown. Smaller photos will not be resized.

In the main area of the dialog you can select one of your existing albums on the SkyDrive, you may need to scroll down if you have many.

The default is to create a new album. Note the text entry box with the flashing cursor. Just type the name that you want to assign to the new album. For a new album, there is also a sharing selector. You can specify sharing here. Of course, you can change that later in SkyDrive.

When you have made your choices, click the Publish button which will now be available in the lower right of the dialog.

A dialog will show the progress of the upload process. Remember that this may take some time depending on the number and size of the photos selected.

It really is that simple. You can upload to an existing album or create a new one right from Windows Live Photo Gallery.