Aug 12, 2015 / Beginner

Mesh: A New Way to Share Photo Galleries

Snap. Tap. Share. With Mesh, share photos with anyone, anywhere.

The first version of Mesh is available for the iPhone. If you’re an Android user or prefer to use Mesh from your desktop, log in from our website at me.sh.

We’d love to know what you think of Mesh, so please leave feedback!

In a recent photo challenge, Beneath Your Feet, we introduced Mesh, a new way to share galleries. Mesh makes it easy to take your photos and videos off your phone and into a gallery, which you can share with anyone, anywhere.

With a few taps, you can make a new mesh of images. Each mesh has its own unique link, which you can share anywhere and is viewable by anyone who has the link.

Not sure how you might use Mesh? Here are some examples:

Blog post ideas:

  • A set of images, embedded in your photo challenge submission.
  • A photo essay or story from your kayaking adventure.
  • Your latest recipe, in step-by-step images.
  • A visual how-to on your newest sewing trick.
  • Text the link to your family to share photos of your baby’s first steps.
  • Post the link to Twitter or Facebook to share a gallery of your trip through China.
  • Email the link to a friend to show progress on your latest DIY project.
  • Embed it in a blog post: paste the link on its own line when drafting a post in the Visual Editor.

Here’s a mesh I texted to my mom, so she could follow my daughter Selma’s adventures on a recent vacation:

https://me.sh/h0cvwua

As you can see, it’s up to you how you decide to use Mesh — you can display galleries and visual stories with the world, or simply share a few pictures with your loved ones.

Mesh basics

Note: These steps refer to getting set up on your iPhone, but you can log in and get started on your computer at me.sh, too.

Ready to experiment with Mesh? Let’s get started.

  • Once installed, open the app and log in with your WordPress.com or Facebook account.
  • Tap “Add Mesh,” and then tap pictures you’d like to include.
  • At the top of your screen, you’ll see a field that says “Gallery Title.” Give your mesh a title, if you’d like. (You can add this later, too.) When you’re finished, tap “Next” at the top right.
Create a gallery by tapping pictures to add them. Add a title at the top.

Tap pictures to add them to your mesh. Add an optional title at the top.

Viewing your galleries on different devices: We’ve made sure Mesh works on every screen size, so galleries look slick no matter which device they’re viewed on. Mesh will compress, resize, and tailor each photo to the device it’s seen on, so galleries load fast.

  • On the next screen, you’ll see a preview of your mesh. Swipe left and right to explore it. The little bubbles at the bottom indicate the number and placement of images in your mesh.
  • Tap the pencil icon to make edits: add photos, update the gallery title, or delete a photo (by tapping on the photo and then tapping the trash can).
  • Tap the share button at the top right (the icon with the “up” arrow) to display your sharing options. You can view your mesh, post it to your blog, copy its URL, open it in your browser, or share it other ways by tapping “More” (text message, email, Twitter, etc.).
A preview of your mesh, with sharing options at the bottom.

A preview of your mesh, with sharing options at the bottom.

Viewing and editing your meshes

Here are additional tips to help you get the most out of Mesh.

Viewing your meshes

Quick navigation tips: Use the arrow at the top left (<) to return to your home screen. When you view or make edits to a mesh, you can always tap the share button in the top right to retrieve the link and access your sharing options.

Each time you open your app, you’ll see your home screen of “My Meshes.” Scroll to see all of your meshes, and click on the ellipsis icon in the right corner of each image to edit or delete that mesh. To create a new mesh, tap “Add Mesh” at the top.

On your "My Meshes" screen, you can view and access all of your meshes.

On your “My Meshes” screen, you can view and access all of your meshes.

Sorting images

You can arrange the photos in a mesh. When editing a gallery, tap and hold a photo to “lift” and drag it to where you’d like it to go.

Tap and hold a photo to drag it within the gallery.

Tap and hold a photo to drag it within the gallery.

Adding captions

When you tap on a photo, you’ll see the option to add a caption in the middle of your screen. Tap on “Add a caption…” to display your phone’s keyboard, then type a short caption for the image. Tap “Done” to save the caption.

caption2

Download photos on your desktop

Please note that if you share a mesh, those you share it with can download the photos.

Sometimes you (or your family and friends) may want to download an image from a mesh onto your computer. Just open a mesh link in your browser on your computer and — when viewing the photo — tap the share button at the top right. Click “Download photo.”

download

What’s next?

We poured our hearts and souls into building Mesh, and we can’t wait to see what you create with it! Please let us know any thoughts, questions, and suggestions you have. In the meantime, have fun testing it out, and look out for a Mesh photo challenge very soon.

selma

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    1. Glad you’re interested!

      Beside an iPhone app, there’s also a web-interface you can use, on your desktop computer or even your Android phone. Just go to https://me.sh, scroll to the end and tap “Sign in to the web-interface”.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. I’ve just tried it out using the iPhone app on an iPad – works fine but for the fact that it ignores the orientation of your device. I created a mesh and then pressed share on wordpress. It made a whole new post! looking at that post before I deleted it, I see that you just put the URL in to have the embedded mesh, there is no shortcode around it. My question is, is there anyway to control the size of the embedded mesh gallery? Will there be a shortcode for it in the future?

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    1. In order to let you create a mesh, the app needs access to your photo library. If you denied this permission, you can always grant it after the fact, by going to the Settings app > Mesh > and flipping the switch next to Photos.

      Can you clarify what you mean by “see”?

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  8. I don’t have an iPhone yet. So not clear, where one’s photo gallery is stored… still on wordpress.com account and in a different area than the media library, right?

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  9. Can you give it more control over posts on WordPress so things can be edited before publishing or a preview of what the post will look like? And is this something new to where anyone can see your “mesh” like Instagram or is it a photo editing tool?

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    1. Hi, appreciate for your feedback.

      We’re thinking of ways to give you more control over the “Post to WordPress” flow and have some ideas. For now, what you can do is tap the “Copy URL” button instead of “Post to WordPress”, and then paste that URL directly into a WordPress post, for example via the WordPress app. Mesh essentially does the same, create a post with the Mesh title, and the URL pasted in the body.

      Meshes you create are seen by those you give the URL, there isn’t a global stream it’s automatically shown to.

      Hope that helps!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thanks for the info! I tried the app and it’s very cool. Just would like a bit more control so I don’t post something weird looking. : )

        Liked by 1 person

  10. I used a MESH this week in my blog. https://mikehardisty.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/weekly-photo-challenge-beneath-my-feet/

    Observations.

    1. Photographs are cropped by the MESH software into a sort of squareish shape. All of my photographs are landscape orientation. That’s a problem and would dissuade me from using MESH
    2. I’m uncomfortable that anyone can download the photographs. Can you disable that download button.
    3. It looks like the EXIF data is preserved. I downloaded one photograph to check this. Good.
    4. I’ve raised some points through feedback, mainly that I still can’t add captions. Not a deal breaker but it would be nice if it could be done using a font and colour of my choice. Also where I can place the caption and how big it is. I could use this to add a copyright statement if you don’t want to remove the download options.

    Mike

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Can’t wait to use it. I’m linking my WordPress to it right now. Thanks for pouring your souls into this endeavor, now lets us share what we can do with it! 🙂
    Cheers!

    Liked by 1 person