UPDATE: January 2012 – The update to SkyDrive in November 2011 now again provides an easy way to obtain the actual URL of a SkyDrive photo, please see: Getting the URL of a SkyDrive photo is easy again.
The current version of SkyDrive has disabled getting the URL, web address, of an image file. SkyDrive offers “Embed” code but that only gets back to the SkyDrive view of the photo. Besides, that code will not work in some uses like WordPress.com blogs (WordPress strips “iframe” code for security reasons).
Finding the URL in the right-click menu (in Internet Explorer one level further down in Properties) provides a web address to a reduced size version of the image, not the full size, stored image. Yes, SkyDrive lists the full size in the information pane. My SkyDrive illustration here shows that it lists the real 8605 x 3603 pixels size for this image, but the properties-URL is to a 1600 pixel version of this photo.
Fortunately, there is a Download provision which allows download of the original, full-size image. It is a bit complicated, but that is the route to the image URL. [No easier way has come to light – I hope Microsoft will re-enable obtaining the actual image URL soon.]
Finding the URL of a Photo in the new SkyDrive
Go to the image in SkyDrive using Internet Explorer (I use IE9). If the information pane on the right is not shown, click the little “<” (Expand) in the upper right. 
Under the thumbnail of the image there is a Download link (the Rename and Delete links are present only if you are logged in).
Download the photo. Answer the question “Do you want to open or save …” by clicking Save. This will download the image to your default download folder.
Bear with me, we are after the URL not the file, but for now this is the “easy” way. The full size image will be downloaded. The downloader needs the address, URL, to the full image, and this is how we can get to it.
In the download bar at the bottom of the window click View Downloads.
If you did not pay attention and closed the bar, click Tools – the little wheel in the upper right – and then click View downloads in the drop-down menu. The illustration here uses the red pointer to show the Tools icon location.
The View Downloads – Windows Internet Explorer
window shows your downloads (here I had previously cleared the list). Right-click on the file you just downloaded (this also works during the download). Click on Copy download link. Hurray! You got it! Now, what could be easier? The URL is now in your clipboard. I normally paste it into Notepad and save it for future use. You can, of course, delete the downloaded image from your download folder, it is just taking up space.
Use the URL to link to the image in your blog or website.
NOTE: This is a partial repost of an earlier article to allow easier searching.
.:.
© 2011 Ludwig Keck
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Thanks! I was really frustrated that I no longer could get the URLs for my pics on SkyDrive, so this tutorial really helped!
To get my URL to work properly I had to erase the part after “.jpg” in the adress, but then it worked perfectly!
Thanks again!
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