Today, digital cameras let us snap anything in an instant--for instant consumption or deletion.
Our need to share photos has led to online services which offer a digital alternative to photo albums of old. Now we can create personalised albums and slideshows to share with others. Ordering prints of our fave pics is also big business.
The InfoTrends Research Group (www.infotrends-rgi.com) estimated this May that 19 per cent of Internet-enabled households in the USA have used an online photo service.
Most online photo companies no longer accept traditional film, but high street stores will scan negatives into a CD, which you can upload to your online account.
All the major camera companies have an interest in online photo services. Canon owns the European based Fotango.com, Kodak owns the US centric Ofoto.com, Nikon has a photo sharing offering called NikonNet,com, and Fujifilm's print fulfilment service is used by companies like Microsoft for its photos.msn.com service.
Meanwhile printer companies such as Epson are providing services like epsonphoto.co.uk, which lets you print images straight tram your computer. Resolution is vital to consider when you're printing your own photos. Make sure your image's output resolution is set to 300dpi before resizing the image to the size you want.
As for online photo services that specialise in print fulfilment. consider what size prints you might need. An 8x10 photo requires a minimum resolution of 1220x960 pixels, for example--anything less and your image will look pixellated and ugly. Airy good photo printing service will warn you if your image resolution is too small to achieve an ideal result.
This month we've tested a European photo sharing service called Pixum. the established digital print specialist Fotango, Epson Photos offering, UK dotcom upstart Photobox, the popular US site Ofoto and the tried and tested Yahoo! Photos. We were looking for a good all rounder sporting a bit of initiative and innovation.
DON'T TALK JUST SHOOT
Camera phones are an increasingly popular way for people to share photos, but let's face it--the quick and dirty kind of images produced by the current crop of camera phones are never going to become photographic masterpieces. They do, however, illustrate just how far we've come when it comes to exchanging information in an instant and their popularity has soared in recent months. In an ICM survey conducted for Internet Magazine, eight per cent of UK respondents were found to have a camera phone. The latest research from ARC Group suggests that by the end of 2003 more than 55 million consumers worldwide will own camera phone handsets doubling the size of the current market.
In Japan, more than 40 per cent of the phones sold in the first half of 2003 had videophone capabilities. We probably won't be seeing such widespread penetration in the UK for the next couple of years, despite the availability of 3G handsets here. No doubt as technology evolves, the quality and resolution offered by affordable camera phones will increase to such a level that we'll soon be printing images of a respectable resolution from them which end up larger than the credit card sized copies we're currently stuck with.
Epson Photo Epson lets you send images straight from its site to any printer and is therefore ideal for sharing your pictures with friends. There's no need to spend ages emailing them high-resolution images for them to print out because all they have to do is log into the site and print the photos out for themselves.
A slick plug in provided by ArcSoft lets you zoom in, crop or rotate your images before they're printed. And no, your printer doesn't have to be an Epson, although you are asked if you own one when you sign up. We successfully printed our pictures out on an HP printer, thank you very much.
There are some really convenient online enhancement features in the workshop area, which is also powered by ArcSoft. These include contrast, red eye reduction, greyscale, emboss, solarise, pinch and ripple--effects you'd normally get in off-the-shelf photo editing software. Child friendly features include the morphing tool (for IE browsers only), which lets you create disturbing videos of children turning into their pet dogs, or whatever takes your fancy!
You can also print out e-cards using the templates provided, and add gaudy frames to any boring snaps. For a purely online service, these features are impressive.
There are plenty of photo sharing features too. You can invite guests to view your albums and choose whether or not to let them see the high resolution originals. Your guest will receive an invitation within a couple of minutes, with a password set by you. You'll be able to track how many times they've visited, and check your guestbook to see if they've left a message.
Uploading can be done via the site or after downloading additional software. But the paltry 20MB storage space isn't enough for you to keep too many quality images.
SCORE: ****
Fotango You can still send traditional film to Fotango to be processed, printed and automatically uploaded. This is one reason why we keep coming back--lot of other services won't do this.
But we're disappointed with the site because it looks exactly the same as it did at its 2000 launch. Back then, the service was revolutionary, but since Canon acquired the European photo printing and sharing service in 2001, little has been done to develop it.
Fotango outsourced its traditional film processing to a company called A1M Studios last year--this was a positive move, beta use A1M's photos are uploaded to your Fotango account at a higher resolution than previously, meaning you can order larger prints without losing image quality. We also received quality, dust free images--which had already been uploaded to our Fotango inbox--through the post in a couple of days.
Digital camera users are able to upload images to their accounts through the upload interface. This is rather clunky if you've got a lot of photos to upload--we much preferred the option to email images straight to our account. Sadly, there are no online editing features available, apart from a basic image crop in case your image's aspect ratio doesn't fit your printing size.
Sharing selected photos or albums with friends is easy. Voyeurs can also access the public gallery, which hosts a range of random snapshots, most of which are rubbish.
Fotango's current developers support the open source community and have been consulting on other projects (such as the Canon Image Gateway, which lets Carton's digital camera customers store and order images). But why haven't they improved the flagship site? We like Fotango, but it's looking a little tired. Let's hope a new look version is around the corner.
SPECS
CONTACT www.fotango.com
STORAGE SPACE Unlimited
PRINT COSTS Prints ordered via album cost from 24p, depending on order volume. 4x6 roll 40 exposures cost 8 [pounds sterling]
SCORE
***
Ofoto
Digital camera fanatics will love the easy way Ofoto uploads their images. Plug in your USB camera and the Ofoto software automatically Launches, giving you a simple yet powerful interface from which to upload your photos to your Ofoto account.
Log into the site, and you'll have a cuddly yet fully-featured service at your fingertips. After a long wait, a UK service has just launched, which is excellent news, and the sharing facilities are efficient.
People who want to view your albums need to register, although this only takes a second. Your photos will then be available to view from their own accounts, You and your friends can also add comments after individual photos thankfully, you have ultimate control over what's said!
Ofoto lets you easily see which invitees have visited your online albums and how often they've checked out that photo of your single sister. You can also view your guestbook, and apply essential work to your images before they're printed or shared, including instant fix and red eye reduction. For a bit of fun add a few effects such as tints or borders to your photographic masterpieces, or launch a slideshow.
This site has speed. Pages load faster than any of the other sites we reviewed. And although the site's front end hasn't changed much since we last looked at it, Ofoto hasn't stood still. There's an exciting premium service which lets you update the site using your camera phone via email, which could be interesting.
SPECS CONTACT www.ofoto.co.uk
SCORE ****
Photobox We reviewed Photobox's site in Issue 106, when it earned four stars for its swift printing service, huge range of photo branded gifts and ease of upload. Anyone can join this home-grown, privately-funded digital photo sharing and printing service, although co-branded offerings are available to AOL, Telewest and Freeserve members.
Uploading photos is easy, and if you've got Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8, you'll actually be able to upload your photos direct from Paint Shop to your online Photobox album. This is great, but considering that other providers offer free upload software, there's no great incentive to go out and buy Paint Shop Pro if you don't already use it.
Apart from the usual photo sharing and online ordering, a new facility is the ability for you to send photos for free from Photobox to any MMS mobile phone on the Orange, O2 and Vodafone networks, thanks to Photobox's partnership with PocketThis (www.pocketthis.com) This is ideal for non-camera phone users, although the user will incur a small charge to receive the image, so don't bombard your mates!
As with most of these services, you need to be a member to view any photos shared with you. The registration process took a little longer than we expected, but it wasn't too taxing. Those you share your albums with can give photos ratings out often, too.
Photobox's wider community aspect is thriving. You can access public albums submitted by Photobox users (the celebrity section leaves a lot to be desired, particularly the dodgy photos of Prince Andrew).
Most of all, we like Photobox's quality, value for money fulfilment offerings, and the choice of gloss or matt (we like matt). Prints arrived by first class post the day after we ordered them. Now that's service!
SPECS
CONTACT www.photobox.co.uk
STORAGE SPACE 30MB for new customers, expands to 100MB after first order
SCORE ****
Pixum
Pan-Eurupean online photo service provider Pixum launched in the UK this August.
Its free, slick, image manipulation software, called Pixum-Up, will upload selected photos directly to your online account in minutes. This tiny piece of software also lets you resize images to their ideal aspect ratio for printing without losing image quality, remove red eye, display slideshows, email someone a photo attachment and more.
The Web based interface is just as cool. You get 200MB storage space to create albums and share them. If your album is private, friends will need to be registered Pixum members to view the photos--but that only requires entering an email address, name and password, and there's no obligation for them to buy from or use the service. But, if they like your photos, they can order prints or other fun products like photo mousemats. You can also set your album's status from private to public so that any Pixum visitor can see it.
You can't send in traditional film for processing, but CD-ROMs can be sent in and prints returned. We quickly learned not to upload any image larger than 5MB, as that seemed to upset the system.
Uploaded images appear in your online inbox, from where they can be sent to your checkout or transferred into online albums. When ordering prints, you can choose for Pixum not to employ its Digital Photo Optimizer--if you have already edited your pictures or scanned them in, any additional enhancements Pixum uses could have a negative effect on your prints.
Another great thing about Pixum are its prices, which start at just 10p for a 4 inch print. It's a reliable service and is a welcome entrant to the UK market.
A significant criticism, however, is its privacy policy. If you don't keep your albums private, Pixum says they are free to do what they want with your snaps.
SPECS
STORAGE SPACE 200MB
PRINT COSTS One 4 inch photo costs 10p plus postage
SCORE ****
Yahoo! photos
You can order prints online via the US Yahoo! Photos site, but for those of us in Blighty, there's nothing on the UK site directing us to printing services.
We tried as hard as we could to find the other stuff that was flagged up on the UK home page--a wonderful album flip chart, photo editing options, yada yada yada ... but we found none of it. And so, Yahoo! Photos UK and Ireland remains a pure photo-sharing site with a mere 30MB of free space. On the flip side, 30MB is quite a hefty amount of storage really when you consider that it's pointless storing hi-res photos on the site if you can't order prints of them. You can rename images and caption them, or view them at their full sizes if you wish. Friends and family can also receive invitations via email to view your albums, or you can send them electronic photo greetings for special occasions instead.
The only things this site has going for it is its integration with other Yahoo! services, the ability to use your existing Yahoo! login to access your album and fairly easy to remember album URLs. Oh, and if you're uploading multiple photos there's an upload tool that discovers where all your photos are before uploading them to your desired album and automatically resizing them. On the US site you can customise your albums to a much greater extent (by including backgrounds, for instance), while prints and novelty products are fulfilled by the popular online photo service, Shutterfly. You may be tempted to try and access the US site to discover better photo album offerings, but if you're registered in the UK you'll continually be automatically transferred to the UK site.
But we can't complain too much--it's a free service and very consumer friendly, after all, so will appeal to the utmost novice.
SPECS
CONTACT http://photos.yahoo.co.uk
STORAGE SPACE 30MB
SCORE **
CONCLUSION WHICH ONLINE PHOTO SHARING SITE IS BEST? Ask yourself what you want from a photo sharing site and experiment with several--they're free to use, after all, and many sites that do photo processing offer free prints as an introductory offer. Do you want to let your friends order copies of your birthday party prints? Do you want them to be able to leave comments in a guestbook or under each photo? Would you prefer to keep your photos private or public? Will you ever need to order prints in bulk? How much storage space will you need--will you ever need to upload an extremely large image for a poster-size print, for instance? Do you want to send in rolls of film for processing or upload pics? Each of the sites we've reviewed offer something different depending on how you take your photos and how you want to share them. For example, there are still quite a few of us who use traditional colour film because of its richness in detail and colour. Film needs to be developed, and you'll probably want the pictures scanned and burned onto a CD. Fotango will do this for you and upload the images to your online account. If you prefer to use a local lab to put your photos onto a CD, you could send it in by mail to be printed by Photobox. You can also send other media to be uploaded or developed, including Zip disks and compact flash cards. Pixum will also accept CDs to be developed. For those who take digital shots left right and centre, software like OfotoNow will comfortably recognise your digital camera and swiftly upload your photos to your account. While online, you can add effects and fix your photos instead of doing them individually offline using photo editing software. Meanwhile, absolute novices or those with low resolution or 'toy' digital cameras who take photos simply to share with other online buddies might like Yahoo! for its easy upload tool, which automatically resizes your images for easy viewing and sharing. Those who don't like the idea of ordering prints online because they've got an Epson Photo Printer can use the Epson Photo site to access and print images straight from their online album!
We like Photobox's swift ordering process. It has its own lab and your photos are done almost as soon as you order them. Its community aspects are also on the up. Fotango, although apparently neglected somewhat by its owners, still offers a solid processing and storage service even if its sharing interface could be a lot friendlier. Ofoto offers slick storage and simple photo sharing. Epson Photo's on the fly photo manipulation is excellent if you want to adjust your prints without photo editing software.
Posted by kimgilmour at April 24, 2004 11:28 PM