Club Photo's a Winner!
Written: Mar 05 '00 (Updated Mar 06 '00)
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| Full Review |
Club Photo is one of the fifteen online digital photography sites currently listed on Epinions.com. under “Household Services”. I recently spent a Sunday evening by joining five of the sites, uploading photos and ordering prints and enlargements from each one. The following review will specifically cover Club Photo, since they were the first to complete their order. After I have received the prints from all the sites, I will include a summary so that the reader will not have to go through all five reviews to do a comparison, unless specific information is wanted on a particular site or sites.
Overview
Today, the ability to capture or scan images into a digital format is not only a convenience but also nearly a necessity. As consumers demand higher resolutions (more pixels) files sizes increase and storage becomes a problem. What if a hard copy is wanted, or the image needs to be shared. You could buy a true photo quality printer and photo quality paper and make your own prints, but that would be expensive. And you could email the image or put it on your website, but what if you have lots of images and lots of people share them with? One convenient and economical solution is the online digital photos service. After uploading and storing your images on one of these sites, you can have prints made and/or share them online, as well as various other options.
Club Photo
A pioneer in online photo sharing, their site was launched December 15, 1998. To join, you simply give your name, email address, country, and zip code and then select a password. Membership is free, and there is no limit on the number of images that can be stored there. After signing up you are given your own web address, and a password and user ID. To upload images you create an album by simply typing in a name, select an image on your computer by clicking the browse button and then click “Add Photo”. You can caption the image and give an additional description, also. Only JPEG files with a maximum resolution of 2048X2048 pixels are currently accepted – other image types (tiff.s, bmp.s, psd.s, etc.) will need to be converted to .jpg . Multiple images can be uploaded, but you must first download their “Living Album” software. Once your photos are onsite, the only image editing available is rotation and brightness. Any number of albums can be created and there is no limit to the number of photos that can be placed in each album.
Albums can be viewed by selecting “My Albums” and then choosing the specific album. The screenshot of the album will show thumbnails of the images and by clicking on the thumbnails; the images are shown at a higher resolution (up to 800X800). Club Photo has a nice feature that some, but not all of the photos sharing sites have, which is the ability to see the image at full resolution. You simply click on “View Full Image” after initially selecting the image, to do this.
Club Photo's Services
Online sharing - you can select the “Invite Others To View Album” link and send an email invitation or you can copy the album’s URL and post it or email it yourself. Either way, it sure beats uploading multiple images to multiple recipients.
Free photo E-cards – this is similar to other internet greeting cards services. Several templates are available and you add a photo and message to it. The recipient gets an email saying that they have been sent an E-card and a web address where it can be viewed.
Photo finishing – 3”X5” through 8”X10” prints are offered with a price range of $.45 -$4.49.
Gifts – chocolates, cookies, jewelry, mouse pads, posters, plate, mugs, and stuffed animals are available to be photo customized.
“Album to Go” – software for Palm PDA photo sharing
Photo Finishing Details
I selected six photos and uploaded them to a new album, which can be seen at: http://members2.clubphoto.com/dave220812/samples/. Image 001 is a 1200X1600 pixel pet portrait, images 002 and 005 are 1200X1600 macros, image 003 is a 1200X1600 landscape, and images 004 and 006 are approximately 1500 X1000 professionally scanned landscape images from a Kodak Picture CD. Images 001CP through 006CP are scanned images of the prints I received back.
Each photo was uploaded individually and the total upload time was 14 minutes, on a 56K modem connected at 48K. I then ordered 4X6 prints of the first five images ($.45 each) and an 8X10 of the sixth image ($4.49). The ordering process was simple enough, but each photo has to be separately selected and then prints ordered from it, which made the process lengthy. It took an additional 16 minutes to order and check out, which included setting up a new billing account and supplying credit card and shipping information. $8.69 was the total including $1.95 shipping. The order was placed Sunday evening and the prints were received five days later in Friday’s mail. The prints arrived in a manila envelope with thick cardboard protectors and were undamaged.
Photo Finishing Results
I scanned the prints from Club Photo at 300 dpi and then uploaded them back to: http://members2.clubphoto.com/dave220812/samples/ so that the original and scanned print image could be compared online. I realize that a little is lost when converting the images back to a digital format, but overall I was quite pleased and surprised that it worked out as well as it did. I think this attests to the overall quality and sharpness of the Club Photo prints.
Image 001CP – the color was off slightly but noticeably. I was able to duplicate this on my PC by changing the hue just a little from red to green. The 3X4 aspect ratio was cropped to fit the 4X6 print and was done uniformly on all four sides, probably by machine.
Image 002CP – again the red/green hue was off just slightly. The 3X4 image was cropped on all four sides, but a little too aggressively on both sides of the longer dimension, so that a white border resulted. Furthermore, the image was not centered on the print resulting in uneven borders
Image 003CP – this 3X4 image was cropped unevenly; more from the top than the bottom and more from the right side than the left, as if by a person in order to fit the print - it was exactly the way I would have done it. The color is fine.
Image 004CP – this image was evenly cropped on all four sides, which is unusual since it was already in a 4X6 format. The color is near perfect, but some minor details, such as the slight blue in parts of the overcast sky, are missing.
Image 005CP – this 3X4 image was cropped fairly evenly on all sides to fit the finished print. Details are excellent, even the tiny fibers show up. However, the hue is again a little too green.
Image 006CP – this 4X6 aspect ratio image was cropped evenly on both sides but not as much as was required, leaving approximately ½” borders on both the top and bottom sides of the finished 8X10 print. The color and detail are nearly as good as the original.
Conclusion
The Club Photo website is easy to navigate and fairly intuitive, and the ordering process is straightforward and secure, but could be streamlined. Their prints, which were all made on glossy Kodak Professional paper, are reasonably priced and ranged from acceptable to very good in quality. On the plus side: they had the fastest photo finishing order delivery time, have a full resolution viewing option and offer free unlimited online image storage. The only negatives are the inconsistent, but totally acceptable photo finishing results, and that only JPEG files can be uploaded. I will certainly be using them again.
I hope you have found this review to be interesting and informative, but above all useful. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. It’s always good to hear from fellow Epinions.com members and /or photography enthusiasts!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ryansridge
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Member: D. McCandless
Location: Rural Pennsyltucky
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 316 members
About Me:
To insure success, try to eliminate failure.
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