Internet Photo Sites - Pixels to Prints
Mar 07 '01
The Bottom Line I've tried most of the sites online. My recommendation is to pick the one that offers the functionality YOU prefer...coupled with the cost per print/value equation that works for you.
The gift of a digital camera can turn a neophyte in the world of photo taking into a fanatic. I speak from experience.
Prior to last year, I probably had taken about 500 photos in my lifetime. Since the Sony Mavica - and its easy to use floppy disk storage system - landed in my hands, I have easily taken 1000 photos.
Why?
Ease of use, ease of storage and probably most importantly - no additional trip to the developer. Just point, shoot, and look at the end result instantaneously.
Sound familiar?
Well, if it does, then you probably now also own a digital camera. And you've probably found that turning digital camera pixels into a real, live photo that you can hand to a family member requires one of two things:
Either a large budget to acquire a photo capable printer and the resulting additional expense of color photo cartridges for that printer, or....
A photo developer on the Internet that can simplify matters.
Guess which I chose?
Both.
And I found that even though I have that fine printer setup, I prefer the web based photo finisher for most of my prints. They're cheaper, offer more functionality, and don't require you to change ink cartridges almost daily.
My current favorite is dotPhoto, which, not surprisingly can be found at www.dotphoto.com. It is the newcomer to the field that is quite crowded these days, with over a dozen sites currently offering storage and printing from your digital (and sometimes conventional) images.
What should you know before picking a site? Well, that's easy. You need to know what is important to you.
Perhaps it is cost per print. The standard cost these days on the internet is around $.50 per 4x6 print, with shipping and handling extra (normally $2.00 to $4.00 per order). One of the reasons I prefer dotPhoto is that they charge $.29 per print, or less if you print a lot of prints monthly.
Other amateur enthusiasts may prefer the quality of the image as their main determinant of a photo supplier. I've tried others - Ofoto (www.ofoto.com), Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com), PhotoWorks (www.photoworks.com) and ememories (www.ememories.com) - along with dotPhoto. I've had good success with dotPhoto, Ofoto and Shutterfly, and been less happy with the results of the rest of the pack.
Still other users may find ease of submitting photos to be the key factor in choosing a web based photo delivery stystem. The easiest I've found is PhotoPoint (www.photopoint.com) with the aforementioned dotPhoto a close second. Each has the capability that allows a member to simply email a digital photo to their site, and they handle the upload. That option saves a ton of time, since the traditional upload function of every photo site I've tried takes anywhere from thirty seconds to three minutes to upload one digital photo using a 56k modem connection.
Photopoint does this the quickest, and will send you an email confirmation that your digital image was posted into your account.
The final decision point may simply come down to digital storage online, and the ability to manipulate, crop and display photos in albums online. Sometimes many of us want to share photos with others, but don't have any particular desire to convert the photo to a print.
All sites offer this functionality, and I find myself using PhotoPoint and dotPhoto primarily. Again, the ease of use is what convinced me to stick with these two. Both offer user friendly online software that can do things like crop that ugly blemish out of the corner of a photo, or remove that red eye that seems to spoil your best pictures. Ofoto and dotPhoto even allow you to download software that allows you to do photo manipulation, correction and cropping offline.
Most of the online providers offer some type of incentive to sign up as a "member" of their service. In fact, since joining each I've yet to pay "full" price for any photo. With the myriad of "get 20 free prints" offers, it is easy to pay nothing for digital photo prints these days - at least initially. In fact, dotPhoto currently has a "60 free prints" offer at signup, so your first several attempts at converting a digital image to a print should be easy, painless, and free.
Can you tell I've spent way too much time online using these services?
Can you tell that my friends and relatives have received way too many emails telling them to check a particular URL and see my latest online album?
Can you tell that my favorite is dotPhoto?
Can you tell that this particular epinion has reached its logical conclusion?
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Member: Jeff Clow
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