Simply Superb
Written: Oct 18 '02
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I have been a happy user of Fototime for about 1 1/2 years. I tried OFoto, Photoloft and Club Photo, none are as good.
Your friends can view and print your photos without requiring any software (they can even print directly onto their printer), but you need an application to run on your host computer. Fortunately the application is modest in size, available for Windows AND Mac, and is very useful even if you don't use their online service.
The free album organizer, Fotoalbum, is required for photo uploads to their site. However, the software is very useful even without uploads. You can organize your photos so that they live in multiple albums, regardless of where they are on your disk. You can burn a CD of an album and include a slide show that runs with the FotoAlbum software.
As a local application, FotoAlbum is very fast and it builds thumbnails automatically when photos are added to your computer - it even seems to "see" directories that you wouldn't think it would bother to look at. When displaying thumbnails it seems much faster than other software, especially the thumbnail view option of Windows Explorer.
With Fotoalbum you can easily attach captions to photos and those captions will be uploaded if you use their online service.
Now here's a magic feature: if you move a photo on your disk, Fotoalbum figures it out and keeps the caption and album information intact.
I tried a number of photo album applications, and none were as simple, yet powerful, as this. Some of those were ULead PhotoExplorer (horrible), ACDSee, Compupic. It's the ease of use of Fotoalbum that makes it a winner. I discovered that their printing options (multiple photos per page, mixed sizes) are controlled by a simple XML file. I was able to add new formats, such as 8x5 thumbnails on a page. Try doing that with any of the other applications!
I have had two occasions to ask tech support for information and they were quick and knowledgable.
On the online side, you will find that their interface is pretty similar to the offline Fotoalbum application - what a concept! Fototime web seems fast to display the thumbnails of an album (but I have DSL, who can be sure?), and the individual photo viewer is quick. Better yet, when viewing a single photo, it does not download the entire image to the viewer, it renders a smaller version. Nevertheless, the viewer can then download the full file, or the smaller version. On OFoto I found that the viewer could never download the full size image. With Fototime the viewer can even directly print the image on their computer.
Naturally, viewers of your photos can order prints, t-shirts, etc. Unfortunately I have not found Fototime online print prices to be competitive.
About a year ago they began charging $25 per year for 250 Meg of storage. That's small change, and if it keeps them in business, so much the better!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
quakeguy
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 1 member
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