Whether taking digital or film photos, many of us don't take advantage of the resources available to us nowadays. Instead, we clog up our friends' email inboxes with party candids, we fill up our hard drive with unorganized sets of graphics files, and/or we turn the home office into a print shop for vacation pictures.
Fortunately, Web photo services can help us clear away the clutter. Sign up, and you and your friends can view photos and order paper prints online. These services even provide free Web storage space for your digital images; all you pay for are the paper prints you order. You also can order items with photos printed on them, from mousepads to greeting cards. This month we round up the most popular of these services: Ofoto, Snapfish, and Shutterfly. Once you see what they offer, you'll wonder how you lived without them.
Common Features
To use any Web photo service, you'll need to upload (transfer) your graphics files from your hard drive (or a digital camera connected to your computer) to the Web. Users with dial-up Internet connections will wait longer than broadband users for their files to upload. With a 56Kbps (kilobits per second) modem, it may take two minutes to upload a 400KB file, and a batch of 10 may take 30 minutes.
One of Ofoto's strengths is its online image-editing capability.
These services only accept JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) files, which use the .JPG extension. If your pictures exist in another file type, use an image-editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop or Jasc Paint Shop Pro, to convert them to JPEG files first.
Online photo-sharing services usually provide free downloadable software for image editing and batch uploading.
