Feature: Publish Your Pictures on the Web

For ten years, I've been able to reliably predict all of my mom's usual complaints: You don't visit enough; you aren't eating right; and you don't send me pictures of the kids. She was right on all three counts: I made the pilgrimage back to New Jersey as infrequently as possible; I ate mostly pizza; and I'd often forget to mail her the double prints of the kids. Now, though, I have an easy way to keep my mom up-to-date with pictures, and I'll let you in on my secret: Web-based photo sharing sites.

The Web Options

A few years ago I tried to build my own photo albums at my personal Web site. The problem? It was a lot of work! I mean it was really a lot of work.

To maintain a collection of pictures on your Web site, you have to get familiar with a Web design program of some sort. You also have to think about style and layout, which isn't as easy as it sounds, even if you're using a Web designer with a layout wizard. And then you need to resize images for the Web. Depending upon how many pictures there are and how you plan to lay them out, some folks actually make two versions of each image--a miniature "thumbnail" shot for the main page that links to a larger image visitors can view if they're so inclined. Granted, some people have the energy and talent for such things. Check out Russ Schleipman's Web site, which is quite impressive. But that kind of dedication is not for me--I gave up after a short time and instead allied myself with a photo sharing Web site.

Drag-and-Drop Simplicity

On the Web you'll find a handful of photo sharing sites with names like ClubPhoto.com, Ofoto.com, and PhotoWorks.com. They all tend to offer the same basic suite of services: You can post your favorite pictures online, usually for free, and order photo-quality prints, delivered right to your door, for a small charge.

Using these sites is a snap. Most provide some simple mechanism for adding your pictures to an online photo album. ClubPhoto, for instance, lets you simply drag and drop images from a folder on your hard disk to a special icon on the Web page; the images are uploaded to the site, where you can rename and caption them. Ofoto.com has a similar drag-and-drop system, and it also boasts a surprisingly complete suite of image editing tools. You can remove red eye, rotate images, and add artistic effects, all via Ofoto's own image editing program.

Once the images are online, you can share the Web address with friends and family, and they can see your images at any time. You can even make the images available for public viewing, so anyone can wander around the site and check out your pictures.

Additional Features

Some of these sites also sell an assortment of reprint options and photo gifts. Heck, if you store your images at an online site, you'll never run out of gift ideas. At ClubPhoto, for instance, you can turn any picture into a jigsaw puzzle, coffee mug, mouse pad, t-shirt, refrigerator magnet, or night light. You can also take pictures from your last vacation and turn them into a Photo Book--a spiral-bound collection of your images, complete with captions. And let's not forget the baked goods: You can put your pictures on all sorts of goodies, including chocolates, cookies, Rice Krispy bars, and cakes.

It's Free! (Usually)

Most of the time, the photo sharing features at these Web sites are free. My favorite site, ClubPhoto, does charge a fee. The first 90 days don't cost anything, but permanent storage costs about $25 a year. That turns a lot of people off--I've gotten e-mail from readers complaining about the subscription charge. But I look at it this way: Web sites that offer their wares for free tend to drop like flies. In the past year or so, a huge number of free photo sharing sites, like PhotoLoft.com, Zing.com, and Ememories.com, have all gone to the great cache in the sky. If ClubPhoto's subscription revenues help to ensure that my photos will still be online in a year or two, I consider it money well spent.