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Companies that make both cameras and snapshot printers, such as Hewlett-Packard and Kodak, are spending a lot of energy these days trying to convince consumers that sharing photos is easy. In one sense they are right: Their software, in conjunction with camera menu selections, takes a lot of the guesswork out of uploading your photos to a PC or to an online gallery.

But printing photos from online galleries could be a hassle for your customers, friends, and family--and leave them holding substandard prints.

I've used both Kodak's EasyShare and HP's Instant Share to send e-mails containing a link to photos I'd taken. With both programs, sending photos that way was easy, though using the HP program was a little more intuitive.

But my experiences as a recipient were disappointing--especially when it came to printing the photos.

Kodak EasyShare Tangles

After receiving the e-mail that I sent from Kodak's EasyShare, clicking on the image didn't open it in a Web browser. Instead, I was prompted to create a log-in before I could view the image. And then, when I selected the print option, I was notified that I had to download Kodak's Print@Home software. But the software wouldn't work with my regular browser, Mozilla Firefox, so I had to switch to Microsoft Internet Explorer.

I was finally able to make a borderless print with Kodak EasyShare, but it was like pulling teeth.

Once I created a log-in to Kodak's site and clicked the image again, I was presented with a slide show that didn't provide a Print@Home option. To get that option, you have to get to a gallery page--but not just any gallery page. Ending a slide show gets you to the View & Edit Albums window on the Web page, and the only printing option here is to order prints from Kodak.

To begin the journey to actually printing photos yourself, you have to click the View & Edit Albums tab that is already highlighted (and how would you know to click the tab you think you're on?), or you have to visit one of the other tabs before returning to View & Edit Albums. Confused? So was I. The View & Edit tab is highlighted as if you're on it, yet does not view the same options as it does when you click off of it and then come back. A company representative had to guide me.

HP Instant Share: Border Trouble

E-mails from HP Instant Share were similar to messages sent via Kodak's EasyShare. They contained a series of thumbnails (or broken links to thumbnails, depending on which e-mail app or Web mail service I was using). Clicking one of the thumbnails took me to the Instant Share online gallery.

I didn't have problems navigating to the printing function in HP Instant Share, and making prints was simple. No sign-in or software download is required.

However, every print from HP's Instant Share came out with an unusually wide border around it--almost one inch on both sides and nearly a half inch on the top and bottom. More disappointing, when I selected two images for printing, the first print came out with about half an inch of the second image on its trailing end. The photos were salvageable only if I got out my scissors and cut off the wide borders. The images had been resized to fit inside the borders; along one edge the originating URL ran off the edge of the paper.

In HP's defense, Instant Share does recommend that you print to paper that has tabs. I was printing on an Epson PictureMate, an inkjet printer that uses 4-by-6-inch paper without tabs. Dye-sublimination printers generally use tabbed paper--but who wants to remove extra paper from every print?

It turns out that to get Internet Explorer to print correctly from Instant Share, I had to download an ActiveX control for the program. (This isn't an option with Firefox, which doesn't support ActiveX.) A link to this download appears in Instant Share's print preview window, but it's easy to overlook. After I installed ActiveX, the ugly borders disappeared, but another problem remained: The print quality was subpar.

Getting Full-Resolution Prints

Compared to the prints I made of the same image with Adobe Photoshop and Internet Explorer, prints from Kodak EasyShare and HP Instant Share lacked sharp details and vibrant colors, and they suffered from a grainy appearance. I was able to resolve the problem with HP's Instant Share, but not with Kodak's EasyShare. The problem in both cases was downsampling--the compressing of files to make uploading and downloading quicker--which can reduce the quality of your prints.

Downsampling isn't an issue if you order prints from Kodak. The EasyShare site will upload your files in their entirety to your online gallery, and Kodak will use those uncompressed files to make prints, according to Sean Malone, senior product manager for Kodak. Friends and family who want to print those same images at home, however, aren't so lucky. When they use the Print@Home feature, EasyShare downloads a downsampled image to their PC's cache. The 4-by-6-inch prints I made from the downsampled files looked a little fuzzy and washed out. There is no way for your recipients to print from the original high-resolution image.

Conversely, HP's Instant Share does allow you to print from a file that hasn't been downsampled, though I found it difficult to figure out how. According to an HP representative, Instant Share downsamples images when either you or your recipient has a dial-up connection. The problem was that although I had told Instant Share my recipient had a broadband connection, the service had not detected that I had a broadband connection, as it was supposed to. Thus, it was downsizing all my images as I uploaded them to my online gallery. When I described the problem to John Graf, an Internet software engineer with HP, he pointed me to the preferences, which had defaulted to the dial-up selection. After I checked the broadband box, the images I uploaded to my gallery were full-resolution, and prints of them looked as glorious as those printed directly from my hard drive.

There are quite a few other online photo sharing options beyond what the camera makers provide. Some of them offer a chat feature, blogging tool, or camera-phone support. But I'm still looking for an online sharing tool with a high-quality printing option.

Take Note

Snapshot Printer: Epson announced the $250 PictureMate Deluxe Viewer Edition on May 10. While the first model has a monochrome LCD, this latest release has a 2.4-inch color LCD that tilts up; it also adds an internal battery option, and reportedly prints faster. For more information, go to Epson's Web site.

Color Lasers: Konica Minolta has introduced two new color laser printers. The midrange Magicolor 2450 is rated to print at up to 5 pages per minute in color and 20 ppm in monochrome. The high-end Magicolor 5450 is rated at 27 ppm in monochrome and color. An internal hard disk is optional on both models for storing fonts, print jobs, supporting direct PDF printing, and the like. Both models have a USB port on the front panel that's labeled with a camera icon, but a downloadable firmware update that will enable PictBridge support won't be available on the company's Web site for a few months.

Have a question or a comment? Drop a line to Eric Butterfield.