A picture is worth thousand words…Part II

Three sandhill cranes are taking a drink from your birdbath. You rush into you house, trailer or RV, grab your digital camera and snap that once in-in-a-lifetime photo. You download the photo to your computer and it is everything you though it would be — now you want to share it with everyone you know, but how? Last week I wrote about using a variety of web sites for digital photo finishing, including four national chain-stores that provide both online and in-store service: CVS, Costco, Wal-Mart and Target. This week I expand upon the topic and write about using the same photo finishing services for online photo sharing with family and friends.

All of the web sites mentioned in last week’s column provide online photo sharing, and all of them work in basically the same manner.

1. Photos are uploaded to the site.
2. Photos are sorted into photo albums and displayed in online photo galleries.
3. The user provides the service a list of email address of family and friends.
4. An email invitation to view the photos is sent to everyone on the list.

It is that simple! You can even choose to share just one photograph. Photos are stored in “galleries,” and galleries can be sorted into albums, just like you do with your printed snapshots. Most of the services even offer you the opportunity to make simple edits, such as red-eye correction and cropping, right online. As an added bonus, many of the sites also allow photo storage which provides a safe place to keep backups of your photos. All of the services require users to set-up an account before uploading photos, but your family and friends do not have to have an account to view your photos. Below is a listing of the online photo services with some specific information about each.

1. Wal-Mart (www.walmart.com) — Wal-Mart’s Digital Photo Center is free to all “active” users. They consider anyone an active user who has purchased prints or photo merchandise through the online service at least once in the last 365 days. The web site says that storage is unlimited. In addition to uploading photos from a computer, photos can also be emailed to the Wal-Mart photo center.

2. Target (www.target.com) — Target does not advertise this, but their online photo service is actually Yahoo Photo Service, which is part of the Yahoo network of email services. To use the service you must establish a Yahoo account.

3. CVS Pharmacy (www.cvs.com) —The CVS service appears to be very similar to Wal-Mart. An active account is one from which prints or merchandise has been ordered within the last 365 days, and users must access their account at least once each 180 days.

4. Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com) — The Shutterfly web site states that they have never deleted a photo, and that unlimited storage is free.

5. Snapfish (www.snapfish.com) — With Snapfish you can email or upload digital photos, and you can also mail in rolls of film for developing, printing and sharing online. Accounts stay active if a purchase is made every 365 days.

6. Kodak EasyShare Gallery (www.kodakgallery.com) — Kodak EasyShare, formerly Ofoto, is one of the best known of the photo services. The basic gallery service is free, but for $2.49 a month, or $24.99 for the year, you can have your own web page with a unique name that anyone can access by typing the URL into the address location of a browser.

In next week I will finish this three part series of columns and write about two photo sharing services that are a bit “outside the box,” as well as online storage options for serious photographers.