Snap decision: sharing your photos online

The old days of getting the photo album out when friends came around for dinner are long gone – in this digital age it is much easier to share your photos online with the help of the multitude of photo websites around. There’s no need to email large image files that take ages to download or burn photos onto a CD and post it to friends and family. Photos can now be accessed online anywhere and anytime.

Most of the sites are free and, after you’ve created your online albums, just email your friends to tell them how to access the photos. If you still want prints to put in an album or to frame at home, then most of the sites we’ve looked at here offer a print service, where the photos will be delivered to your doorstep within days of ordering.

Most photo-sharing websites work in the same way – you register before you can start uploading snaps. Registration is often free, and you enter your name, email address and sometimes postal address and phone number.

We wanted to carry out a blind test, where each company would have no idea that PCW was looking at the service, so we could ensure no special treatment was afforded us. We registered under a private name and used a home delivery address to test the services as they would be available to any customer. We added an identical set of 10 photos to each of the sites and then went on to order one 6 x 4in glossy copy of each. Where applicable, we opted for the first-class delivery option.

All the sites sent some kind of confirmation email upon registering and then again after an order had been placed. Once you’ve set up your account, creating online photo albums is the fun bit. You can assign names and descriptions to your albums, such as your holiday destination, for example. Adding photos is done manually by browsing the photos on your computer and uploading the ones you want, usually 10 at a time.

If you tend to upload lots of holiday snaps on your return, a quicker option is to download the dedicated software offered by some photo-sharing sites. Once installed on your computer, you can take your time selecting the photos you want to upload and once you hit the ‘upload’ button, the images will be transferred to an online album.

Many of the sites offer some kind of editing tools, including adding frames and borders, rotating images or adding text. Some go even further and have special effects and filters available so you can really play around with your snaps. Once you’re happy with your albums, it’s time to invite people to see your photos.

Typically, there will be a section on the site where you can enter email addresses of the people you wish to invite. They will then be sent an email saying that your photos are ready to view.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is the time it will take to upload images, especially if you’re on a dial-up connection as you will effectively be paying per image uploaded. High-resolution shots and large orders will take a while to process, even if you have a broadband connection, where upload speeds often tend to be a lot slower than download speeds, sometimes 50 per cent less.

We reviewed 11 online photo services to find out what they offer and how much they cost. The reviews below should help you make a choice depending on your needs.

Bonusprint
Bonusprint has moved with the times since the days when people sent their 35mm films by post to be developed. It always was, and still is, cheaper than developing snaps in a high-street shop, and offered the cheapest prices for prints in this test – only 9p per print for orders of 100 prints or more. It charges a flat rate of £1.20 for delivery, which is reasonable, especially if your orders tend to be on the large side.
Before you can start uploading your photos, you need to install a utility called Pix from the Bonusprint site.

Once installed, uploading is a simple process, although Pix’s interface is slightly confusing. There is no online gallery available, so this is purely a site for ordering prints. If you don’t want to upload your images online, you can send in your memory card or a CD and the prints will be delivered to your door.

The site doesn’t offer any frills, such as an online gallery or image-editing tools, but the print quality was acceptable. Our snaps were printed out on Kodak paper with good colour reproduction. However, they were darker than we’d hoped for, which reduced detail. Our pictures arrived within 36 hours of placing the order, which makes it one of the quicker services tested here.

Canon Image Gateway 
Along with the other big players in the digital camera market, such as Fujifilm and HP, Canon offers its own photo-sharing service for users of Canon cameras. When you register on the site you will need to specify the camera model you use.
Photos are uploaded manually, up to 10 at a time, as there is no downloadable upload software.

This makes the upload process slightly long-winded, but when you’re done, there are plenty of editing options. For uploading movies shot with your Canon digital camera you have to download and install some software before you can begin.
The support section is good, with recommendations on how to optimise the performance of your Canon camera.

Choosing images for purchasing prints is time consuming, as you have to select them individually, by checking boxes beneath each photo. Once you’ve created your selection and are ready to place your order, you’ll be taken to a page listing selected print centres. At the time of testing this service, only one print service, Photobox, was listed (see review on page 122). As a photo sharing site though, it’s a good option if you own a Canon camera.

Fdiprint
This site is very confusing. On the one hand, it’s got backing from Fujifilm so looked promising from the start. It has one of the most advanced set of image-editing tools of the services we’ve compared in this test and we were looking forward to prompt delivery of high-quality printouts of our holiday photos.

Before we could upload any photos we had to download some software from the site. This allows you to organise and upload photos to the online server and then prints can be ordered. 

The download process is very confusing, however and the site isn’t very user friendly. The image-editing tools are decent and offer the opportunity to play around with your snaps.

On the other hand, ordering prints after you’re finished editing them is a long-winded and complex process. We weren’t even sure if we had actually placed the order, even after adding address and credit card details, as no confirmation appeared on screen. It wasn’t until we received the email confirmation that we knew our order was on the way. Then we waited. And waited.

Six days after placing the order, the prints had still not been dispatched and they finally turned up a week after ordering, making Fdiprint the slowest service we tested.

The images weren’t great either, with bleak colour, noticeable jagged edges on straight lines and they were printed on low-quality paper. The site offers few alternative printing options (such as gift items and posters) and this, together with the slow delivery time and poor quality of prints, this service didn’t impress us.