Feature: Some of the most interesting online Photo Galleries are Print Services
Motivation:A host of Print Services have disguised themselves neatly as free galleries

Kodak has missed out almost completely on the digital camera revolution despite being the leaders on digital camera introductions, targeting of inkjet printers for output of digital camera images and leading the way with archival papers for digital printing. So when Kodak bought Ofoto this observer thought the reverse Midas touch of Kodak gold was going to be passed onto another market leader. Well Snapfish, Shutterfly and other web-based photo services are doing well but so is Kodak.

Part of the reason inevitably is the big market swing away from Kodak, Fuji and all the other film makers and their cameras to digital. And its not just the costs. "it is the ability to quickly take a picture and see the results and then discard all the misfits and take picture over again" a girl at the Royal Winter horse fair remarked to me. When she showed me her last 8-10 ten shots, they were stunningly creative in style, color and form. I understood then that film cameras were now a niche market - useful in some specialized domains, but not the technical virtuosi that various digital camera could be.

But if cost had originally won the day for digital cameras along with the loss leading low price of inkjet printers; however the skyrocketing cost of digital inkjet cartridges and prints might be one of digital cameras Waterloos. The other problem facing digital images is the risky nature of storage for digital images. CD and DVDs simply do not have better than 3-5 year lifetimes. Hard drives and tapes, remarkably, are the best media for storing images into the 8-24 year time frames. But even they suffer the problem of obsolesence and MTBF -Mean Time Before Failure limits. So enter now the photo gallery services.

What the Photo Services offer are three key features: a)the ability to share your photos with friends and family through emails, mobile phone downloads, and onsite slideshows; b)the opportunity to buy and deliver prints of pictures at fairly reasonable costs - typically 20 cents for 6x4 inch to $4 for 8x10 - but prices do vary widely. Also many photo galleries offer such options as photos on mugs, stickers, stamps, posters, t-shirts, etc; and c)the ability to store photos for backup on their servers and tape recovery systems. It is this package of services that can make the the Photo Service Galleries attractive to users. We examine here some of the major players.

Kodak EasyShare Gallery Service

Kodak bought Ofoto whose real innovation was the use of its nifty Ofotonow PC utility which allows users to quickly upload files to Kodak Gallery servicesfor storage, buying prints and sharing with others. Ofotonow also created PC screensavers and wallpaper while allowing simple cropping and rotation of images. The downside to Ofotonow - it only works in Windows. So Kodak created a second upload and photo-organizer program, Kodak Easyshare PC album organizer that runs in most versions of Windows and Mac software but not Linux. Easyshare can read directly from most Kodak digital cameras as well.

Kodak Easyshare Galleries also offers a number of ways of sharing your images with friends and family. You can invite users to view your slideshows, send them pictures or slideshows by email, mobile phone or snail mail (buying prints in this case). To simplify sharing Kodak Easyshare Galleries offers Premier Service for $25US/year which provides image backup at two locations, upto 4 web addresses, auto-notification services, and the ability to organize and document your images for unlimited download by friends and family. For an additional $25US/year Premier Service members can get their 6x4 prints for half price, 10 cents each with the Print Plan option.

Finally, Kodak Easyshare Galleries offers some of the widest selections of photo goodies around. These include 3 types of albums, calendars, several photo book styles, mugs, tshirts plus other apparel, collages, stickers, plus all sorts of games with photos. The prices:

MPix - The High-price Spread

As one can see from the screen shot of prices, MPix has premiim prices for its small prints but the competitive prices for its its intermediate size prints and then roughly comparable pricing for larger prints. For example the average price among Kodak, Shutterfly, Snapfish and Fotki is about $14c for 4x6" prints, $3.24 for 8x10" and $13.50 for 16x20" for quantity 1 where as the lowest Mpix prices are $.29, $1.69, and $15.99 respectively. So MPix shows a bargain prce for 8x10" shots but above cost on all others.

But even more interesting is that MPix sells two quality of prints. Here is how MPix describes them:
Traditional Paper - KODAK PROFESSIONAL Portra Endura Paper is by far our most popular paper. Accurate color, realistic saturation, excellent neutral flesh reproduction and brighter colors are just a few of the attributes to describe E-Surface paper. You will enjoy the benefits of Mpix’s state-of-the-art color technology in prints made on our Kodak Professional Endura Paper.You will see matched prints between optical and digital printers, improved color saturation, and excellent skin-tone reproduction, as well as brighter blues, cyan, purples, and reds. With this paper don’t worry about prints fading. The standard is 100 years in home display and 200 years in dark storage. or
Endura Metallic features a unique pearlescent surface. From fine art applications to special event photography and business cards, we think you will agree when we say this paper is truly spectacular. Endura offers natural looking flesh tones, sharp details and beautifully saturated colors. Plus, Endura is strong. Resistant to tearing and curling without any additional lamination. This paper uses a patented combination of film and laminate layers that results in striking, three-dimensional, lasting images on an ultra-bright background. I have a query into MPix on the comparative archival quality of Endura metallic prints. Given that users album contents are only saved for 60days, MPix will certainly have to show superior print quality in our print tests to contend with the other Print Services.

Shutterfly Gallery

Shutterfly has been familiar to this reviewer for at least 3-4 years - since I started using the free PHP Gallery program on several of my websites. Shutterfly was the first of the Print Services offered by Gallery and it was easy and convenient to use for many of my clients. Shutterfly offers remarkably similar services as Kodak Easyshare, sometimes I got confused as to which I was running.

The workflow of the tabs is nearly identical: Create an album, Upload pictures, Share them, Order Prints, and Buy from the store. And if you compare the prices, they too are also nearly the same (see price tables) . And Shutterfly has now matched one of the original advantages of Kodak Easyshare, the Ofoto photo organizer and upload utility. Shutterfly Studio is a free Windows photo organizer and uploder program several notches ahead of Ofotonow but on par with Kodak's Easyshare with one notable exception - it runs in Windows only. Also the features of ACDsee or Corel Photo Album are two versions ahead of Shutterfly Studio.

Nonetheless Shutterfly Studio, like Kodak's Easyshare Utility, makes uploading batches of photos a breeze. But Shutterfly has another neat innovation on uploads. You can drag and drop thumnail images from Corel Photo Album or even Windows Explorer to the Shutterfly add image area and the photos will be automatically uploaded to your designated Shutterfly album. Then as in the case with Kodak Easyshare you can share your images - but not in as many ways. However, Shutterfly's browser based photo editor for doing touch ups to your images before sharing or printing them is a bit more conveneint than Kodak Easyshare dialogs. In sum for workflow there is not a lot to separate the Photo Services.

But in products for sale Shutterfly has even more photo bling-bling than Kodak. Products like magnets, slideshow DVDs, mouse pads, and tote bags are some of the photo goodies available. So if you are looking for photo gift ideas be sure to checkout Shutterfly.

Finally, Shutterfly does not offer a Premier or discount price plan like Kodak. But the Shutterfly Pro Plan does offer semi-pro and pro photographers the opportunity to sell their images through a Shutterfly hosted website. Shutterfly takes care of all the order fullfillment and pro photographers get to set their prices and product lines for sale. For $200/year, photographers get unlimited diskspace, a website address, and and discounts on Shutterfly pricing - for example, $3.99 8x10 prints are charged to the photographer at $2.39.

Snapfsh Print Service

Like Kodak and Shutterfly, Snapfish has the same workflow and even the same freebie 6x4 prints on offer for immediate uploaders. However, there is one small but notable difference - it is 20 free pictures instead of 10 and 12 respectively for Kodak and Shutterfly. And in fact, one of the distiguishing characteristics of Snapfish is part of their motto "the best value in photography". If you check the price tables, Snapfish consistently offers the best prices among the three Print Services. And Snapfish offers better volume discounts right at the checkout cart (you have to sign up for "plans" at Kodak and Shutterfly).

However, there is a caveat. We found that in such things as calendars and memo books and mugs the size of the object or image was slightly smaller than competing products. Also although we have ordered free prints from all services - they have not arrived yet. So the question of basic print quality for the same images is still up in the air.

The workflow is as noted fairly comparable to what Kodak and Shutterfly provide with three notable exceptions. First, some of the Snapfish offerings are only available through Internet Explorer - such as Memobooks and some Calendars. This is really unacceptable. Second, Snapfish has just added a browser based QuickUploader but this is no match for the PC based album uploaders and utilities available from Kodak and Shutterfly. The latter two PC album utilities really help organize as well as prepare images for uploading, sharing and printing. Finally, we found the share options also barebones in comparison especially to the robust Kodak Easyshare offerings.

In terms of photo bling-bling, Snapfish was ostensibly as good as Kodak but not up to Shutterfly's Foto-Bazaar stanadrds. However, again because many of the offering would not display in either Opera or Firefox latest version browsers- it was hard to tell what was really on offer. It is hard to

Summary

Kodak, Shutterfly and Snapfish now have new competition. The big chain electronics and photo stores are now offering copycat services (I suspect under the Kodak flag). For example, here in Canada Futureshop, Circuit City and Bestbuy among the consumer electronic shops all have Web based Photo Services offering many of the upload, share, and broad range of print services. We have checked out the websites and found the prices varying a great deal - almost like the various online popup specials that appeard on the 3 main services => "Buy this calendar now and get 25% off".

Among the big 3, I consider Kodak to be true to its name, Easyshare - with the most share options and some good high end photo output prices. Shutterfly is my foto bling-bling site of first choice and Snapfish the place to go for bargian basic print prices. But all this could change when the free prints start to roll in.