Scenario: You're hotel-bound at night and you need to get those digital photos of the work site to a computer-challenged client tomorrow. You're nowhere near a photo lab, and even if you were near one, you still have to get them across country. What to do? How about an online photo service like Shutterfly, oFoto, or Print@Kodak?
Forget it, none of these companies even offers rush orders. My apologies for the tease, but now you know how I felt when I could find no online solution for this predicament. OK, enough bad news. The good news is that online photo developers are still a great way to turn your digital images into hard-copy photos. And if the three services I tested don't offer rush orders, they do offer next-day service for orders received before noon.
Up, up, and await
There's one drawback to online photo services that you'll notice right off the bat: upload time. If you're using a T1 or T3 line, no problem. But even using my 128Kbps DSL uplink at home, it took 20 minutes to upload 15MB of photos--about 30 shots from the 2.1-megapixel camera I use. Double or triple that amount of time for a dial-up on the road. Fortunately, Shutterfly and Print@Kokak allow you to review and place your order working with thumbnails, then upload only the image files you want to enhance or order prints of. oFoto requires uploading whole image files.
Both oFoto and Shutterfly let you drag files for upload right from Windows Explorer to your browser's window after you've downloaded a small extension. Print@Kodak uses a file browser that's only a little less convenient. oFoto and Shutterfly also provide standalone programs that let you prepare your photos offline and then upload them. Neither is very sophisticated, but they don't need to be.
Depending on the state of your photo-touchup software collection, Print@Kodak's lack of online touchup tools might not bother you. However, I found the tools that oFoto and Shutterfly provided useful and convenient--despite the fact that I have Photoshop. Shutterfly's online touchup features are by far the most elegant and practical; the cropping options and red-eye reduction features are especially noteworthy. You can also apply various borders or special effects such as color saturation and color filters. oFoto's cropping and editing features aren't as advanced as Shutterfly's, but include plenty of fun special effects like pastel, charcoal, neon, and cartoon. I was also pleasantly surprised by the speed of the online tools, which make the process not much slower than working with the files locally.
Once you've uploaded your pictures and touched them up, it's time to order. Prices at oFoto and Shutterfly are quite reasonable. Ofoto charges 49 cents apiece for 4-inch-by-6-inch prints, 99 cents for 5-by-7s, and only $2.99 for 8-by-10s. Shutterfly charges the same for their prints, but also offers wallet-sized prints at four for $1.49. Kodak's 4-by-6 prints are the same 49 cents as the other services, but prices escalate rapidly--$1.49 apiece for 5-by-7s, and a whopping $4.49 for each 8-by-10. Kodak also sells specialty items like mugs, T-shirts, mouse pads, and puzzles with a picture printed on them for $12.95 to $25.95.
I ordered a batch of prints to be delivered by first class mail from the three services. All arrived within reasonable snail mail time. However, I appreciated oFoto's friendly e-mail informing me that my order had shipped. I then ordered overnight from the three services. Both oFoto and Shutterfly arrived on schedule, shipped the same day they were processed But the Kodak order took an extra day to show up.
Which service did I prefer? Shutterfly is the most elegant and has the best online tools, but oFoto was equally prompt and I appreciated their attention to detail. Call it a slight edge for Shutterfly. Kodak is relatively new to the game, and will probably be competitive in short order, but for now it's not as full-featured or affordable as the others.
