Internet sites offer variety of ways to share pictures

12/09/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

For Web neophytes, sharing photographs with family and friends scattered around the world - until recently - has required a daunting plunge into the nerd world of home-page coding.

If that HTTP stuff is all geek to you, a growing list of Internet sites offers help.

Most require no experience with HTML, the hypertext markup language used to produce Web pages. Although each site attempts to sell something in exchange for free space to post photos online, the trade-off may be more palatable than learning code.

More than a dozen free online photographic services have cropped up over the last two years. Most, such as PhotoIsland (www.photoisland.com), are designed for novices.

"Our target market is absolutely the soccer moms - people with a scanner in their home or office, or maybe a new digital camera," says Todd Rumaner, PhotoIsland's executive director for worldwide marketing. "Anybody can do this with a little savvy, and it's somewhat fun to personalize."

Each site has its own way to make money through ads, targeted marketing or sales of customized goods. One even offers to transfer your posted images onto 18 iced cookies for $34.95.

Several are driven by software makers that hope to hook visitors on their premium products by showing them the ropes. In fact, Adobe learned long ago that many people were willing to pay $600 or more for its high-end, professional Photoshop program to perform the very basic manipulations needed to post pictures to home pages.

"They don't know a JPEG graphic from a GIF. All they want to do is share their photos on the Web," says Drew McManus, Adobe's group product manager for consumer and online solutions. "The motivation is so strong that people go to heroic lengths to do it."

The rush to erect photo-sharing Web sites is fueled by some intriguing numbers. According to InfoTrends Research Group, which analyzes the digital imaging market, 25 percent of households with Internet access own a scanner. Most purchasers of scanners and digital cameras say they intend to post photos on the Web or send them with e-mail.

Interest is expected to rise along with the purchases of digital still cameras, which will hit 29 million by 2003, says the Cahners In-Stat Group.

Although many photo-sharing Web sites launched only this year, InfoTrends estimates that they've attracted nearly 100 million users. That places them among the fastest-growing segments of the Internet.

In general, such services fall into three categories.

Photo communities allow users to upload digitized images to the Web as part of an array of keep-in-touch products for family, school, friends and other groups that may benefit from an online gathering spot.

Photo album sites also let users post their pictures, which are often stored in customizable templates or slide shows.

Photo-finishing services offer to post prints on the Web as an option when photographers submit their rolls of film for processing at a store.

"This Christmas would seem to be a prime opportunity for these sites," says InfoTrends research analyst Lia Schubert.

Photo communities

One of the most ambitious of this genre is the partnership between Adobe and eCircles, makers of a suite of Web-based products to assist groups in organizing and communicating. The site (www.adobe.ecircles.com) was launched in August. In its first week, more than 100,000 people downloaded Adobe's ActiveShare software, Mr. McManus says.

The target market is groups such as high school classes, professional associations and extended families. Among the features of the venture are calendars, discussion forums, bulletin boards, chat rooms and file-sharing.

The first member of a group can download a free copy of ActiveShare to begin creating an online photo album. ActiveShare enables users to wipe out red eye, as well as size, adjust color and crop scanned snapshots. One click uploads the finished product directly into an album created at www.adobe.ecircles.com.

Then it's time to find out who your friends are.

A template allows you to invite others through e-mail to view the pictures and contribute to the eCircle. Joiners answer a questionnaire and pick a password. Each member can invite more people, start other circles, post comments on photos already posted and upload their own to group or private collections.

The combination of text and photo-based interactions is compelling.

"When you show people pictures, you don't just hand them a stack of photos and say, 'Here, look at these,' " says Mr. McManus. "You flip through them together while talking about them. Not everybody has a digital camera or scanner. But everybody has a keyboard."

Other major players have recently entered this realm, including Microsoft communities.msn.com and Intel www.gatherround.com.

Most of these sites offer to keep groups updated on activities by sending out automated e-mailings. Some of those mailings contain advertisements for photo equipment, software and other merchandise.

And many sign-up forms contain offers to "opt-in" for regular updates on the sponsors' new products.

Once posted, the pictures are available only to invited members of each photo community. Discretion is advised, however, because risqué or embarrassing snapshots can be downloaded easily and distributed by any visitor.

Photo album sites

These sites present a variety of display mechanisms for uploaded photos. Specialized digital photo albums for new babies, weddings, vacations, birthdays and other events are available at most.

Once these sites have your images, many offer to sell invited guests T-shirts, coffee mugs and posters plastered with your work.

A decision on which site to use may hinge on several factors. PhotoIsland, for example, limits the amount of space for picture storage to 10 megabytes, more than enough for most family endeavors. Additional 100MB chunks of Web space can be purchased for $29.99 a year.

Proprietary mechanisms for uploading images and editing them online are also diverse.

For example, PhotoIsland and its software partner, Arcsoft, provide tools that let users simply drag multiple photos straight from Windows Explorer to the Web storage area and manipulate them online. The site also offers unusual gifts made with the software, including photo montage posters.

"The gifts are really a dime a dozen," says Mr. Rumaner, the PhotoIsland executive. "Where we're different is that we're an image software company first. When you start to use us, our software, there is interaction back and forth with the Web site automatically."

Another service, PhotoLoft www.photoloft.com features contests for photo and album of the week. It is among a growing number of sites that allow users to post shots of items they want to auction.

Some operations, such as Club Photo www.clubphoto.com, specialize in public displays of amateur photography. This San Jose, Calif., company also offers to decorate cookies with users' images for a fee.

Mslide www.mslide.com provides online tools to put music to a slide show made from your uploads.

Photo finishers

Kodak and America Online introduced their You've Got Pictures service earlier this year. By checking off a box on a film-processing envelope, amateur photographers can have their work automatically displayed on their AOL welcome screens for $5.95.

Seattle FilmWorks www.filmworks.com now offers PhotoWorks, which processes rolls of film, then e-mails customers a Web page address where the finished prints can be viewed. Web storage is free as long as you send in more film at least twice a year or make other purchases. The best of your shots can be e-mailed right from the site.

Local outlets such as MotoPhoto in Snider Plaza near Southern Methodist University are also taking to the Internet. In October, MotoPhoto began accepting e-mailed digital images and printing them on high-quality silver halide paper.

"That way they get true archival quality from digital media," says John P. Hughett, spokesman for the Snider Plaza outlet. "Up until now, there just hasn't been a way to make a permanent print when you're using a digital camera."

Film processing over the Internet will grow rapidly, Ms. Schubert of InfoTrends says.

"Right now, I'd say it's still the early adopters who are using digital photography now and are out front," she says. "I think AOL's deal is going to mainstream it. We're about to see this take off."

E-mail Staff Writer Doug Bedell at dbedell@dallasnews.com.