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Prices range from 49 cents for each 4 by 6 print to $20 for each 20 by 30 print.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Getting your digital photos printed online: iPhoto on a Mac and Ofoto on Windows look like winners


April 17, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   Getting regular pictures developed is easy. You take your film to the supermarket or the drug store -- or maybe to a camera store, if you have one close by -- and drop it off. A few days later you have your pictures.
   You don't have to know anything about film development or enlargers and things like that. You snap your pictures and get your prints.
   It's been that way for a century. But you don't need to read the handwriting on the wall to know something very important has happened to photography. Film is the next big dodo.
   Digital cameras outsell film cameras by 7-to-1 these days. Anyone with a digital camera and a modern color inkjet printer can produce color photos at home.
   Making your own color prints is easy. If you use glossy photo paper, you'll probably be able to make photo prints on your inkjet that are almost as good as the kind you get from a film camera and a photo lab.
   But what do you do if you don't have a color inkjet or don't want to buy special paper and ink just to get prints you can send to grandma?
   You can have your photos printed over the Internet. I've been trying out a Kodak photo-printing service that Apple provides in its iPhoto program, and I'm elated over both the quality of the prints and the speed of the service. The prints are better than I've ever been able to get on my home inkjets -- a LOT better in some cases -- and they've always arrived in a couple of days.
   The prints come from Ofoto, a subsidiary of Kodak. (Go to www.ofoto.com for information and free software if you have Windows or an older Macintosh, or go to www.apple.com if you have a modern Mac but don't yet have iPhoto.)
   To order your prints, simply go online and click a couple of times to order prints from photos on your computer. You can get prints from photos taken by a digital camera or from images you've acquired from a scanner.
   I haven't tried the Windows version of Ofoto's software, but I've looked it over and it seems to work a lot like the photo-ordering part of Apple's iPhoto software.
   In iPhoto, you click on a photo you'd like to get prints from, then click a button at the bottom of the screen. A form opens immediately already filled out except for the size of the prints (from 4 inches by 6 inches to 20 inches by 30 inches) and the number you want printed. Make those two choices, click one more time to confirm the order and walk away. you don't have to do anything else. (If you've turned on one-click ordering, the software already knows your credit card number and your mailing address.)
   Prices seem very reasonable, although shipping charges bring them up a little. Prices range from 49 cents for each 4 by 6 print to $20 for each 20 by 30 print. (Apple gives you 10 free 4 X 6 prints when you sign up for the service, but I didn't see a similar offer for Windows users.)
   Prints come back on heavy paper. They're not inkjet prints, and seem much less likely to smear or fade than the inkjet prints I'm used to. The 4 by 6 prints were gorgeous, and I paraded them around for days when I first saw them.
   But nothing prepared me for the quality of the poster-size 20-inch by 30-inch prints. For those prints, I chose some of the photos I took in the Everglades with my new 5.2-megapixel camera. Calling the giant blowups "stunning" would not do them justice. (I'd show you a snapshot of me holding one of my giant prints, but I don't have them handy right now. They're being framed for an art exhibition. I'll show them in the Web version of this column as soon as I get them back.)
   Both iPhoto and Ofoto provide next-day delivery of your prints at a flat rate of $16 per order, using Federal Express. In all the orders I've made, prints arrived in four or five days at most, using standard postal delivery. Small prints arrived in a large padded envelope, and my poster prints came in a strong mailing tube.