Even though I do think the photo sharing market is getting crowded with Flickr clones, wannabes and also rans I try to check out all the new ones I find just in case something really is groundbreaking and cool. It's not often I find something that meets those criteria but Tabblo does. Tabblo is billed as "a brand new way to tell a story with your photos." The Wall Street Journal says "If you want people to see your photos in a more-personalized way, Tabblo is a good service that will change the way you look at online photo sharing."

Tabblo is Web 2.0 and ajaxified to the core and I mean that in a good way. It's extremely intuitive and easy to accomplish the main site objective which is to share photos in a different way. That different way is by arranging photos into tabblos or collages and photo essays with text. The mechanism behind building displays is incredibly easy and powerful. You can choose background colors, layouts, rotate images, do minor image effects (convert to sepia for example). A great example of the flexibility tabblos offer is Title IX from a photographer who was working for the Orlando Sentinel. Title IX is his photo essay representing "a year long personal project" commemorating the anniversary of Title IX. The obvious advantage to this method of display instead of say a Flickr set slide show is the extreme flexibility in layout and design and the option of adding text among images.

In addition to the cool factor of the photo displays themselves it's extremely simple in Tabblo to set privacy controls, integrate your photos from Flickr, upload pictures from popular photo apps like Picasa, tag and search images and all the other things you'd expect from a next generation photo sharing service, like the ability to order prints. In the short time I've played with the service all of the options and tool integrate seamlessly and provide a really great user experience.

Though it's probably not going to replace Flickr as my go-to photo sharing service Tabblo is on my list of useful tools. When I want the creative flexibility to very easily create photo essays and collages (a post-family Christmas photo collage from which family members can order their own prints comes to mind) Tabblo is definitely where I'll turn.

Tags: photo sharing, tabblo, photography