Recently in Services Category
I got an email today about Box.net's new OpenBox service which allows the editing of photos stored online.
OpenBox allows you to "bring the power of web applications directly into your existing Box account". Translation? If you're storing and sharing photos with Box.net you can right click on any photo in your Box.net account and edit the image with Picnik
What is Box.net?
Box.net is an online storage and sharing service that gives you access to your files from anywhere. With Box, you can access important documents from your desktop computer, laptop, or even mobile phone. Once you've uploaded your files to your online storage on Box, you can also share them with anyone, anytime — Box makes online web file sharing simple.
In the "huge step forward in the evolution of digital photography online" Flickr has just announced a partnership with online photo editing service Picnik.
Picnik’s awesome photo editing tools are now only a click away. If you’ve ever wanted to deal with the dreaded red eye or crop a photo just so, click on the new “edit photo” icon located above one of your photos and get started.Picnik has been providing online photo editing for a while now. As soon as we saw it, we knew that there was huge potential for us to join together. Rather than Flickr diverting from our speciality to enter a realm we had no (particular) expertise in, the thought of a partnership seemed much more sensible.
The Picnik/Flickr collaboration works similarly to other 3rd party services who’ve built additional tools on top of the Flickr API: You’ll need to pass through the step of giving the Picnik service permission to edit and save your photos… It’s a little bit like you’re “installing” Picnik on your Flickr account, but with nothing to download.
Looks like the previously mentioned Photoshop Online isn't going to be Photoshop Online after all. Adobe senior product manager John Nack says instead that by "Photoshop-branded" we don't mean the professional version of Photoshop. The tools being discussed here are targeted at the consumer market-- especially all the people using social networking and media sharing sites."
So instead of a tool for serious amateur photographers or pros it's aimed squarely at a lower end consumer market. That answers a few of the questions I'd had earlier and really sets the stage for an interesting play for dominance in this market between Google's Picassa and the "Photoshop-branded" product Adobe is going to put out. Since both products are going to be free it seems like the definitions of success and the path to revenue will be very different for both. Will Google try a better/bigger system of getting people to order prints (a la Flickr's which allows you to choose having prints mailed to you or picked up by you at your local target), will Google try to grow Picassa's web album feature? Will success for the "Photoshop-branded" product be measured by how many users of the free online product go on to buy Photoshop Elements?
ProtectMyPhotos is a slick new online backup service that automatically syncs the photos on your computer with secure, offsite servers. Online backup isn't new or sexy but automatic backup that's secure and completely simple to set up and run? That's the new hotness.
Download a small application, tell it to either scan your whole system for photos or tell it which folders to scan and then let it run quietly in the background and do its thing. After the initial time consuming scan and uploading process ProtectMyPhotos unobtrusively makes sure the photos on your hard drive match the photos in your online backup. Add new photos? ProtectMyPhotos detects them and automatically uploads them to the datacenter. Delete some photos? ProtectMyPhotos let's you know about any discrepancy so you can make sure that what you deleted is what you actually want gone. It's very cool and very easy to use.
I keep mentioning the simple factor here because I'm thinking of getting my grandmother a subscription to ProtectMyPhotos for Christmas. My grandma loves digital photography and digital photos. When she thinks about her computer it's in terms of how many pictures she can get on it, how safe her photos are on it, how easily she can get to her photos on it, and how harshly she needs to warn the grandkids not to mess up her photos on it. A simple, automatic back up process would give her peace of mind and save me hours of DVD backup burning on visits. That's right, ProtectMyPhotos is so easy and painless to use I feel confident hooking my grandma up with it.
The free account allows unlimited backup of low res jpegs. The paid account is $49.95 per year and works with nearly every image format you can think of including RAW files. In addition the service is stretching the limits of its name by allowing you to back up video, mp3 and other audio files, office documents, and financial documents (Quicken, MS Money, etc). You can access your files from anywhere with a secure web based file browser and restore any lost files with a click.
Tags: photography, backup, ProtectMyPhotos, file backup, photo backup, data backup
Do something different with your images. Make personal photo cards with as many as 25 of your images. They are a fun and inexpensive way to show off your images. Available single- or double-sided, with the capability to add images as well as text.
This is a tool I'm excited about. I love the idea of personal calling cards and for photographers this is a great way to show off your stuff. QOOP is integrated with Flickr, Photobucket and other popular photo services so it's super simple to grab your images.
Tags: photo sharing, QOOP, photography, Flickr
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
I received prints today from Shutterfly. This is the first time I've used this online lab so I was anxiously awaiting my order to compare Shutterfly's work to other online labs I've used. I'm generally pleased because the prints work fine for the purpose I bought them for (namely being framed or even just magnetically tacked up for display in my own home). However if I had a less specific or more formal need for these prints I'm not sure I'd be so pleased.
The color prints have phenomenal and true color. Deep greens, true reds and pure whites. I have absolutely no complaints about the color quality. The black and white prints are another story. The contrast that I had both on my screen and in some samples I printed with my low end photoprinter was exactly as I wanted it. The black and white Shutterfly prints are muddled. The contrast is weak and shadows and shades of gray just seem inadequate. I'm sure a combination of less than high end post production on my end and lack of calibration on Shutterfly's end is probably to blame but the black and white prints definitely aren't where I'd like them to be.
The main issue I have with the Shutterfly prints though can be looked at in one of two different ways. Either "it's such a minor thing you should let it go and not make a big deal out of it." Or "this is such an obvious detail I can't believe they don't have better quality control in this area." I fall into the latter camp. On each of the dozen or so prints I got one edge of the print was rough to the touch. The roughness is from an unclean cut in the paper. Imagine you used a paper cutter on photo paper that was clearly not sharp enough. Instead of making one, swift clear cut instead the cut is ragged with tiny bits of fiber left over that weren't separated. I would never give a print with such an obvious defect to a client or a friend. I'm proud of my photography and want to be proud of my prints as well. If I'd made the prints at home I'd never hand one out if I'd failed to get a clean cut on the edges so you can be sure I wouldn't hand one out like that when I've spent money on it.
To be fair to Shutterfly I'll mention a couple things I really liked about their service.
1. The service was incredibly fast. The order was printed and shipped within less than 24 hours.
2. You have the option of adding a caption to the back of each print.
So would I use Shutterfly again? Yes absolutely if I was only ordering color prints for either my own private use or if I was going to frame them before delivering them to anyone else.
Tags: shutterfly, onlinelab, prints, photo prints, photography
Google has just launched a beta version of Picasa Web Albums. By invitation only so far, the service gives users 250MB of online storage for web photo albums created by Picasa, Google's desktop photo application.
Sign up to request an invitation to the beta trial at the Picasa Web Albums site.
On the FlickrBlog today George said changes to the navigation and user interface were needed because "As Flickr grew organically, the site became a little, well ... "rambly" over the years." So the rambly-ness is being addressed and changes are coming. And in a completely grown up responsibility vein Flickr is giving advanced warning about the changes.
