DotPhoto.com

Website Review: DotPhoto.com

BY BILL CHACHKES

July | August 2004
Issue No.16

With the advent of digital photography, more people than ever are taking pictures. The question is what to do with all 26,000+ images hanging out on your hard disk. Back in my early days of digital imaging, I used my old Kodak DC25 and DC30 to take pictures of my late mom’s dance company performances and made prints in order to share them with others. She always told me, “It looks nice on the screen, but when you print it out it looks horrible”.

Fast forwarding to the present, there are Websites that offer digital storage of your photos. This is nothing new; people have been using sites like Yahoo Photos and AOL’s My Photos for quite a while. In fact, there are several good choices out there if you want to share and/ or print your photos.

One new entry deserving of mention is DotPhoto.com. I tried it out even though I was skeptical when Peter Fine sent us the press release in March. I’d already had extensive experience with Yahoo’s service and Fuji’s Member site, but DotPhoto offered other options for the sharing and reproduction of my images. The offering of 4x6 prints for 29 cents each is universal; even Walgreen’s and CVS pharmacies offer printing directly from memory cards, floppy disks, and CD’s. With DotPhoto, all you do is upload the images, and it does the rest. Also, while the image editing tools in this application in no way compare to those in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, the basics are available here if you need them.

The site’s interface is simple to use. Basic membership is free, and there are also paid levels offering even greater discounts for prints. I was able to upload nearly 1,000 photos to 5 different albums that I’d set up to share with friends and family. Each person could download the chosen photos and pay by credit card. The burden of printing photos was off me.

It is also possible to send e-mail invitations to share the pictures. This was good for me because I had three major photo shoots in the space of three weeks. Two were over the same weekend: the football draft in late April, and my in-law's 50th wedding anniversary party. Two weeks later was my niece’s Sweet Sixteen party.

While at the football draft, I took pictures to go along with the stories I was writing, and at the other events I functioned as the family photographer.

In all three cases, DotPhoto satisfied my online needs. For the sports writing, it was easy to share my album of 150+ photos with my editors, who preferred this method to the uploading of all photos directly to them. They just selected the ones they wanted.

The two family events were a bit more complicated. My father-in-law originally said he wouldn’t need extra sets of prints, but once he saw how good they looked, he wanted a set for each of his friends. No problem! Eleven more ordered and delivered in less than 72 hours. My niece was also happy to be able to share the photos from her party with friends.

Finally, the prints were nothing short of top quality, professional, photo output. Like iPhoto/ .Mac, you can have a complete, bound album printed if you wish (with a slightly longer turnaround), and there is a large range of photo, gift ideas. Just a few of them are: clocks, mugs, and mouse pads. Unlike .Mac, DotPhoto.com offers unlimited storage capacity as long as you keep your account active. Overall, the site is well designed and caters to both beginner and advanced digital photographers.

As long as you don’t mind a three-day turnaround for prints, you will be very happy with a DotPhoto.com account.