Photo archive, sharing services impress

A photograph is a memory captured forever. Until you lose track of the negative. Or, these days, the large digital file containing the image bits.

I favor regular data backups, as any regular reader of this column knows, which is why I'm particularly enamored of the growing set of online photo archiving and sharing services that have excellent tools for Mac users to upload hundreds or even thousands of photographs for quasi-permanent, off-site storage.

While these services are primarily aimed at getting you to order prints and other add-ons, several also provide tools for later retrieving photographs you've uploaded. In a drive catastrophe, natural disaster or home implosion you won't have lost everything to do with your past.

Each of the services I examined offers a limited free account or only offers free service; several others — like Smugmug — provide a free trial but require a regular payment to use.

These services are distinct from Web gallery hosts or creation software, in that the original photographs you upload are maintained as individual objects that can be e-mailed or linked to, organized into galleries, or shared with friends, relatives or total strangers.

Most of the major photo-hosting services now feature their own Mac and Windows upload software, either as standalone packages or plug-ins for iPhoto or a Web browser.

And five of the six I looked at work with PictureSync, a Mac OS X uploading program, (holocore.com/?PictureSync), $14 requested, not required). PictureSync works with 16 photo sites for uploading pictures. You select photos within iPhoto, iView MediaPro or Aperture, or drag and drop pictures from the Finder into PictureSync's Pictures window.

You can configure PictureSync with every account you use at any supported service, and then, for instance, upload the same set to Flickr (for public galleries, say) and Shutterfly, if you prefer them for purchasing prints. Beware downsampling! With consumer cameras now capturing 4 megapixels and higher — well over 1600 x 1200 pixels — your archives could seem quaint if you can't get your original images back out.

Buzznet and Webshots reduce the size of images you upload, while the other four services show only reduced previews online. Paid Flickr Pro account holders can download full-resolution images from the Web site; Yahoo! gives only its DSL subscribers full-resolution access. Kodak, Shutterfly and Flickr can provide full-resolution images on CD for a reasonable fee.

Flickr (flickr.com). Flickr provides a simple Mac OS X program for drag-and-drop photo uploads, but several software developers have written their own packages. The folks behind the blog-posting package ecto offer 1001, a Flickr uploader that can also notify you when new photos are added to categories or people you want to track (kula.jp/software/1001/). Another developer released an iPhoto plug-in.

Kodak EasyShare Gallery (kodakgallery.com). Ofoto Express might use the service's old name, but it works quite nicely under Tiger. Dragging photos into its upload interface works as one might hope: File formats the online service can't accept are automatically excluded, but you're warned.

Kodak's EasyShare One digital camera with Wi-Fi can send photos directly to their gallery, making it possible to shoot on the road and archive without a computer or storage being involved. The Wi-Fi connection process and transfer method are cumbersome, but I expect Kodak to learn and improve.

Shutterfly (shutterfly.com). Shutterfly provides a Web browser plug-in and an iPhoto plug-in for upload images. I managed to crash the browser addition the first time I used it, but after restarting Firefox, images uploaded fine. The program excludes unsupported file formats when you try to select them.

Webshots (webshots.com) and Buzznet (buzznet.com). These two hipper services, intended for the MTV Spring Break and LiveJournal crowd to judge by their current home pages, work with PictureSync. Both have rather particular limits for free users. Buzznet downsamples all uploaded images; Webshots stores images at a maximum 1600 x 1200 pixels only.

Yahoo! Photos (photos.yahoo.com). Although Yahoo! acquired Flickr last year, it still operates its own, parallel photo service. It provides an excellent Firefox plug-in for Mac users. (Windows users can pick a Firefox or Internet Explorer plug-in.)

The plug-in lets you select multiple photos through a file-selection dialog box, and automatically uploads only image file formats that Yahoo! Photos supports.

With several other services available — including MSN's Photos offering for its subscribers — don't leave your pictures unprotected in a digital shoebox. Archive and share to preserve your past in the future.

Glenn Fleishman and Jeff Carlson write the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology.

Send questions to Glenn at gfleishman@seattletimes.com.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists