The digital photo sharing service is rapidly evolving, becoming more diverse and catering to various user needs. In the past, digital photo sharing services often required a small fee, though not expensive. Nowadays, almost all of these services are free and easy to use.
Below is one of the best and most appealing free digital photo sharing services:
AOL Pictures
AOL Pictures is a new service from AOL. This service is completely free for everyone. AOL Pictures not only allows users to share photos with friends but also provides basic photo editing capabilities and professional printing options. AOL Pictures allows photo uploads via IM or email and lets users send photos to other websites.
AOL’s photo sharing service is simple and user-friendly. After installing a small ActiveX control, you can easily upload photos by dragging and dropping them into a convenient Windows window. The service offers two upload options: a fast option for quicker uploads but lower image quality, or a slower option for better quality images.
Once you have installed the ActiveX controls, you can edit your photos by cropping, rotating, adjusting brightness and contrast, and removing red-eye. Users can also add captions and create their own slideshows.
AOL’s photo management tools are impressive, truly feature-rich and powerful enough to satisfy any average user. AOL is indeed an attractive and simple free digital photo sharing service. Users will quickly become familiar with the service’s interface in just a few minutes.
Shutterfly Collections
Shutterfly Collections allows users to create personal web pages to upload and share digital photos. This service provides a dedicated URL for easy access. Friends and family can also add their comments or upload their photos to this web page. You can also add password protection to your web page. Shutterfly Collections is offered for free, with each registered account allowed to create up to 2 web pages, and of course, sharing and printing features are included. The ability to create personal web pages has contributed to Shutterfly’s success and popularity.
Shutterfly Collections is a web service that lets you upload digital photos, manage them, and edit as well as print them. Unlike before, where you had to upload each image individually and then send the link to users you wanted to share with, with Shutterfly, you only need to send the web page link and password (if applicable), and all your latest photos are instantly ready to share. Before using Shutterfly Collections, you need to download and install an ActiveX control for quick and simple access.
FilmLoop
Although FilmLoop is still in beta, this service is quite appealing. FilmLoop operates like a movie projector on your desktop, allowing you to scroll through preview images similar to watching a slow-motion film. Whenever you want to view a photo in full display, just click on it. FilmLoop allows you to create “slow-motion clips” and share them with friends and family.
Creating these “slow-motion clips” is straightforward; just drag and drop the digital photos, and they will automatically be uploaded to the company’s server, ready to be shared with other users. Users can also submit these clips to FilmLoop’s public directory for everyone to access, or restrict access to only certain users. If you don’t mind others editing your photo albums, you can allow others to edit these clips as well, adding comments and inserting additional photos…
In the public directory of FilmLoop, you can find many “slow-motion clips” about news, sports, entertainment images, and commercial clips from eBay and Purina Naturally… available for free. However, a minor drawback of FilmLoop is that it does not currently support keyword searches for clips. The company has stated that this feature will be available soon.
Flickr
Flickr is a web service that allows users to share digital photos. Flickr differs from other digital photo sharing services such as AOL Pictures, Shutterfly, and FilmLoop. This service tends to create an online community where you can interact with other users sharing digital photos.
Registering for Flickr is free. After entering your email address and password, you can quickly upload your favorite photos online. Users can upload up to 6 photos at a time. If you’re not comfortable with Flickr’s photo upload tool, you can use other tools from different digital photo managers.
Flickr easily allows you to add information about your photos and keywords to make them easily searchable in the future. At the same time, you can control who accesses your photos. Users can choose to make their photos available to the entire Flickr community or restrict access to just a few friends or family members.
Minh Phúc
