Best of the Rest

While the online photo sharing, printing and product sites listed in the Rest of the Best section are almost as good as the ones in the Best of the Best section, you will notice that a few of them are more devoted to the sharing feature of this review such as Flickr. All on-line sites are not created equal and you will see that certain sites might further specialize in community forums or social networking with a photography angle while another site might be more geared to professional photographers such as Mpix.

Nearly all of the sites offer some sort of image storage although you might have to purchase either prints or products at least once a year to keep this ‘storage’ feature active. I would prefer to pay for the ability to archive my images as this helps to ensure that the company hosting my photographs will continue to be a viable business, and I won’t be bombarded with advertisements. However, even some well-known sites like Yahoo Photos and Sony’s Imagestation have gone out of business. This means you have to take ultimate responsibility for the proper backup of your photographs and not exclusively rely upon any of these sites listed for backup. In order to qualify for this review, each site needed to have the ability to share, print and create products with your photographs.

While you might have a photographic ink jet printer for some of your printing needs, many photography enthusiasts want to share their images with others – even those images based on specific criteria like photographs of England or photographers who like taking images of trains. Most of the sites listed allow you to join communities, read blogs and even have your own website (listed under the main online site).

Also, if you have a new addition to your family, canine, feline or human, and want to send out 4x6 prints, then it is not cost effective to print all of your images at home or at the office. You will need to employ the services of one of these sites. Many of the sites offer efficient uploading of your images (mostly in JPEG, but a few allow high resolution image uploads), good color prints, and above average turnaround.

The Rest of the Best online photo sharing, printing and product site is Flickr. They have one of the largest online photo communities, have limited advertisements, produce excellent prints and have a wide variety of products through clever partnering with top third-party sources for items such as photo books, greeting cards and photo cubes. If you want a wider variety of products in the Rest of the Best category, then investigate SnapFish or Dot Photo.

Remember, you when displaying images in public spaces, you will always want to protect your copyright. You can add a copyright or even a watermark to your images and a few of the sites will allow you to do this online. As you get more involved with any of these online sites, you might notice the quality of your photography improving. Why? Because you are paying attention to your images and how to share, print and make products with them.