Picture Perfect

With the advent of the digital camera, which is easily accessible to a large number of people, the concept of photography is now redefined. The very concept and ways of storing photographs has also changed and is now quite diametrically opposed to what it used to be. Of course, there are still a few amongst us, who prefer hard cover and fancy albums to store their memories, but by and large, and like everything else, albums have also gone online.

One such website which has helped in facilitating this, is Shutterfly: a website where photographs can be uploaded and shared with family and friends. But other than that, it carries quite a few interesting features which makes it conspicuous from its other cyber counterparts. For one thing, it is hassle-free. For instance, once you have logged in and created an account, all you need to do is to use the ‘add photos option’ to create your albums and then add photos to it. You can add up to ten photos at a time. A word of advice though: if you are using a dial-up connection and the photos are large in size, try uploading not more than three at a time. There is always a chance that your internet connection may disconnect or electricity may break down, so this way at least some pictures will get loaded.

Once your albums are created and the photos uploaded, you can always play around with your collection. Then there are options to crop photos or put a fancy border around them. You can even add captions to individual photos. The possibilities are never-ending and in fact are only limited by how much time you have to spruce up your albums and photos. So let your imagination go wild.

Then of course, there is the sharing option. Here, you can select the album and then choose individual photos from them. Then you can write out the email address(es) and personal note to go with the photos.

All in all, Shutterfly is quite a handy website. And if you have done your homework, that is, properly compressed your photographs using a good photo-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, it is only a matter of minutes before you can upload and share your photographs. The best part is that once your photographs are uploaded, you can easily delete them from your camera and hard drive to begin clicking again.

Shutterfly’s privacy policy has some useful guidelines too. It basically advises one to exercise caution when sending the links of the photos, since once the link is out, you can never know who it may reach. So only send the links to your most trusted family members and friends.

So there you have it. This website is clearly a good complement to your offline albums. Of course, nothing can substitute hard copies or the charm of a good album which is there for you whenever you need it. Online albums may be convenient but their accessibility depends on the internet connection and power supply. Of course, you can get prints of your digital photos anytime you want, but as long as you need some place to backup photos, Shutterfly is the answer.

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To keep your photos in one place and share them with family and friends, log on to http://www.shutterfly.com