21 Oct 05: Firefox 1.0.7 on Windows XP is ok
21 Oct 05: IE 6 on Windows XP is all screwed up, and probably fixable but I can't stand debugging it (see below).
18 Oct 05: Firefox 1.0.6 on OS X 10.4 is ok
18 Oct 05: Safari 2.0.1 on OS X 10.4 is ok for browsing, but type-ahead magic and possibly the whole edit page doesn't work
18 Oct 05: Firefox 1.0.4 on Debian Linux is ok of course, since that's what I use
No, I don't expect that it does. Don't bother to report this as a problem, since I don't care. Do you want to know why?
The most direct way to add more photographs to your gallery is to upload them through the Web site. The Upload page will allow you to upload zero to five files at a time. Each file may be either a single image in JPEG format, or a ZIP archive containing as many images as you like. Any extra files in the ZIP archive that are not recognizable images will be discarded. The maximum size for a single file (JPEG or ZIP) is 256 MB.
When you are uploading a batch of images, you can pre-select certain attributes (Date, Location, and Publication) that you want to automatically apply to the batch. All other attributes, such as Time and Caption, must be edited one by one, since they don't make much sense to apply in a batch. No matter whether or not you pre-assign any values, you can always go back and edit the images one by one.
The default value for Date is the date stamp encoded inside the JPEG file by your digital camera. (It need not be the same across an entire batch; each file is examined one by one.) The default value for Location is nothing. The default value for Publication is "Unsorted". Pictures in your Unsorted pile will not be visible to anyone except you, until you assign them to categories one by one.
If you want to send a single file (JPEG or ZIP), with the default settings, you can do this from the "Quick Upload" form on your home page.
If you have a huge number of files to upload, it is faster to burn them to CD or DVD and send it to me. Files from CDs will be added to your Unsorted box unless you specify otherwise.
The "Edit Preferences" page is where you can update your contact information, set preferences, and change your password.
All of the contact information is optional. Actually, as of now (8 Feb 2005), it is not used for anything or displayed anywhere in the site. In the future, at least the email address may be used by "share these pictures" email functions.
The "Gallery Style" setting controls the "theme" your gallery is displayed in. If you know how to use CSS, you can easily design your own theme and email it to me to have it installed in the list.
When you change your password, make sure you know what you typed, since you will not be asked to confirm it!
The ability to view pictures in the web site is controlled by publication categories (the field called "Publish" on the image editing page.) You may see any pictures that are assigned to a category you have permission to see, no matter who they belong to. If you created a publication category, you are considered its "owner" and you may add or remove other people from the access control list.
The categories named "Public" and "Not Published" are special. Everybody may assign pictures to either of these. Everybody may view Public images, but nobody may view images that are Not Published. When people visit the web site and do not log in, they can see only Public pictures.
Note that the site will always show you pictures that you own, even if you assign them to a category that you cannot view, such as "Not Published". This prevents pictures from being lost.
To get to the Manage Permissions page, go to the admin page and click "Manage Permissions."
You can download ZIP archive files containing large collections of your images from the download page. This might be useful if you want to keep a backup copy, or if you want to move your images to another storage system (though I don't know why you would want to do that).
Click any of the year links to download images from that year, or the "One big file" link to download a ZIP of everything you have ever posted. The page will estimate the size of each file for you; in most cases you will want to start the download and come back in while.
These days, just about any lab will take your JPEG image files and make photographic quality prints. I do not particularly recommend any of these sites over the others.
Be sure to send the original image files when ordering prints; do not just right-click and save the image as displayed in the photoprism web site. You can retrieve the original file for any of your pictures by logging in, clicking the "details" view, then clicking the "original file" link in the Sizes pane.
Update, 12 Apr 2005: You can also have digital prints made at any Target or Wal-Mart. This isn't news, but recently I am seeing that many professional photographers are perversely happy with Wal-Mart in particular. This is because Wal-Mart, in keeping with its philosophy of providing rock bottom service at rock bottom prices, performs no postprocessing or color correction before dumping the files to the Frontier printer. Thus your average point-and-shoot pictures will come out looking noticeably worse, but it is ideal for professionals that are hand profiling their images and don't want them screwed up in the lab.
All prices in the table are for single prints (that is, without any volume or prepay discounts) and the listed shipping price is for the minimum order. A + sign indicates that the price goes up with volume; a - sign indicates that the price goes down.
These prices were gathered on 21 February 2005.
| Site | 4x6 | 5x7 | 8x10 | 11x14 | 16x20 | 4 wallets | Shipping | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mpix | .29 | .99 | 1.99 | 6.99 | 15.99 | .70 | 4.95 | Pittsburg, KS | Another professional-oriented lab. Premium Kodak Endura paper with metallic and lustre upgrades available, mounting and framing services. sRGB profile. |
| ezprints | .29 | .85 | 2.45 | 3.95 | 14.95 | .85 | 1.95+ | Norcross, GA | Fuji Frontier printing. Pro-oriented high volume lab; huge selection of print sizes, provides ICC profile and free calibration prints. |
| ofoto | .25 | .99 | 3.99 | 17.99 | 1.79 | 1.49+ | Emeryville, CA | Kodak paper, Kodak Perfect Touch processing | |
| snapfish | .19 | .95- | 3.79 | 1.79 | .99+ | West Virginia | Kodak paper, matte available, Kodak Royal paper +.05 | ||
| shutterfly | .29- | .99- | 3.99- | 7.99 | 17.99 | 1.79- | 1.79+ | Hayward, CA | Fuji Frontier printing, matte available, correction optional |
| photoaccess | Merged with photoworks | ||||||||
| photoworks | .19 | .99 | 2.99 | 9.95 | 17.95 | .99 | 2.50+ | Seattle, WA | Formerly known as Seattle Filmworks. "Color enhancement" processing. |
| winkflash | .16 | .29 | 1.99 | 3.79 (10x15) | .39 | .99 | Rhode Island | Fuji paper, no color correction, sRGB profile | |
| Adorama | .19 | .49 | 1.99 | 4.99 | .99 | 3.50+ | New York City | Kodak Royak paper, correction optional, FTP upload | |
| National Geographic Labs | .65- | 5.95- | 9.95- | 13.95 (10x12) | 29.95 inkjet | Washington DC | Fuji Frontier printing. (Yes, it's THAT National Geographic.) | ||
| Ritz Camera | .29 | 1.65 | 4.99 | 14.99 | 4.99 | .00 | Local pickups | Appears to be Fuji Frontier printing? | |