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Advantages:
Fast service, Share your photos with friends easily, in their email, then they can purchase prints for themselves, Loads of extras to play with, some great gift ideas
Disadvantages:
May need to "rotate" images for them to print correctly, Any photos which you link to have an add on them
Fotango is basically a Photo developing company, with the added bonus of a password protected, online photo album. Then there are all sorts of extras, things that they really didn't *have* to bother with. But they did, and they've done it well.
First of all, the online album is free, and if you own a digital camera you can upload your photos for free, then if you want to you can order quality prints from your digital photos, choose the individual pictures you want processed, not the entire film. In addition, if you have ANY digital images in JPEG or jpg format, these can also be uploaded free of charge.
If you don?t have a digital camera, or digital images, they'll send you a freepost envelope for your films, you can even send them
disposable cameras using the envelopes supplied, and their prices are competitive (from £4.99 for 27exp 6in X 4in to £6.99 for 40exp APS).
Once you have your photos online, you can order prints or reprints in a variety of sizes, including 6in X 4in, 7in X 5in, 10in X 8in. They also have the ability to print your pictures onto gifts, Mouse mats, place mats, mugs (I uploaded the Wallace Crest (see my profile) and had it printed onto a mug, as a gift for my Dad, it looks great, I was really pleased!), jigsaws, posters, T-shirts, candles, even onto a chocolate bar!! They also have a selection of frames, and a preview facility so that you can see what your picture will look like, AND when you buy a framed photo you get the picture free.
Not enough? Well, then try the share facility. This enables you to share your photos with ANYONE that you choose. No this does not give them access to your entire collection, they can only see the photos that you want them to. Simply put a tick in each box of the thumbnail of the photos you wish to share and click ?email selected picture to a friend? . Sound simple? It is! There is also a Public Gallery, which you can add any photos to that you choose, and also peruse other peoples photos that they have put there.
Another feature, which comes in handy at times, is the rotate facility. When I decided to try out having some uploaded pictures printed, to see how they came out (I had some free prints to use up), I discovered that they had been cropped badly. It seems that they do not consider the orientation of the pictures when printing, and crop them as though they are all landscape, ruining some pictures. This is resolved by rotating the picture onto their side before ordering. One aspect that I particularly liked about this, was that you can select the pictures in an entire album, choose which side you want face-up on each picture, and rotate them all in one fell swoop!
if you have a website, and you want to display your photos on your site, Fotango.com will supply you with a link to your photo, which you just copy and paste into your web page. They even have a list of your links, located in the public photos section, where you can also view the photos which you are sharing in the public gallery). The down-side to this, is that recently you get "www.fotango.com" across the bottom of your picture.
When you add a site which is easily navigated, well designed, and simple to understand, and, from my experiences (I have ordered several times from them) excellent customer care and fast service, with my orders being received within a couple of days of placing, what you have is a winning formula, and although their prices may not be the cheapest around, they are competitive.
I don't have a digital camera, I'm not very good at photography, but I love this site!
So just sit back in your chair, let the work be done for you, and "share the moment".
*Update* 11th September 2001
Recived an e-mail from fotango.com recently informing me of new features on the site. These are:
Cropping When you have a picture which requires cropping to be printed, you can choose how the picture will be cropped. Simply click on “select cropping” in your basket where a picture requires cropping. This will bring uo a window with several icons icons; these are left, centre, shrink to fit, right or top, middle, shrink to fit, bottom depending on the images requirements. Once you have selected you cropping requirements, click on “save” to close the window.
Online Order Tracking When you place an order on the site you can check on it’s status by going into “my account” and cluicking on “see my most recent order”. There is also a link to a page where you can view all your previous orders, which was not mentioned in the e-mail, and yes they have back-dated it, all my old orders are there. Clicking on each order shows the same information as the Basket, with a thumbnail of each picture and which format (i.e. 4X6 glossy, photo mug), and the address it was delivered to. Only online orders are listed here.
Online Envelope Requesting If you have run out of envelopes to send your films to them, you can now go online, enter “my account” and click on “order more film envelopes”. This will send you to a page where you can select from 1 to 10 envelopes, and whether you wish them to be sent to your “usual” address, displayed on the left, or another address from your address book. This page even allows you to change your address book. But when each envelope holds 4 films or 1 disposable camera, and they send you 2 envelopes every time you receive an order from them, I don’t think I will be using this option a lot. But it’s there if I need it...how comforting!
These additions to the service are certainly welcome, and I’ll update again if they ever find any other improvements to add to their fantastic site.
I seem to recall that someone complained about their orange colour scheme, it’s still orange...sorry!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
I love Fotango! I never need to scan another photograph!!Our last lot of holiday snaps were online a couple of days before we received our prints through the post. Did you know Fotango also can sell products with your pics on (splitting the profit between themselves and yourself) - I do it on my website, it's very good. Think I might need to write an op on them myself actually! FBx
spooks 22.08.2001 01:01
excellent first op,welcome to ciao. i look foreward to reading more of your ops! spooks xx
Aug 21st, 2001
(Sep 11th, 2001)
very helpful by (100%):
