ofoto.co.uk

...here!"

Well ofoto.co.uk provides a kind of halfway-house between the two. It allows you safe and unlimited storage of your digital photos, the ability to share these "albums" with whoever you choose, and then you can order whatever copies you want for a reasonable price

Kodak
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Ofoto is owned by Kodak, so straight away you've got the reassurance that this is a reliable company, and ...
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Registering at ofoto.co.uk is simple, at you also get 10 free 6X4 prints when you join. As per most websites of this type you get your own secure login details to ensure that no-one else can see your photos or access your details

Creating an album
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As per real life, your photos are stored in an album. Essentially you can create as many or as few albums as you like. It's ... more

Now digital cameras are great, don't get me wrong. The quality of the photos you can take are incredible, and the ability to review, delete or store your shots is a life-saver. I bought a digital camera at Xmas and wouldn't be without it now

But there's something very reassuring about having the physical photos in your hand, plus you then get to share them with your friends and family and put them up in frames. Not forgetting the great "take my holiday photos into work and show off what I was doing whilst you were stuck here!"

Well ofoto.co.uk provides a kind of halfway-house between the two. It allows you safe and unlimited storage of your digital photos, the ability to share these "albums" with whoever you choose, and then you can order whatever copies you want for a reasonable price

Kodak
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Ofoto is owned by Kodak, so straight away you've got the reassurance that this is a reliable company, and one that's not going to disappear in a week or two, taking your online photos with it! You've got a trusted brand plus any photos you order are going to be Kodak quality

Joining
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Registering at ofoto.co.uk is simple, at you also get 10 free 6X4 prints when you join. As per most websites of this type you get your own secure login details to ensure that no-one else can see your photos or access your details

Creating an album
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As per real life, your photos are stored in an album. Essentially you can create as many or as few albums as you like. It's a way to co-ordinate and organise your photos and make sure you know where your individual holiday, family or special occasion shots are. This process is really simple

Uploading your photos
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What should be simple process turned out to be quite hard. It was recommended that I save my digital photos to my computer first, as this would help the upload speed. Obviously this then defeats one of the major advantages of this site - that you don't take up valuable memory space!

So having done this, you select which photos to upload, via a "browse" tool. I selected around 70 photos from a recent holiday and went into the other room to watch TV. Coming back in an hour or so later, I was disappointed to see that only a quarter of the photos had uploaded.

This speed gets even slower if you're using the computer at the same time, and even causes some uploads to crash. It's the sort of thing you may want to do overnight or if you're popping out for the afternoon. This crucial element of the site really lets it down, as you can't see why the uploads are so slow

But as I mentioned at the start, you do get unlimited storage capacity, so for free you can't really complain too much - and that could be why the upload process is so slow...?

Editing Features
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Once you've (finally) uploaded your photos, there are a number of basic editing tools that you can use to "enhance" your photos:

- add title
- add border
- crop
- remove red-eye
- rotate and flip

You can also add "effects", which in this instance is limited to changing the colour-scale of your photos to:

- sepia
- grey scale
- blue
- red
- green

There's also a series of "artistic" effects that you can use, which apply a number of different styles to your photo. These are all pretty useless and only succeed in making my photos all distorted and blurry!

- watercolour
- sketch
- soft hatch
- soft glow
- charcoal
- neon

Like I said it's pretty basic, and not fantastic quality. If you wanted to do any serious editing then you'd be far better off with something like Adobe Photoshop

Album Features
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The "share album" facility allows you to send a secure link to your friends and family, from which they can access your online album. This is done on an individual album basis, so letting mum see those shots of the new dog won't mean she can see those "private" photos you took of your partner.....

So far, there's nothing that Ofoto offers that I feel you couldn't do a lot easier on a semi-decent PC. In fact, my computer is still my first choice for storing all my online photos and albums, purely on the basis of ease of access.

Ordering Prints
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But where Ofoto really comes into its own is the ability to order quality copies of your photos at a reasonable price. If you go into Boots or Snappy Snaps, they will charge you an absolute fortune to print off your digital photos and the quality can be dubious at times

So on Ofoto you simply click on which photos from which albums you want to order, select the size, and securely pay online. You can order as few or as many as you like, the price is the same for one print as it is for one hundred, and varies by size:

- 6x4 = 24p
- 7x5 = 54p
- 8x6 = £1.49
- 10x8 = £2.49

Now for most people's uses, 6x4 will be more than enough and at 24p each are really not that expensive. All the photos you order also come with an "index print" with a thumbnail image of all the photos, and you can include a message on this to whoever you're ordering it for (for no extra cost)

As I mentioned, and as you'd expect, the online payment mechanism is entirely secure, and protected by SSL software

Delivery
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With Ofoto you can have your prints sent anywhere in the world, which is really useful if you have friends or family overseas and you want to share your memories with them.

Surprisingly, delivery isn't free, no matter how many prints you order. You'd have thought that for the larger volumes, Kodak could stretch to this, but no. Prices vary according to number of photos ordered and where they're going to.

I've listed the prices below by no. of prints - UK delivery - EU delivery - Worldwide Delivery

1-19 / £0.99 / £1.39 / £4.49
20-39 / £1.29 / £1.79 / £4.49
40-59 / £1.69 / £2.29 / £4.49
60-79 / £1.99 / £2.69 / £4.49
80-99 / £2.49 / £3.39 / £4.49

The claimed delivery times are 2-4 days, max 10, and of the prints I've order for myself and my folks, there's never been any problems

Upon receipt, the quality of the photos was excellent, but then you wouldn't really expect anything less from Kodak!

Customer Service
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I've only had cause to email Ofoto once with a query, but I got an email response within 2 days, albeit from someone in Holland who didn't appear to fully understand what I wanted! But they were friendly, helpful and sorted me out

There's also a fairly good Help tool which answers a lot of the common questions you may have

Conclusion
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Ofoto.co.uk is far from the worst online photo storage site, in fact it is among the best as far as I can tell. It offers free unlimited storage, which you won't get many places elsewhere, and the price and quality of the prints you order are fantastic

But going forward I only really plan to use the site for my own ends. The upload process is so slow that I will keep copies of my photos either on CD or on my computer. I'll only store the photos online that I want prints of, which will save a whole lot of time and bother.

But even then, this is still a pretty useful free tool. If all you want is good quality digital prints delivered to your door for a reasonable price, then Ofoto will be for you. But if you want a sophisticated and quick online storage or editing tool, then I suggest you look elsewhere

 

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