Switched On: High-resolution photos want to be free

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

It's happened to all of us. You're having a pleasant lunch with your gal pal klatch and in walks Steven Tyler – in slow-motion, no less. Instantly, your inner drunk Wrigley Field fan chasing a foul ball kicks in. After you've trashed the restaurant, all of your Aerosmith-lovin' supermodel lunchmates want a copy of those pictures. And being a tech-savvy stalker, you want to send them the high-resolution originals so that they can crop them or print them at large poster sizes for their own shrines.

But now what do you do? The first thing is you probably have to remember to send them all the photos later, because there isn't a way to do it now. E-mail might work if it's a photo or two, but if the rest of Aerosmith had also been there, you might have to either pick and choose a few or send them at reduced resolution. There are also the big three photo sharing services, but there your friends will also be restricted to viewing a reduced size photo or have to pay to download the original resolution if that's even offered. There are also photo sites where you can offer high-resolution originals, but they often require a subscription.

One of the best ways to share photos today is Hello, a nicely-designed free companion program to Picasa that hasn�t been discussed much in light of the Google acquisition. An instant-messaging-like program, Hello lets you simply and conveniently shares high-resolution originals if you check the proper checkbox. Hello also offers notification of new photos. However, as Windows software, it must be downloaded and won�t work with other platforms. Also, Hello is a point-to-point product that employs a �push� metaphor; what you�d really like is a simple and universal way for your friends to receive your new photos of �70s rock stars automatically. (By the way, they can�t spell �RSS.�). DEMO conference debutante imeem embraces the spirit of this kind of photo sharing, but it is still in limited testing.

One company that offers a limited version of sharing in the field today is Kodak, the old film stalwart that is often derided even though it has managed the digital transition about as well as could be imagined. Virtually all Kodak digital cameras have a few token megabytes of flash memory. In addition to helping consumers avoid the �last shot� dilemma of Polly Perkins in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, you can copy a few pictures from other people�s flash card to your camera. However, this will of course work only if they use the same flash card format that your camera supports. Kodak�s forthcoming EasyShare Picture Viewer, a battery-powered digital photo wallet, might have been an interesting way to do this, but alas it cannot download images directly from digital cameras and is limited to 1024 X 768 photos.

With Kodak and others starting to support Wi-Fi, perhaps more ad hoc picture sharing can take place at the point of capture. However, that will only be part of the solution. The big three photo Web sites have had a business incentive to keep high-resolution photos out of the hands of consumers. Why don�t those with a vested interest in home printing, such as Canon, Epson, or HP, counter this by offering a free consumer software program or Web site that allows simple, automatic sharing of high-resolution among groups of consumers. Unlike music, the �pass-along� value of photos quickly reaches the law of diminishing returns, but a larger pool of high-quality digital images benefits any company in the output business.

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Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis at NPD Techworld, a division of market research and analysis provider The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On, however, are his own. Feedback is welcome at [e-mail].

[david_m @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Once again I'm reminded by the copy and tone of this article how little I have in common with the "target audience."

Is there a thoughtful gadget web site oriented towards the individual, rather than Aerosmith?

[mike s. @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

david, you obviously don't get it, it's a reference to a tv commercial for a digital camera that had steven tyler in it.

[j.o. @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

just stating common knowledge: granted it's a subscription service ~$42/yr, flickr.com really is a good fix for storage and sharing if you get to considering bandwidth and storage issues (both of which are unlimited with flickr)once you get the ball rolling with your 8.1MP digiSLR.

and while i've taken a liking to Hello, it seems like no one i know uses it. any other p2p options for transfering high-res images?

[Markham Bennett @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Another subscription service out there is Smugmug. It is hands down the best place to share your original resolution photos on the web. Also, none of your visitors have to register to see your photos and be bombarded by spam and ads. Oh and for those pros out there, they can turn off the ability for visitors to download the originals.

[Wayne @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

There used to be a great program for peer-to-peer photo sharing. People could subscribe to you shares, and their client program would poll for changes and automatically download them. I had my parents computer set up to subscribe to a folder here to share pictures of our daughter. It worked great, until they shut it down and changed their model (haven't tried the new program). It was Photopeer, now known as Photoleap.

[Andrew @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Can you say "legit use of P2P networks"? What's that? You can, but won't?

This is the kind of thing that P2P was designed for - a whole bunch of people wanting to get a large file that is too big to be e-mailed. Not to mention other protocols too numerous to mention that would accomplish this equally well for even mildly tech-savvy users.

[Myth @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Picasa/Hello works great for sharing (and organizing/editing) your photos.

http://www.picasa.com

And it's free to boot!

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Am I getting the point of this article? Is the autor arguing for a free web site where you can share photos?

Does this make any sense? Bandwidth is not free. Unless you want your photos to have a bunch of ads smacked all over them.

If you want to share your photos, buy some web space. Is it really so hard? Or use whatever amount comes with your internet service - I get 10MB through Earthlink, which is more than enough to share almost as many reasonably high-res, good quality snapshots as I want (though I currently use it to host my video game collection site).

Having ad-hoc wi-fi on a camera would open yourself up to ALL SORTS of problems, so that's no solution at all. Unless you want to spend half your time making sure your photos and folders are organized and password-protected properly on your camera (and then making sure all your friends know the passwords, which would sort of defeat the purpose of having ad-hoc wi-fi for sharing instantly).

[Tony @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Grouper [http://www.grouper.com] is a personal p2p application that will let you share pictures/files/music streams. I tested it out for a while, but hardly any friends/family I sent invitations to bothered to download it, and the two that did were either never connected or didn't bother to put anything interesting in their shares. But, if you could convince your friends to download the program, and they all happen to be in Windows 2000/XP, then you are good to go.

[Dave @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Flickr Pro costs money, but Flickr offers free accounts which are very handy (only the bandwidth is smaller). Plus, it's web-based and offers two levels of privacy (restrict viewing to "friends" and/or "family" - other Flickr users). Also, you can email photos directly to Flickr and those photos can also be automatically posted to a weblog. Also, Flickr has a very open API and there is a growing number of nifty apps that make novel use of it. In short, check it out.

[gt @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

#9 i too was going to suggest grouper. i use it and actually got my brothers and mom to download and use it to share his baby pictures and videos. it is better than picasa since it can share videos, mp3's, ttg's and any files really

[Vince @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

you could use
http://rapidshare.de/en/webhosting.html
or
http://s13.yousendit.com/
zip or rar all the files then upload

[Mark H @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

I would just generate a Bittorrent file of your photos and mail the torrent. Everyone I know uses it with the possible exception of my sister and she actually agrees to the terms of the iTMS.

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Yes Mark, and then when my grandmother, or even my mother for that matter, start ripping torrents off the web, that will work.

Until then, though...

[elizabeth @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Grouper is a great alternative to sharing high-resolution products for free, via private peer-to-peer network. Check it out: www.grouper.com

[Peter @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Multiply! Not only *can* you share those photos, with Multiply it's practically automatic. If you haven't checked it out yet, you will be blown away with what you can do with this site.

http://multiply.com/

[Joseph @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

blogtorrent is the future. People can download pictures, via BitTorrent without any knowledge of the technology and without installing anything. It's perfect; all you have to do is leave your PC on so it can seed (let's face it, everyone already leaves there computers on 24 hours). Installing the tracer is as easy as uploading some PHP pages (you do have your own web server, right?) Problem solved, no need to thank me.

Here's the site:

http://www.blogtorrent.com/

and my own torrent tracker:

http://www.gonzo-wireless.co.uk/torrents/

[Cow @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Assuming that they all your supermodel lunchmates have the new iPod photo, you could just tranfer it from your camera to their iPod's.

[Dave @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

First advertised here...

http://www.woot.com has been having photoshop contests and suggested http://imageshack.us to host images. They claim to have no connection, but like the serivce. It is a very easy solution, close to #12's rapidshare.de

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Actually, HP does have a free photo website for uploading and sharing images. Check out http://hpphoto.com