Goleta DeskTop Publishing User Group
Meeting Information

March 7 -- How do I Share my Pictures?

Pictures used to be so easy -- you'd get prints and then stick them in an album (or shoebox) and pull them out to look at them and share them with others. Now we have a lot more choices about how to share them and sometimes it isn't easy to figure out the best way. Tonight we'll cover the relative advantages of photographic prints, inkjet prints, email attachments, web galleries, and CD-ROMs.

There are a variety of ways of sharing pictures, including
 • Standard photographic prints
 • Color printer prints (often inkjet)
 • Email attachments
 • Online photographic galleries
 • Web pages
 • CD-ROM and DVD

Which method is best depends upon your audience, of course. Tonight's presentation will show the advantages and problems of each of these approaches so you will know which one to pick for a specific project.

Here's a brief overview of some of the more common possibilities:

Photographic Prints:
Viewable anywhere, but are costly in quantity, especially if they have to be mailed. Easily obtained and fairly long-lived compared to most inkjet prints. The resolution of the picture should be about 240 pixels per inch, so it needs to be about 960 pixels by 1440 pixels to make a decent 4x6 print, or 1200 pixels by 1700 pixels for a decent 5x7 print. Check with the specific photofinisher to see what they want.
 

	Cost Breakdown:
	Goleta Camera Center (GCC)
		$3 setup + $0.65/print for 4x6, $3.29 for 5x7. They send it to Kodak.
	Fromex
		$4.59 setup + $0.85/print for 4x6, $3.95/print for 5x7.
	Weight for Mailing:
		1 ounce: six 4x6 prints

Color Printer Prints:
Similar features as photographic prints, but with the additional advantage that a small number can be printed quickly when needed (Aunt Sue needs a copy of the graduation picture before she leaves). However, they often are more costly than photographic prints, many are short-lived, and the time it takes to print a significant number can be inconvenient.
 

	Cost Breakdown:
	Epson 785EPX printer with Epson ink cartridges
		Epson 4" x 26' roll: $20 (good for 52 4x6 prints) $0.38/print
		Epson 785EX cartridges: $45 (good for 100 4x6 prints) $0.45/print
		Total: $0.83/print
		Initial cost: $200
	Alternative:
		Epson 8.5 x 11 Photo Paper: $20 at Costco for 100 sheets -> $0.07/print
		Third party ink: $50 for 1800 prints -> $0.03/print
		Total: $0.10/print
		Initial cost: $430 because you need to buy the Continuous Inking System (CIS) and profile, which adds another $230 to the fixed cost of the printer.
	If you do 277 or more 4x6 prints before throwing out this printer, the alternative is cheaper than the Epson printer with roll paper and Epson ink cartridges.
	You have to do 662 4x6 prints with this setup to be cheaper than taking the photos to Goleta Camera Center (which we will refer to as GCC). However, if you want 5x7 prints, this alternative is cheaper than GCC if you do 131 prints or more.
	Time is an issue: it takes my Epson 1200 2.4 minutes to print a 4x6, 3.0 minutes to print a 5x7. If we're talking about knocking out 100 5x7 prints in one sitting, that comes to 5 hours. That's a lot of sitting! However, if the comparison is between printing 20 5x7 prints in an hour or running to GCC (twice, once to drop the stuff off, and again to pick it up a day later), using the printer doesn't sound so bad.

Email Attachments:
OK for a few recipients who are somewhat savvy, but take much longer to receive than getting the same picture from the Web. Also, many people don't have a simple way of going back and retrieving a specific picture from their email, while pictures on the Web are always accessible.

Cost: Mainly online time for both the sender and recipients. Say you send a 640 x 480 pixel JPEG image which has been compressed to 154KB (the original is 900KB). The size of the email attachment becomes 211KB because of the binary to ASCII coding -- this is 33% larger than the same file would be on a web page, and it takes 33% longer to receive this file as an email than it does to look at it on a web page. Also you have to upload that same file (with the attendent wait factor) for each separately addressed email. This gets real tedious.

Note the difference in resolution of the picture: for email you generally do not want to exceed the screen size, which means limiting the dimensions to 720 pixels wide by 540 pixels high if you expect your recipients to have their screens set to 800x600. For printing the picture, you needed about 240 pixels per inch, so for a 4x6 print that comes to 960 pixels by 1440 pixels. This is about twice as many pixels in each dimension as what displays readily on an 800x600 screen!

Online Photographic Galleries:
Cost is the same no matter how many people look at the pictures, and there's no shipping cost or time. However, people can see the pictures only when they are at their computer, and it may be quite time-consuming for people to browse a large number of pictures.

The advantage of an online gallery versus sending pictures as email attachments is that you have to upload the picture only once instead of each time you send out an email. Also, the time that it takes to upload the picture, or for others to retrieve it for viewing, is only 75% of the wait they would experience if you sent the pictures as email attachments.

Web Pages:
Same features and drawbacks as the online photo galleries, but with the added feature that you have complete control of the appearance and design, and the added difficulty that you have to do the design.

CD-ROM:
Costs much less than prints, both to produce and to mail. Requires a computer or TV with recent DVD player to view. Retrieving pictures from a CD is nearly instantaneous, while getting pictures from the web or via email can be quite slow. A CD can be set up to automatically start up and run a "slide show" on most computers (Windows and Macintosh), or it can be made as a "VideoCD" which is playable on DVD players.

One other feature of sending pictures on CD is you have enough room to save them at multiple resolutions, which means you have versions suitable for various screen resolutions as well as for printing!
 

There are many ways to distribute pictures on CD:
o	Build a web site on the CD which the recipient can view with their browser
o	Build a slide show and include the free slide show viewer
o	Build a PowerPoint presentation and include the free viewer
o	Build an Acrobat document and include the free Acrobat Reader
o	Build a video and record it in VideoCD format which can be played on a recent DVD player connected to a TV (no computer needed!)

Personally, my favorite is building a web site on the CD, because almost everyone with a computer already has a web browser installed and they know how to use it. I'm real reluctant to expect the recipient to install new software and then learn it -- that's just too much to ask!

My next favorite option is for those people who either don't have a computer or don't like to use one. For these people a VideoCD can be quite appropriate, but only if they have a recent DVD player hooked up to their TV. It's not as easy to skip around on the VideoCD as it is with the web site, so you shouldn't think "one size fits all" and send everyone VideoCDs.
 

	Cost Breakdown:
		Blank CD:	$0.35
		Mailer:	$0.60
		Postage:	$0.80
		Total:	$1.75, the same as mailing two 4x6 photographic prints!

 

Please send email to gdtpug@troutcom.com with suggestions for topics you are interested in seeing covered. Or even better, volunteer to give a presentation!

The Goleta DeskTop Publishing Users Group is a SIG (Special Interest Group) of the Santa Barbara PC Users Group. We are not platform specific: some members have PCs, some have Macs, some have both. Linux and other systems are sprinkled in as well for good measure. We focus on the issues of publishing in all forms, be it on paper, web, CD-ROM, or some other medium.