Digital Darkroom

One of eframes' best features is the ability to store collections of images in albums. You can even have, as you see here, many different albums available at one time, which can be selectively viewed by friends and family. By giving them the link to the page, family members can view images in an album and order framed prints.

The Create a New Album window lets you add images to an album, rename an album, or even remove an album that you had setup. You can create many different albums: one for your vacation photos, one for pictures of your friends, and even one for all of the images you've created with your new image manipulation program. The choices are limitless. You can edit and control each album separately, and print images from any one or all whenever you want to. After you've filled your digital album with images, eframes will assign you a distinctive URL (Uniform Resource Locator) code for that page. You can e-mail that link to friends who can use it to browse through the photographs in that album, but only that album. If you have other albums of images, they can only access those album pages--if you give them the link. You can even give your friends permission to print copies of images that they like.

Print And Frame Your Digital Photo. The heart of eframes is this section which lets you upload a digital image or choose one from an album. Uploading is simple, and like most eframes, it feels like you're using a software application instead of working through a web site using a browser. For now, eframes.com only works with JPEG (Joint Photographers Experts Group) files. Almost all image-editing programs, including Adobe's Photoshop and PhotoDeluxe plus lots of others, can save a photograph, scan, or drawing as a JPEG file. The main reason that eframes is currently working with JPEG files is that most web browsers can only display JPEG or GIF (Graphic Inter-change Format) images. If eframes accepted images in different formats, you wouldn't be able to see them in your browser, which means you couldn't see them in different frames or in an album. For those who may be asking, "Why can't I upload GIF images?" the reason is that the GIF format isn't practical for images that will ultimately be printed. GIF images can display up to 256 colors and any photograph of reasonable quality contains thousands or millions of colors. In future versions of eframes.com the company has plans to accept images in other formats, then convert them online for you, but for now, they're sticking with JPEGs.

If you prefer, you can upload single images to eframes and this part of their web site lets you crop the image, order a print, or frame it.

After you select a specific image, you can use a cropping tool, much like you would find in an image-editing program, to crop any unwanted space from the photograph. Another choice is to resample the image to increase the quality of the printed images, although I remember that old computer adage of "garbage in, garbage out" and think that the better quality file that you upload the better quality the output will be. When you have the image looking just like you want, you can electronically preview the photo within a variety of photo frames. If you need information about the process, you can click on the "faq" icon at the bottom of each web page.

When you go to the Select A Frame page, you'll see a choice of three major frame types. What's impressive about the selection of wood, metal, and specialty frame choices is that most of them are quite unique and are of a type and style you won't find at the local Wal-Mart. To preview frame types, you click on the icon for each type and use arrows to view up to four different frames types at a time. Prices for each frame are shown directly beneath a photograph of that frame. Take the time to browse through all of the choices. When you find the frame you're looking for, click on it and you will see your image placed inside that frame. While the frame prices are not inexpensive--they run from $15 to $28--they are unique and the price includes the print cost.

Some of the frames come in only one or two sizes, so if you really want to see your image in one of these frames, you must either crop it using our cropping function, or you can use an image manipulation program of your own to change the size of the image. The only other option is to choose a new frame. If eframes doesn't show the size you want, it's probably not available. The third section of the opening page is called, "Buy A Frame Only" and lets you only purchase a frame, which, to my mind anyway, defeats the purpose of the web site, but curious surfers might want to check it out.

After you place an order using your credit card, the photo is printed using Fuji equipment at an eframes.com distribution center, placed in the wood, metal or specialty frame chosen by you and shipped to any US address with optional gift wrap and a personalized note.

Another Bookmark. Although Yashicamat 124G cameras are no longer being manufactured, they remain a popular "first step" for photographers wanting to try medium format without spending a lot of money. When first establishing my studio, I purchased a used-but-clean Yashica-mat 124G to serve as a back-up camera to my Hasselblad. Thanks to John Harper for sending his favorite bookmark at http://home. att.net/~j..harper/ his web site dedicated to providing information about this durable twin lens reflex camera. The site gets 800 hits a month from Yashica TLR fans, and if that describes you, you owe it to yourself to add it to your own bookmark list.

If you'd like to see your web site featured in an upcoming column or would like to send me your favorite bookmark, drop me an e-mail care of editorial@shutterbug.net.