Photo Programs Help You Share Pictures, But Need Improvement
May 20, 2004; Page B1
Millions of digital pictures lurk on hard disks everywhere, unseen and unshared with others. One reason is that the main methods for sharing digital images leave something to be desired. Photos sent as e-mail attachments can be so large that they choke mailboxes. Prints are hard to share long distance. And sharing pictures via Web sites can be a tedious process for both senders and viewers.
This week, though, two small California start-up companies have introduced very different new products that aim to make photo sharing easier and more interesting. I've been testing the two products and believe that they are good ideas. But both could use some work.
The first of the two is called Telling Stories, from a San Francisco company of the same name. It's available for $50 at
www.tellingstories.com and offers a free 15-day trial version. The program helps you organize your photos, along with music and any videos you have, into a slide-show presentation that tells the story of your life (or somebody else's).
Telling Stories opens by placing on the screen an S-shaped timeline with your birth year at the upper right and the current year at the lower left. The program launches an onscreen interview that elicits some basic dates of your life events and places them along the timeline. The software also automatically adds in historical events, such as the 1969 moon landing and the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
For each event in your life -- graduations, key birthdays, new jobs, trips, etc. -- you can create a multimedia commemoration, mixing photos, music, videos, text and even voice narration.
Telling Stories makes all this very simple. It has its own little built-in word processor, and it can help you find pictures, songs and videos, either on your hard disk or on the Internet. You can preview each type of media and do simple photo editing. The program even interviews you about each event, asking, for instance, if your mother cried at your wedding.
One cool feature: The software will tell you what songs were popular in the year in which an event took place, and help you look for them.
After you have constructed your timeline, Telling Stories plays the whole thing back as a slide show. As each personal event appears on screen, the program displays the photos you chose, along with your text, and plays the music and videos. You can save the completed slide show as a self-running file, and either e-mail it or burn it to a CD to give it to others.
In my tests, Telling Stories worked pretty well, except that, in the saved version of my grand life story, one video didn't play back. But the final presentations don't have a really polished look. The backgrounds the program supplies are fairly primitive, and you can't customize the way photos look on screen. The songs also sometimes drown out the audio track of the videos. And the presentations tend to be too large to e-mail.
The second program I tested is OurPictures, from a Palo Alto company of the same name. OurPictures includes software for organizing pictures, but it's really a service for sharing and printing photos. It costs $20 a year, with a 30-day free trial, and it can be downloaded at
www.ourpictures.com.OurPictures organizes your photos in a big, bright, simple interface. Pictures are arranged into virtual albums, and you can do simple editing and add captions without leaving the program. Large tabs at the side of the screen guide you through the process of adding, viewing, fixing, sharing and printing photos.
But it's the sharing and printing services that make OurPictures worth a try. You can send any of your photos, quickly and easily, to any other OurPictures member. You just select the pictures you want to share, click the "Share" tab, click on the recipient's name in your address book, and the service routes the pictures right to their PC. On the receiving end, the pictures you sent show up under a "Received Pictures" tab.
One great feature: You can set up OurPictures to automatically print any received photos on your home printer.
You can also send off your pictures to be printed at any of 1,200 Ritz Camera or Wolf Camera stores and picked up within four hours. Or you can order prints to be delivered by mail.
In my tests, the OurPictures sharing and printing features worked perfectly, and they were much simpler than using e-mail or Web services to achieve these tasks. My prints were ready at my local Ritz store in less than 30 minutes.
But OurPictures has some problems. The program froze up on me several times on two different computers. The company says it has a fix for the problem, but I can't verify that.
Also, you can't use your OurPictures account on multiple PCs, and the service doesn't offer a member directory. It also lacks a one-click fix for photos, and the process for moving received photos into an album isn't clear. In addition, there's a creepy privacy problem in OurPictures: The program reports back to the sender whether a recipient has viewed shared photos.
Both Telling Stories and OurPictures need improvement. But both are promising new ways to make use of all those digital images nobody ever sees.
轻松共享数码照片
数百万计的数码照片沉睡在硬盘里，让人注意不到，也无法和别人共享。原因之一就在于：共享数码图像的主要方法还有某些亟待改进之处。
把照片当作附件用电子邮件邮寄吧，图片可能太大，会导致邮箱阻塞。用打印机打印照片吧，又难以和远方的人共享。通过互联网共享照片吧，对于上传者和观看者来说都是一件很麻烦的事。
但本周，两家位于加利福尼亚州的小型新创企业推出了全新的产品，旨在让共享照片成为更加容易和充满乐趣的事。我最近一直在测试这两款产品，感觉它们的创意很好，但可能都微有瑕疵，需要进一步改进。
第一款名为Telling Stories，由位于旧金山的一家同名公司生产。你可以在
www.tellingstories.com网站上以５０美元的价格买到，另外网站还有免费试用１５天的版本供下载。这款软件可以帮助你整理照片，并可加入音乐和视频内容，做成一个讲述你（或别人）人生故事的幻灯片节目。
打开Telling Stories程序，屏幕上会出现一个 型的记事年表，你出生的年份在右上方，当前的年份在左下方。程序会弹出一个对话框，让你在记事年表中填入一些生命中重要事件发生的日期。另外，该软件也会自动加入一些历史事件，比如１９６９年的登月事件和１９８９年柏林墙的倒塌。
对于你生命中的每一个事件，比如毕业、重要的生日、找到新工作和旅行等，你都可以创建一个多媒体的回忆录，加工融合照片、音乐、视频、文本，甚至配音。
Telling Stories程序令这些工作变得轻而易举。该程序内置了一个小型的文字处理软件，还可以帮你搜寻照片、歌曲和视频文件，不管是你电脑中的，还是在互联网上。你可以预览每种媒体形式，并进行简单的照片加工。程序甚至还会就每件事向你提问，比如问你在你的婚礼上，你母亲是否落泪了等等。
最棒的一个功能是：该程序会告诉你事件发生当年的流行歌曲有哪些，并帮你搜寻这些歌。
在你建完记事年表后，Telling Stories程序会将幻灯片节目从头到尾播放一遍。当每个个人事件在屏幕上出现的时候，程序会播放你选择的照片，以及你加入的文本，并配以音乐和视频内容。你可以将整个幻灯片节目保存为自动播放的文件，然后用电子邮件发给别人，或者刻录到 上送给别人。
在我测试的过程中，Telling Stories程序运行良好，只是在我保存的某个事件中，有个视频文件未能回放；而且在最后播放时，该程序也不能美化画面。程序提供的背景相当原始，你无法按照自己的要求定制照片在屏幕上的效果。而且有时候视频歌曲的声音也会出现不同步的情况。再说，幻灯片节目用电子邮件传送也有点太大了。
我测试的另一款产品名为OurPictures，由位于帕洛阿尔托的一家同名公司生产。OurPictures也包含整理照片的软件，但总体来说它是用于共享和打印照片的程序。该产品每年收费２０美元，有３０天的试用期，可以在
www.ourpictures.com网站上下载。
OurPictures 在一个较大、明朗、简洁的界面上整理照片。照片被放入虚拟像册中，你可以在不退出该程序的情况下进行简单的照片加工，并加入照片说明。在屏幕边缘的大型图标会指引你完成添加、观看、加工、共享和打印照片等工作。
但OurPictures最值得一试的功能在于共享和打印照片。你可以给任何OurPictures的用户迅速、简便地传送你的任何一张照片。你只要选择你希望共享的照片，然后点击“共享”图标，再在你的地址薄里点击接收人的姓名，该程序就会把照片传输到接收人的电脑中。在接收人那端，只要点击“接收照片”图标，你传送的照片就会显现。
一个出色的功能是：你安装上OurPictures，然后就能在你家里的打印机上自动打印任何接收到的照片。
你也可以把你的照片送到Ritz Camera或Wolf Camera的1,200家商店中任何一家打印，在４小时之内能够拿到照片。或者你也可以用邮件预约打印服务，让他们送货上门。
在我测试的过程中，OurPictures程序的共享和打印功能运行良好，比用电子邮件或网络服务来完成这些工作要简捷多了。我的住处附近的Ritz Camera商店打印的照片不到３０分钟就收到了。
但OurPictures程序也有些问题。在两部不同的电脑上，该程序“荡”掉了好几次。公司解释说已经解决了这个问题，但我未能证实这一点。
另外，你无法在多个用户的个人电脑上使用你自己的OurPictures账户，该程序也无法提供用户目录。程序也缺乏一点击就能加工照片的方便性，把接收到的照片挪进像册中的过程也不明了。再者，OurPictures程序有个讨厌的隐私问题：程序会向发送者提供接收者是否观看了共享照片的报告。
Telling Stories和OurPictures这两款软件都需要改进。然而，它们毕竟都开辟了新的途径来利用那些无人注意的数码照片。
