Picturetrail has many features useful for the photo enthusiast and professionals in all industries. It is a storage and sharing site with advanced functions and displays for browsing through member profiles and albums, customizing homepages and creating picture shows. The site has a nice photo community with a mix of pros and amateurs.
Professional photographers and business owners can benefit from this site’s free services. Although the site does not allow pros to set their own prices, any business can use this site to gain free exposure, display merchandise and find targeted audiences in clubs and groups. Customize album pages and homepage with text and more. Picturetrail also provides code for logos for posting on another webpage.
All members are given a free homepage similar to other social networks, like Myspace and Faces. Friends can view photos and leave comments on one page viewable to the public. HTML code is easily accessible and pictures can be displayed in many formats.
If you are a digital imaging rookie, you may want to check out the glossary for descriptions of general features found on photo and video sites, and for some insight into basic industry terms.
[#Unique#]
Photo Flicks – Animated and still patterns for displaying photos. Post them to blogs, webpages, etc.
PT Clubs – Join groups with similar interests, including fan clubs, travel clubs, hobby groups, etc., or start your own.
Member Profiles – Any member can add a profile to their album and submit it to the public gallery. Descriptions of the album make nice introductions.
URL – Profiles and albums are linked to a customizable, personal URL where guests can leave comments.
Add stock music to albums.
Add hyperlinks below photos to lead viewers to another site.
[#Membership#]
Basic membership allows all major functions of a good photo site: sharing, storage, personal URL, free photo editing software, HTML code, etc. Special features place this higher on many people’s list of favorite sites. Premium membership allows batch uploading, unlimited bandwidth and 50MB of storage.
[#Drawbacks#]
Uploading in batches requires premium membership.
Photo products not available
Currently no video support
[#Uploading#]
Basic Upload: Upload 20 images at once from the site, but they must be selected individually. Batch uploading is not available without upgraded membership.
Batch Upload: Upload batches via the free desktop application to the Inbox, but unless you are a premium member you cannot move them to your albums. Choose from two modes: fast or normal. Fast upload adds a smaller file size to the account which can be used for online viewing. Normal uploader adds full size images for printing. Full size images upload at a decent rate, but interface is finicky: upload stopped in the middle a few times, but continued at the same point when clicking “retry.”
Upload Speed*
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*Under
upload speed, modem is a T1 modem.
[#Storage#]
Albums are stored on customizable pages. Add borders, text, music, hyperlinks and more.
[#Products#]
Only prints are offered for purchase.
[#Prints#]
Prints are available, but posters are not. Pricing is higher than other sites, but Picturetrail offers many useful services that other sites do not.
[#Sharing#]
Sharing is via email invites, posting to blogs or through the personal URL.
[#Privacy#]
Various privacy settings can be applied. Each album can have a unique password.
[#SiteNavigation#]
All functions for uploading, viewing albums, and other tasks are not displayed until you login. You have to return to the homepage to navigate.
