Release The Hounds!!!
Or the digital photos.
A few weeks ago Debbie Zeitman wrote a great article on sharing photos in a physical fashion.
Well, they’re on to us-
Yep, all of the manufacturers have realized that sharing your photographs means more than posting them on the web.
And they’ve been answering the call with products that are getting better. And easier. So look forward to everyone improving their services on this subject.
We sat in a few presentations by HP earlier this week and wanted to bring back to you something you could use. Plus we scored some freebies for you, listed at the end of this article.
[photopress:CreativeStudioforHome1.jpg,full,centered]
HP has just upgraded their Creative Studio to include a ton of options in one place. A veritable cornucopia of ways to get your digital photos off of your hard drive, and into your hands. This includes giving you online access to various other partner programs, like our favorite for books, “Blurb.comâ€.
We hope this is going to be trend and just improve with age.
Of course, since HP is a PC manufacturer, this works best with the 93 percenters; those of you on PC as opposed to MAC.
After trying some of the applications – Calendar, postcard and a Halloween card (who sends those??) it became pretty easy and fast. Now you’ll be using some major inkage because, well, every inch is pretty well covered.
[photopress:creative_studio5.jpg,full,centered] Martha Stewart Projects
But, it’s easy to do at home. And if you have some time, it hooks into the other services including Martha Stewart, Snapfish, Skinit (allows you to create customs skins for your personal electronics, Stamps.com, Dreamworks, Disney, and YouTube to name a few. Good partners? We think so. Look, HP just announced partnerships with Viacom and MySpace. They apparently have the bandwidth to offer you lots of good stuff.
[photopress:HP___HP_Creative_Studio___Photobooks.jpg,full,centered] The navigation is excellent on the site as each project, has a pop-up dialog box that tells you what you’ll need to do the project. You’ll find out easily if you can do it at home or visit a partners site and order it, so you can decide if this is the right one for you.
These folks are pretty smart about knowing how you want to share your photos. If you remember, they partnered up with Gwen Stefani last year, and had a service allowing you to upload your personal photo and have it printed into a customized concert program, blending the momento of pro stuff, with your stuff. Nice concept.
[photopress:creative_studio6.jpg,full,centered]
And now you can get her designs on cards.
Plus there is a full plate for small business projects, also.
[photopress:creativestudioforbusiness1_1.jpg,full,centered]
Anyway you should check out the site, see what appeals and know that options for printing your work are all in one convenient place, nicely laid out for you.
It does work for MAC, but honestly, not quite as smoothly. We’re sure they’ll get there though.
By the way, we have a gift card for 5 of you, good for 50 free digital prints from Snapfish, and 20 more if you are new to that service. The first 5 people who email us, will be sent a gift card.
It’s time to release the photos and hold em in your hand. In a book. On your fridge. In a frame.