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***ALERT***
On November 12th the ImageStation® online photo service will no longer accept new photo and video uploads, support sharing or the ability to buy prints and photo gifts. The disabling of these site features represents the first phase of our planned site closure scheduled for February 1st, 2008.
We strongly urge you to complete any planned purchases, photo gift projects and redeem any unused coupons before our online store closes permanently on November 12th (Picture Archive CDs and DVDs can still be ordered thru January 14th, 2008).
Sony Image Station was rated the best by Maximum PC and offered some great pricing as well. So I was eager to give them a try. First I had to figure out what to do. I had already registered at the site and received an e-mail with special offers and a link to download Corel Photo Album 6, which is the software of choice for Sony Image Station. As I had experienced with Picaboo, the software download stalled. The stall took place at 90% completion and I tried waiting but I just don’t have that kind of patience. However, when I did restart the download, it started back up where it had left off- so it didn’t take much time to finish. I then had to locate the file and install the program on my computer, but this process took only a few clicks and a few seconds. I have a high-speed Internet connection; I’m not sure editing and ordering digital prints online would be nearly as fun with a dial-up connection. My mother who has dial-up sometimes has a hard time even viewing the photos I’ve already uploaded onto other digital photo sites.
Photo FlipBook. A spiral-bound collection of pictures, complete with caption and a protective front and back cover. Sony ImageStation. 
My next step with Sony was to upload some photographs. I wanted to make a small Flipbook for my son of pictures he’d taken of our recent vacation. These are not exactly the greatest pictures in the world. But they represent the things he wanted to remember from our trip. I did take some editorial license and decided we only needed one picture of the bathroom in the album. The photo of the trash can got the boot as well. (I was willing to buy him a book of obscure pictures of curtains, swimsuits and wall art because I had a coupon to get a flipbook for $1.99.) With a Flipbook, you can place one captioned picture per page. Because one of the books I created had 60 pages its final cost came within $2.00 to being the same as a medium-sized Photobook from Picaboo. At Picaboo I probably could have placed all 60 photographs in the book by selecting several pictures per page. So the choice really came down to stylistic ones. For this project, I really just wanted the simple 1 per page layout. Plus, I did want to use that coupon and give Sony Image Station a try. Of course, the cost of the Flipbook would have been significantly less had I only wanted a 20-page book.
Sony Quality Digital Prints and Photo Gifts. Free to Join. Sony ImageStation. 
Sony’s interface for uploading pictures appears simple, if you can read. Apparently I cannot. I didn’t realize that in order to get the pictures to actually upload I had to click on the “Continue” button. After pondering the problem for a bit, I did figure it out. I initially tried to upload an entire collection of vacation photographs at once. I’m not sure if this was a one-night-only problem or a continuing one, but I found that uploading more than 30 or so photographs at a time risked some of them not loading as the upload speed dwindled to 0. Had I waited until the Corel Photo Album software was finished installing on my computer, I could have edited and viewed all the photographs in the Corel Photo Album and then uploaded them as a group. But when I did try a Corel Photo Album upload (on the same night) it was equally slow and some pictures didn’t make it into my online album. I had a little difficulty figuring out “how” to upload the photographs using the Corel program, as in- “what button to click?” As it turns out, to upload a photograph you have to select “Share” and “Order Pictures Online.” Even if you aren’t planning to “order” yet, this gets you to the upload option.
I was very frustrated that first night. After all, this site had been an editor’s pick from a magazine I knew and trusted and I couldn’t even get my pictures uploaded! So I decided to give it another try in the morning. Using the drag and drop option and uploading smaller sets of photographs I was finally successful. I wanted to note that at one point during my many upload attempts I uploaded some resized photographs that had a lower resolution. When I tried to create a Flipbook with these pictures, I was warned that they would not come out well and advised to use larger copies. I was very glad for the information; otherwise I might have received an entire book of really bad pictures.
Sony ImageStation 
As I’ve experienced with the other multi-option digital photo processing sites, more options on Sony led to more confusion. Also, I did have to install Sony’s own Image Editor in addition to the Corel software I’d downloaded. For some reason, I had to allow the Image Editor on Sony’s website to install twice. I think perhaps this was part of that one-night-only problem I mentioned earlier. I’m assuming it never really installed at all on my first attempt. But, once I got everything installed and figured out where all the buttons were, how to delete an album and move photographs between them, etc., things went pretty smoothly. A note of caution, when creating a Flipbook, the site will suggest that you create a new album using the photographs that you want in the book. If you do this, sort the pictures in the order you want them to appear in that new album or add them one at a time in order in that album. I tried copying an entire batch of photographs from one album to another and the order in which they were placed changed. Similar to the Picaboo book, the first page of the Flipbook can’t be altered- so in one attempt I ended up with the wrong picture on the front cover and had to start over.
As you may have noted, I have a habit of just wanting to get things going and little patience for the finer points like reading the instructions. I am so familiar with the software programs that I use daily that expect all software to behave similarly. Not so digital photo software! My new advice- learn from my mistakes. Get to the website then just sit and stare at it for a few minutes. Look at all the little links to the side, top, bottom, corner… Read the suggestions posted on the website and look at other people’s finished works and the samples that are available. There are tricks and links that will make your efforts much easier all over these photo publishing sites- you just have to find them. For instance, I clicked “edit caption” for every picture in the album and wrote in a caption. Had I looked to the right, there was an “edit captions” option that would have allowed me to access all the pictures at once. Ah, live and learn.
High quality prints! From wallet to poster sizes, available in sizes for your every need. Sony ImageStation. 
In the end, I was happy. Sony has more editing options than Picaboo and different ones than Shutterfly- though as with Shutterfly things like borders and other effects are a little hard to locate. I used my coupon to get one book then made another book containing more photographs using the 30% off discount. Shipping was very reasonable, the cost being much lower than I’ve experienced at other digital photo sites. Sony Image Station also offers you the option to pick up your photographs at select retailers across the country and incur no shipping charges. However, the retailer you choose may be limited as to which products they carry. My photographs are being mailed to me via USPS and I received the confirmation of shipment within 24 hours of placing my order. Sony Image Station does provide memberships, but in my opinion they are most useful if a specific product you want is included as part of the membership package. I probably would have invested in a membership in order to get the full version of the Corel software if I had not already purchased a volume purchase membership at Shutterfly. So I do recommend that you review each of the sites in terms of ease of use, variety of products offered, shipping costs and discount packages before choosing the one that you’ll call home to your digital photographs. Me- I’m trying them all so I can come here and tell you all about it.
I will admit, getting some of these photographs printed at all was a bit of a silly indulgence, but one I believe will mean a lot to my son. It’s really not about this print or that to me but having something that my children will look back at when they are parents themselves and smile realizing that only a mom crazy in love would do such a thing. This little Flipbook should be just the thing, and as I’ve mentioned before it’s better than a T-shirt that my son will outgrow in a year and costs less. I’ll let you know how things turn out, once I get my new books.
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