Future Photo to Kodak Gallery Migration a Success!

I thought I'd follow up on my experience for those of you who read my original post about how Future Shop's photo sharing service, Future Photo, is closing down. Members are urged to migrate pix over to the Canadian Kodak Gallery, and I have decided to go that route. Here's a run-down of how my experience has been thus far. Hopefully this will help other members who are looking to switch over to this new Canadian service.

Migration: As mentioned in the previous post, there was an issue with the image transfer process for my account. In fairness to Future Photo, I don't just have a few pix in there: I have 5-6 years worth of photo albums...60 in all! The issue has since been resolved. Just last night, I received my confirmation e-mail that everything was a-ok, and all of my photos had been transferred. Hooray!

Things that I don't like:

The albums did not retain their original upload dates, which means the chronological order is all out of whack. Viewing by date doesn't do me much good since they're all dated April 24, 2008! Luckily, I had given albums names like "Miami, Sept. '06", and "My 28th Bday", so, in most cases, I won't be forced to try and remember where the heck the pix were taken. But I will have to weed through old albums to locate the most recent ones.

The albums did not retain the cover image I had selected. I'm probably being nit-picky here, but for people like me who have tons of albums, and who like to share these albums with friends, the cover portion is important.

The transfer did not retain all picture rotations, although some seem to have been kept. This means that after spending so much time switching vertical pix to their proper orientation, it looks like I have to do it all over again. Darn.

Probably the most frustrating thing, however, is that it looks like someone manually migrated my account over again (since it didn't seem to port all photos successfully the first time) leaving me with duplicate albums! If I had one or two, that wouldn't be a big deal. But with 60 of them, it'll take a while to go through and delete all duplicates. Sigh. At least there's no storage limit!

My Future Photo albums showed "friends albums" where I could instantly view albums from my friends who also had Future Photo accounts. Will Future Photo friends that move over to Kodak Gallery appear as my "friends" there as well? I'll have to see.

Things that I do like:

Uploading photos is blazingly simple. There's a beta "Express Upload" service, but I opted for the standard upload process, which lets me upload tons of images at a time. It took just a few minutes on my high-speed connection to upload about 50 photos. Not bad.

If you shared an album with someone via Future Photo, that person was required to create a Future Photo user name and password to view the images, even if they weren't going to use the service. Kodak Gallery gives you the option to do this, or just let people see the images in a slide show without having to sign in. This is definitely an added benefit, especially for non tech-savvy persons (like my parents!) who would have absolutely no idea what to do if they didn't click a link and photos just showed up on screen!

Image manipulation and editing is really easy, including even an "instant fix" button. You can also do things like crop photos, remove red-eye, and even add effects and borders. When you make a change to an image, there's the option to overwrite the original file, or save the altered pic as a new version.

All in all, I'm happy with the switchover, even though it will require some tweaking to get my images arranged the way I want them to be.

So what's my next step? I'm looking forward to ordering the 100 free 4 x6" prints that were offered! Funny how, after working in this industry so long, I have a digital photo frame rotating pix in the living room, yet a bunch of empty wood frames all over the place, just itching to be filled.

Future Shop's Photo Sharing Site is Closing Down!

Futurephoto, Future Shop's photo sharing Website (http://www.futurephoto.ca/), is closing down! If you're a member of the service like I am, you've likely received a number of e-mail notifications over the past month, advising of the close. The e-mails and home page also recommend that you migrate your images over to the new Canadian Kodak Gallery site at http://www.kodakgallery.ca/, Future Shop's new partner. A warning also explains that, if you fail to move the albums over by May 31, they'll be deleted from the system.

I must admit that I was a tad upset when I saw this. I've been using Future Photo for at least 5 years, and I have about 60 albums in there! Now I have to go through this whole ordeal to ensure that I don't lose my images. And what if I don't like Kodak's gallery? Not to mention that, one of the main reasons I chose Future Photo in the first place was that I appreciate being able to place orders online, then pick them up in the store closest to me. Can I still do that? Here are your answers.

First, don't fear. From some quick browsing through Kodak's Gallery, it looks very similar to Future Photo, with many of the same features and capabilities. As with anything, there will be a learning curve. But that's what keeps us on our toes, right?

Second, you can still place orders online for everything from standard 4 x 6" prints to photo mugs, T-shirts, and books, and pick them up at a Future Shop store of your choosing. In fact, you can now pick them up at Best Buy locations as well, which you weren't able to do with Future Photo! Pricing is pretty much the same, and you can pay via VISA or AMEX. As an added incentive, Future Shop and Kodak Gallery are offering customers 100 free 4 x 6" photos (up until June 30, 2008) if they switch over before the deadline of May 31.

As with Future Photo, unlimited storage is free, as long as you make at least one purchase each year to maintain the account. Lori Helms from Kodak Gallery tells me that members will be notified via e-mail when approaching the one-year mark, and a purchase can be as little as one $0.15 4 x 6" print, the same parameters that were on Future Photo.

This all sounded good, so a few weeks ago, I went ahead with the transfer. After a few days, I noticed that my images still weren't in the Kodak Gallery. Uh-oh. I logged back into Future Photo, where up came a message that I was in a queue, and it could take up to a few weeks for my photos to transfer. Great. Best Buy's Brian FitzGerald tells me that, in addition to lots of people switching over, there are indeed some "heavy users" like me whereby the transfer process times out before all the photos can flip over to the new site. He reassured me that Future Photo is aware of these situations, and is in the process of examining the issue. In some instances, Future Shop will locate the problem account and manually transfer missing images over. In other cases, some customers might receive an e-mail stating that there was an issue, and requesting that they initiate transfer again. Frankly, I don't care which method is used, as long as my photos are properly migrated! FitzGerald also points out that, as soon as all photos are successfully transferred, the user will receive a e-mail confirming that so as to avoid any confusion. I guess at this point, all I can do is hurry up and wait.

Now, about 3 weeks have passed, and I'm still missing photos. I trust that I will get them all switched over eventually, but this certainly is an eye-opener about relying on just one spot to store photos. My advice to anyone out there, regardless of where you store your images online, is to always keep an archive CD on hand, along with physical prints or photobooks. Prints really are still just as relevant today as they were 20 years ago! Essentially, keep your pictures in as many places as you can. I'll certainly be cashing in on my 100 free prints!

Interestingly, FitzGerald says that about 21% of active Future Photo customers have already transferred their accounts over, and the company expects many more to do so prior to the official closing date. Why is the site closing? According to FitzGerald, the photo sharing aspect just simply wasn't part of Future Shop's core business. The new partnership with Kodak Gallery is an extension of a previously-established, enterprise-level pairing between Kodak and Future Shop's parent company, Best Buy Co., Ltd. For now, although you can still access Future Photo albums whether you've initiate a transfer or not, all uploading capabilities have been disabled.

Happy photo storing!