Online Photo Albums

Posting your pictures online for friends and family to enjoy is easy on photo-sharing Web sites, and with so many to choose from, you can pick the site that meets your needs. We visited some of the best.

Apple
(www.mac.com)
More a Web-hosting service than a conventional photo-sharing site, Mac.com makes it easy for Apple users to build a personal Web site using the online HomePage software, then post photos and videos to the site with Mac's iPhoto tool. A free 60-day trial membership gives you 20MB of online storage; the $100 yearly paid membership provides 100MB, as well as other technical support features.

Fotki
(www.fotki.com)
This strangely named site lets you create public and private photo albums and store as many images as you like; you can also order 4-by-6 prints for just 19 cents each. But the real emphasis is on community -- you can post information about yourself and your favorite links, count the number of visitors to your album, and allow viewers to leave comments. Fotki offers a free 14-day trial; membership costs $30 a year.

FotoTime
(www.fototime.com)
Organize your pictures (with free software available for download), create photo albums, and build Web pages at this site. FotoTime offers a 30-day free trial membership and an annual membership at $23.95 for 250 MB of storage. Membership gets you a discount on products ranging from prints (49 cents for a 4-by-6; 39 cents for subscribers) to coaster sets ($19.99; $14.99 for subscribers). If you don't need to subscribe but want to post your photos long enough to, say, order prints, you can store them free for 30 days before they're automatically purged.