With floods on the east coast and fires on the west, we want to remind you that dotphoto will replace photo collections lost in a disaster for 80% off. We hope your photo prints, frames and books have survived intact, but our disaster re-print program will replace them quickly at a nominal cost.
Author: dotphoto
Glenn Paul is President and Co-Founder of dotPhoto, which began life in 2000 as a photo printing service and now also distributes user-generated media in Flash, video and on cell phones.
How to Print a Panorama
Camera phones now take breath-taking panoramic photos. Popular scenes include family reunions, mountains, beaches, harbors, sunsets, and skylines. But how to print a panorama economically or have it framed for presentation on a wall?
Sizing your panorama
Panoramas tend to be large photos because your camera is really taking multiple images and stitching them together. Fortunately, dotphoto uploads up to a 20MB image, which accommodates most panoramas.
Two printing options for panoramas
dotphoto posters are so inexpensive that the most economical way to print a panorama is simply to print it un-cropped on a poster. Our custom framing shop also offers prints, laminated prints, canvas and frames in any aspect ratio that you would like — that is, your photo is not limited to traditional print sizes like 12×18 or 20×30. It could be, for instance, 28×42 like the waterfall shown here.
More on how to print panoramas
Use dotphoto to distribute your photos to social media
There are hundreds of places to paste your photos around the web: review sites, friend sites, professional sites, news sites, and forums. Here’s the best way to work them:
With dotphoto, you can upload hundreds of photos from your phone or camera, pick the best ones, edit or crop them, and then copy-and-paste them into your social site.
Sharing photos to social media
Here’s the big benefit: dotphoto saves your full-size photos (up to 20MB each) while sites like Facebook shrink your photos to less than 100K. Social media is not designed for storage and archiving; dotphoto is. dotphoto has organizational tools like albums, sub-albums, and photo sorting, and even makes it easy to download your photos so you can keep a backup in your safe deposit box.
Upload from your phone dotphoto runs well on both Apple and Android phones now with no need to install an app. Just run dotphoto.com as you would on a computer. When you select photos, hold your finger down and drag it over the photos to select up to a thousand photos at a time.
Save Multiple Projects – Great for Cards
We’ve changed the way we auto-name projects so that you can save more than one similar project. This enables you to save multiple versions or, when making cards, to save the save version with different text to different people.
NOTE: the dotphoto cart does not allow duplicates, but photos that are different by even one pixel are considered unique. With cards, the cart considers the first image. To place more than one of the same product in the cart, you can use a different photo or slightly crop and save-as-new the same photo.
dotphoto has postcards! Save the date!
They say that no one reads anymore, so, if you want to make an impression, send a postcard!
dotphoto brings back custom-made postcards for only 99 cents. (Just 94 cents with this week’s Reader Reward code POSTCARDS.) Add any photo, invitation, or message — or use dotphoto’s Editor to add text to your photo prior to creating your postcard.
How to add text to your photos
Available in either glossy or matte, you can order as few as one at a time. Standard 4×6 photos fit conveniently on 110 pound card stock that qualifies for U.S. 
Postal postcard rates (currently only 35 cents.)
The Internet is full of vintage postcards in the public domain that would also make arresting messages.
7 Sources of free stock images
that would be great for postcards
How to make a postcard…
- Go to Shop on the top menu.
- Click on postcard in the card menu, or search for postcard.
- Choose glossy or matte printing.
- Choose an album and the photowithin the album.
The Sinkhole Photo Essay
On February 28, 2013, Jeffrey Bush was swallowed by a sinkhole while he slept at home in Seffner, Florida. He was never seen again.
We often allude to the “ground shifting beneath our feet,” but the idea that one can simply disappear while sleeping is so disturbing that I wondered if anyone had ever made a horror movie about sinkholes. Only one, it turns out: “Sinkhole” was filmed in Centralia, Pennsylvania, a city that has been burning since 1962 when a dump fire ignited a coal seam. Centralia is an interesting parable about how government works: the town fathers didn’t want to spend the money putting out the fire, so it spread; then the state government deferred; then the federal government decided that it would cost billions of dollars to extinguish, and experts were not even certain they could put out the fire. Centralia was abandoned. The ground still smokes today.
The Atlantic Monthly has assembled this exquisite photo essay of the leading sinkholes on the planet. The deepest — at 1325 feet — is the Hranice Abyss in the Czech Republic.
Mail a custom photo card from your desk — only $1.99!
“How did you send that card?” my friends often ask. “I don’t want to throw it away because it’s got our pictures in it!”
The Mail4Me card is probably my favorite dotphoto product, but even my wife forgets to use it. It’s one of the best ways to show my friends that I care about them. When I’m invited to dinner or an event, I take a few photos, upload them to dotphoto, and make a thank-you card.
The Mail4Me cards include photos inside and outside, a personal message, and a picture of my signature. But here’s the amazing thing: dotphoto Club members can send a Mail4Me card including First Class postage for just $1.99! (Only $1.89 if you use the newsletter code below.)
And one more thing — I never have to leave my desk. I don’t have to drive around, browse endlessly through cards with the usual saccharine messages, and pay $6 plus postage. I can send a customized message and some photos that actually mean something to my friends for just $1.99. They’re amazed, and it’s a bargain!
Helpful tip: when you make a Mail4Me card, the card design includes the ship-to and your return address that will go on the envelope. The check-out process also contains the usual ship-to and billing addresses because you might have other items in your cart, but the cart ship-to will NOT apply to your card.
Here’s a video of how to make your own Mail4Me cards in under 3 minutes:
