The service I use most often is Ofoto.com. I have used Shutterfly, which is apparently the most popular of all photo services Web sites, as well as Kodak's Photonet.com. But I keep going back to Ofoto because I like the interface, which is really easy to use, the quality is excellent and, as a semi-loyal customer, I keep getting free prints and free shipping.

Before I begin my pitch, I should say that this is a convenient way of getting your pictures developed only if you have a digital camera. If you do not have a digital camera, the sites offer photograph and negative scanning services. So if you send them your photos or negatives, they'll scan them up and upload the pictures on the site or put them all on a CD-Rom and send it back to you. Most people would just walk down to the nearest shop and get their roll of film developed in an hour.

You could do the same with a digital camera - pop over to a Kodak shop. On Hong Kong Island, almost everyone is five minutes away from one. Just hand over your SD card or Compact Flash card or CD-Rom and they'll get it processed in about three days.

To get your pictures developed online, you first need to log on to a photo services Web site, sign in and then upload pictures from your digital camera, preferably over a broadband connection. You could do it on a dial-up line but the waiting time could be several hours, depending on how many pictures you have.

I uploaded 41 pictures yesterday on to Ofoto.com from my laptop using Hutchison's Freewing card - a CDMA PC card which gives you wireless connectivity at transmission speeds of not more than 64 Kbps. It took me 2.25 hours to upload the lot. In comparison, I usually upload pictures to Ofoto using my i-Cable 1.5 Mbps connection and it takes just a few minutes. Upload time also depends on the picture's file size.

Once your photos are posted online, you can invite friends and family to view them. Your guests can also order reprints. The best thing about it is you don't have to keep stacks of negatives and go through the hassle of locating them when you want reprints. Nearly every picture I've taken in 18 months are uploaded on Ofoto or Shutterfly, and backed up on my computer, of course.

The convenience of ordering prints, personalising them and sharing photos with friends and family online is worth the one week's wait for the pictures to ship to Hong Kong. Of course, if you pay top dollar, you can get them by courier in two days or less.

The catch is that services vary wildly in quality and features, depending on which site you use. Prices run the gamut, too. There are many sites but the best ones recommended by word of mouth and technology magazines are consistently Shutterfly and Ofoto. Yahoo uses Shutterfly and MSN uses PhotoWorks. HP has a photo-sharing site for users of HP digital cameras and they recently tied up with Shutterfly to provide photo development services for its users.

In Hong Kong, Windows XP users can forward their pictures in the desktop folder 'My Pictures' to Fotomax and pick up their photos the next day at any Fotomax outlet or Circle K, or receive them by mail. There will be no extra charges for the service though users who opt to receive the pictures by mail will have to pay postage.

All the sites let you modify pictures online - crop, remove red eye, zoom in or out - basically everything you can do from most bundled digital imaging software. Both Ofoto and Shutterfly have features which let you personalise your pictures. You can also get the pictures printed on T-shirts, mugs, calendars, greeting cards, banners and caps or get them framed and wrapped as gifts.

In terms of cost, it is about the same as getting pictures developed in the shop around the corner except the quality is often much better from Shutterfly and Ofoto.

I checked out three photo shops in Quarry Bay and the average quote was HK$3 to HK$4 for 4R. With Ofoto, it's 30 US cents per 4R print, which works out to be about HK$2.34. And the picture quality as well as the quality of the paper is superior.