Several months ago, a friend of mine forwarded me an email message with an intriguing title, "300 free prints." Being a bit of a photo buff myself and having taught several digital camera classes here at the county office, I went to the web site to check it out. Why so many of them? Because they are all competing for your money!

I found that I was already signed up for several of those websites, but there were many others listed that I hadn't heard of before. When I teach the photo classes (how-to, editing, storytelling, etc.), I love to show my students all the free software they can get (like Picasa or Shutterfly Studio) and how they can get free prints when they sign up with an online service, besides being a great way to a) back up their photos, b) share them with others, and c) make cool gifts.

I wanted to re-create that message for you, my edzone community of followers. :) So, here's my current list:

• The ones I've used:
• Shutterfly - 25 free prints (12¢ for a 4x6), my favorite site mainly because it has a huge amount of borders and you can even print captions on the photos themselves.
• Snapfish - 20 free prints (4x6 only 9¢ each), usually the cheapest and also has good borders.
• Kodakgallery - 20 free prints (4x6, 15¢). I've had an account with them the longest (since 2001?) when they used to be called Ofoto.
• Ones I've heard of but haven't used yet:
• thru Best Buy - 20 free prints PLUS an 8x10 collage (this one uses Kodak Gallery, so if you already have a Kodak account....too bad. :))
• CVS Photo Center - 50 free prints (20 free with new account, 30 more with something called an "ExtraCare card number"), order online but pick them up at a local store.
• DotPhoto - 50 free prints (standard 4x6 rate, 12¢)
• WinkFlash - 50 free prints (8¢ for a 4x6)
• New to me:
• Clarkcolor - 40 free prints (every day low price, 11¢)
• fotomat - 15 free prints
• Kellards - 20 free prints
• myphotoalbum - 20 free prints (for $20 a year, you can join their Club for unlimited storage and lower per print prices, and you can create an online album to share).
• Photomama - 10 free prints (but check them out anyway....a photo bakery? You can put your photos on lollipops, chocolate photo cards and snapshot cookies!).
• Photomax - 20 free prints
• Photothru - 20 free prints and 2 photo CDs (the most options for sizes, like panaromic!).
• Photoworks - 25 free prints (19¢ each)
• Yorkphoto - 30 free prints (10¢ each)

Okay....that's over 400 free pictures!! Wow, that's a lot of accounts to try to manage. Let's see, I think I'll make a new Google Mail account, just for photo accounts, and use it for each of these new sites.