On-line Photo album services

I'm looking for a reasonably priced, on-line photo album service that will allow me to upload 6x6 and 10x4 photos to an 8.5 x 11 page without automatically cropping any portion of my photos. At this point, Mpix is the only one I've found offering 8.5 x 11 pages but, after 4 attempts and many hours of waiting to complete the upload, can't seem to get the site to accept my uploads (87 photos). Individual file sizes are in the 3500 x 1200 pixel (and slightly larger) range and most are in excess of 300 dpi. Are these parameters too large? I've tried uploading to other sites (Viovio, Blurb, Shutterfly) but my 10 x 4 photos won't quite fit the page and their software won't allow me to resize to fit the page like Mpix does. Anybody have any experience with these problems? Any other sites offering this larger format or ability to resize to fit the page without cropping? Don

Have used Snapfish succesfully for the past two holiday seasons. Happy with their service, quality of product, and ease of use of the system. The photos that I loaded were in the 10x8 size and don't recall any cropping problems. Just received this year's work and we are very pleased with the results.

Don: Are you looking for a site that allows you to display the images in those aspect ratios without cropping, or are you looking for a site that allows printing at those aspect ratios?

CORRECTION. Used Snapfish for a calendar this year not a book. Results were OK. Used MyPublisher for the books. Comments above still apply. Sorry for the confusion.

Sorry about the delayed response. Christmas shopping, art shows and honey-dos have taken up the time. David, I'm trying to find an on-line photo book resource that will allow me to upload my photos as they are (in their already cropped, edited form). I assume that most require JPEG format. I've tried to upload on six different sites but only Mpix will allow me to squeeze my 6x6" and 10x4" photos onto an 8.5 x 11 page, though it took 4 attempts over 4 days (totaling more than 8 frustrating hrs) to upload the 50 pages. Other sites either didn't offer the 8.5 x 11 format or automatically cropped my photos. There's got to be a better way, one that is intuitive to use since most sites don't provide instructions. Bob, Snapfish was one of the sites I tried to use but perhaps I didn't understand their icons because it automatically cropped my photos to fit the page. Thanks for your responses.

Don - My guess is that your pictures might be too big to fit on a page, and that's why they are getting cropped. Something like Blurb should certainly give you the freedom to do whatever you want in the way of page formatting. I think they have a max size for the page though, so you might have to downsize your images to fit the way you want them to.

Thanks, Dave. I did try Blurb after reading several good reviews on the web. However, I couldn't find an icon that would let me shrink my photo to fit the page. Without the shrinkage ability, Blurb cropped to fit. If you can tell me where to find the "fit to page" icon, I'd be happy to give Blurb another try since it did come highly recommended.

Don - I think you missed my point perhaps. I'm suggesting you find out what the max size image is that will fit on a Blurb page without cropping; And then shrink all of your photos to be smaller than this prior to bringing them into the Blurb book layout. Then the Blurb software wouldn't have to do any shrinking or cropping. I know this is what others have done who have made Blurb books.

(I'm pretty sure Blurb assumes 300 ppi, so for an 8.5x11 image, the largest it could be would be 2550x3300. So your 3500 pixel images will get cropped.)

The reason software probably doesn't want to resize for you is that there's a degradation in image quality when you resize. Images almost always need some form of resharpening after a downsize, and you can get ugly artifacts sometimes if you aren't careful. So I understand why the bookmakers may want to make you do the resizing yourself - it improves the quality of their product and your satisfaction.

I understand if you aren't being that critical of your shots as well, and I am a little surprised that the Shutterfly/Snapfish/Winkflash/Kodak type of sites won't let you do what you're trying.

Thanks, Dave. I'll look at the problem again.