FotoInsight – Linux friendly online photo processing and photo gifts
Photo gifts are a popular way of creating personalised presents for relatives. Although some photo gifts can be ordered through the Java based online applications these are normally limited compared to the dedicated download photo applications. Unfortunately the dedicated software required to create some photo gifts is not available for Linux and sometimes not even for Mac. I was delighted to find FotoInsight in time to order some photo gifts this Christmas including photo calendars where are not available for Linux users elsewhere (as far as I am aware). The photo provided by Fotoinsight is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and can be used to order a wide range of photo related goods from standard photo prints to a wide range of gifts.
The software is easy to unload. Download the tar archive and extract the install script. This can be run either as root (to install into the /opt directory) or as a regular user (to install into your home directory). It downloads and installs the rest of the code from the Internet. The only thing it doesn’t do is add an Icon to the start menu, but it can be easily started from the command line or you can manually add an icon using your distributions menu configuration application (on Ubuntu: System -> Preferences -> Main Menu).
In use the program works well. There are a few things that have not been fully translated to English (mainly template names), but it’s easy to work around that. In fact it works better than some other commercial software that I’ve used from another photo processor which couldn’t work out whether it was supposed to be in Euros, Pounds or Dollars. There are a couple of other small issues with how the address is entered, but it’s still usable (although you may end up with your town on the delivery label twice).
The wizards are okay if you are happy to accept the default selections, but there is far more control using the manual options. The amount of customisation of the gifts is excellent.
I ordered photos, calendars and photo mugs all of which I am very happy with.
If you don’t use Linux then there are Mac and Windows versions of the application as well (I’ve not tried those to see how they compare).