The Kodak EasyShare Gallery offers prints and gifts from consumer digital photos. It also offers a mobile service so you can view your pictures on your mobile phone. Though the service was originally called Ofoto, it was renamed "Kodak EasyShare Gallery" in summer 2005. It had been earlier acquired by Kodak in June 2001. Kodak EasyShare currently serves about 20 million users and 500 million photos.

Kodak EasyShare serves two basic functions: storing images in "albums" and printing photos. Kodak has received some negative press for deleting photos if users do not order prints after a certain amount of time. Further criticism has come from a former executive who alleges that she was wrongfully fired for complaining about a plan to reduce image quality in order to save on storage costs without giving adequate notice to customers.

In the July 2006 issue, PC World named Kodak EasyShare Gallery one of The 100 Best Products of the Year.

In October 2006, the Gallery launched a new line of products designed by Martha Stewart.

Archiving

Images are stored at a high resolution in your account, but you are not allowed access to the high resolution versions without upgrading to a paid Premier account. A paid Premier account costs USD$25 per year or USD$2.49 per month (with the first month free). The only other choice to regain access to your archived high resolution images is to pay to have them transferred onto a CD for about USD$15 per 100 images. The website reads as follows:

If you want to download high-resolution files of the images you have uploaded to the Kodak EasyShare Gallery, you have two choices: 1. Sign up for a Gallery Premier subscription. For as little as USD$24.99 per year, you can have a unique kodakgallery.com/your name Web address, secure storage, one-click publishing, and free high-resolution downloads of all your images. Subscribe to Gallery Premier. 2. Purchase an Archive CD containing high-resolution copies of all the images you have uploaded to the Gallery. Purchase an Archive CD.

History

Ofoto, an online photography service, was started in June 1999, in Berkeley, California. The company was founded by Lisa Gansky and Kamran Mohsenin. Gansky had previously been CEO of 1990s internet pioneer GNN, while Mohsenin had previously run Tunes Network, Inc., parent of the Tunes.com music discovery Website.

The Ofoto website launched to the public on December 13, 1999, the same day as competing service Shutterfly. While Shutterfly was funded in part by Silicon Valley businessman James Clark, Ofoto was funded in part by Jim Barksdale, Clark's former partner and co-worker from Netscape. This led to the brief "Clark vs. Bark" photo wars.

Ofoto started by simply allowing users to upload JPEG images to the online service, to share online photo albums with friends, and to purchase physical silver-halide prints of photos.

In 2000, Ofoto added a 35mm online film processing service and an online frame store. In following years, Ofoto added 4-color offset printed invitations and cards, and services for mobile phones.

In May of 2001, Ofoto was purchased by Eastman Kodak. Ofoto, Inc. as a company became Kodak Imaging Network, Inc.

In 2005, the Ofoto web service was rebranded as the Kodak EasyShare Gallery.

Separately, Ofoto was a software program developed by Light Source Computer Images, Inc. for scanning images, adjusting images, and preparing images for the printing process. An Apple Macintosh version was first available in 1991, bundled with Apple's OneScanner. It was eventually discontinued on August 1, 1996.