Sending photos

So the parents want to see where you live. Or maybe you have kids. How do you get the photos to people in Israel? I'm assuming you either have a digital camera or else scan your photos (or use a service that does this for you, for example ofoto).

From the US to Israel

Obviously you can print your own photos and mail them yourself. A single print costs about $0.30 at the local photo shop or retail or grocery chain store (or use a home printer), and a letter costs $0.80 and takes about 7-14 days to arrive.

If you want the more convenient option of having someone else do the printing and mailing for you, here are some inexpensive options:

Shutterfly will print your photos for $0.29/each and express-mail from the US to Israel for $5.00/order. They will also host your photos in a password-protected album which your relatives can view. They have a full-featured image editor you can use over the web (in case you don't have a good image manipulation package you can run locally).
Ulpanei Assaf will print for 0.75 NIS/photo and mail within Israel for 5 NIS/order (shipping free for orders over 35 NIS). For some reason they don't have a privacy policy posted anywhere on their site. They will not host your photos for others to view. Overall a bare-bones service for a low price.
Pic4U will print for 1.50 NIS/photo and ship for 10 NIS/order (free over 50 NIS). They do have the online album feature. They will also let you do simple manipulations on the photos after uploading them.
Pic has prints for 0.89 NIS/each. On their website, the JavaScript is broken, and I could not log in. They replied to my complaint with "the site only supports MSIE". Well, too bad. I took my business elsewhere.
Another option is to find a regular photo shop that is local to the recipient. The idea is that you just e-mail the photos to them, and they print them. Then you relatives can pick them up (and even pay).

Maintained by Dan Pelleg.

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