Photos are a huge part of our lives, and the digital cameras that have dominated the market since the early 2000s have really given users the opportunity to edit and quickly share our photos with almost anyone regardless of their location.

Because many people, including myself, tend to overdo it and take far more photos than needed, digital slideshows have become increasingly more popular. But while the concept seems so simple, many people who would like to create a slideshow end up being lost in the creation process.

FXFoto 6, a photo editing application and advanced slideshow application, is attempting to change that. The company offers a few versions of the software, but I decided to stick with the free standard edition for the purposes of this review.

Starting with the installation, the process went exceptionally well. After about a minute and a half the program was up and running. I first tried to import photos, which wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. The program gives users the ability to import folders; however, I couldn’t seem to get that to work. When using the control key to try to import multiple photos simultaneously, the program would only select one photo at a time, which was a major negative.

After the tedious and frustrating import process, I decided to try out the built-in photo editor to touch up my pictures and remove some red eye off of the subjects. I found the editing process to be the best feature of the application. Although Photoshop obviously blows it out of the water, the basic photo editing that FxFoto 6 provides works. But one disappointment is the lack of options such as brightness and contrast adjustment.

As for the slideshows themselves, I was not impressed at all. The user interface is unorganized, unappealing and poorly designed. I can’t see how any basic user or even a slightly more skilled user could figure out how to effectively produce slideshows with this program.

On top of the aforementioned downsides, the company does not support the Macintosh platform.

Personally, I would stay away from FxFoto 6. As an alternative, the Web site Photobucket (http://photobucket.com) offers a great slideshow creator and powerful image editing tools all for free. Users can also take advantage of online Web hosting so they can share the slideshow they just created with friends and family.

As megapixel quality increases and camera optics greatly improve, photo size greatly increases as well and sharing large photos through email can create quite a challenge, not just for the sender but the recipient as well.

Memeo Inc., a California-based company is ready to take on the challenge with a new product called Memeo Share. Memeo share is a desktop application designed for Microsoft Windows XP that allows users to upload photos to Memeo’s servers where other the recipient(s) can automatically download the full quality photos to be viewed. The service also features a setting that allows the user to upload pictures directly to Facebook and is an overall easy way to transfer photos among computers.

My experience with the photo sharing application left much more to be desired. The download and install was very quick and user friendly but I felt many other photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Photo Bucket or even Apple’s Mobile Me service offers many more options such as RSS feeds, embed codes, photo editors, comments and better photo tagging options, without the need to download and install an application. The interface of the application was designed well and very user simple and the performance of was good as well. The application ran well and seemed to work well without using hardly any system resources.

Overall I just can’t use using Memeo Share as a primary photo sharing application. Sure, it’s better than email, but Flickr and Photobucket provide far more features in a web experience and give Memeo Share a run for it’s money.  Though I’m not a huge fan of Memeo Share, you can give it a try for yourself and let others know your experience by commenting below.