Kodak Gallery photo-sharing site closed; photos moving to Shutterfly

LOS ANGELES — If you're one of the nearly 70 million people who subscribed to the Kodak Gallery photo-sharing site, here's some bad news: It has officially closed.

But no worries. Those cherished family photos you uploaded to the site are safe, and you will be able to get them — eventually.

Your photos are among the 5 billion snapshots making the journey to the Shutterfly site from the Kodak site, which was closed a week ago.

The big question is when you get to see them again.

Shutterfly acquired bankrupt Eastman Kodak Co.'s online gallery service in April. If you've ever uploaded or even just viewed photos on the Kodak Gallery site with an account, you're counted among the millions moving to Shutterfly.

And what about your photos?

The photos of the most active gallery users will get priority and should move within a couple of weeks, said Geoffrey Weber, Shutterfly's chief information officer. Less active users probably will get their notification within a couple of months. Shutterfly expects the photo transfer to be wrapped up before the end of the year.

If you've already created a Shutterfly account and linked your former Kodak account, you'll be able to get to your photos even though they haven't yet moved over to Shutterfly servers, the company said.

If you do create a new Shutterfly account, be sure to use the same email address as the one you used for Kodak Gallery. The email address is what enables the accounts from the two sites to be connected — and the Kodak password is what you use to prove the Kodak photos are yours.

Shutterfly is offering 50 free prints for all new accounts.

If you don't create a Shutterfly account — or have one with a different email address — the photos will be transferred into a newly created account. You will get an email with instructions on how to get to your photos.

Moving 5 billion photos from one of the biggest photo-sharing sites is no small undertaking.

Shutterfly's own users have amassed 10 billion photos since the company's inception in 1999. With the absorption of Kodak's 5 billion photos, the company is increasing its photo collection 50 percent in a matter of months.

"It's an exciting thing to be part of," Weber said. "Just pulling this off is a neat trick."

Not everything from the Kodak Gallery will live on in Shutterfly. Projects such as slide shows and custom-made calendars have expired with the Kodak site, as have Kodak Gallery-branded mobile apps.

Also, Kodak wireless photo frames that used the gallery to share and update photos will not be supported by Shutterfly, the company said. But that doesn't exactly make them useless. You can, of course, still add photos to the frame using removable memory cards. And one that used to use the gallery — the Kodak Pulse Digital Frame, which is still supported by Kodak — will continue to connect to email and Facebook.

This story was originally published July 9, 2012 at 12:00 AM.