Visitors to the Thomson website can order the spiral bound albums, which start at 6.99 for a 20pp 16x12cm pocket album and rise to 19.99 for a 33x24cm 40pp album after downloading a software package to create the album on their PC.

Although run under the Thomson brand, and initially marketed to Thomson Holiday customers, the site can be used by anyone, and the albums can be used for any images, not just holiday snaps.

"This is the first stage of the market, we plan to roll out other products over the coming months," said dsi group business development director Fraser Church.

Church predicted a huge and lucrative market with a "six figure" number of albums per year. He added that it had good repeat business with half of customers so far using the service again.

The firm is producing the books on its third iGen3 at dsi colourworks in London's Docklands. The only kit it needed in addition to the software was some finishing equipment.

Dsi was one of the first iGen3 users in the world using the machine to produce personalised travel packs for Thomson customers.

Earlier this year Xerox UK DocuColor marketing manager Kevin O'Donnell said the firm would be bringing iGen3 customers a package to enter the digital photo printing market.

The market for printing consumer's digital photos is seen as a huge potential market by photo and consumer electronics firms. The demise of film cameras, as shown by retailer Dixons' decision last week to cease selling conventional cameras has led to a rush to find lucrative print services to replace conventional developing and processing.

Church said that the rise of digital camera ownership and broadband use, which he said was rising by 50,000 homes per week, made online photo printing increasingly attractive to consumers.

Hackney firm Emeness set up a separate division totalPix to offer an online photo album service using its NexPress 2100 earlier this year and the option is built into Apple's iPhoto imaging software.

In October market research firm Infotrends CAP Ventures is holding a two-day conference Digital Imaging 05 Europe, which will include sessions on digital photo output including online photo services.
Contact: www.infotrends-rgi.com.

Story by Barney Cox