NEW YORK — Coming to a mailbox near you: scores of smiling, beaming faces on holiday photo cards.

With each holiday season — and each new digital camera given as a gift — more families forgo Norman Rockwell-like illustrations or funny Far Side cards in favor of a photo to send their best wishes. The trade group Photo Marketing Association International estimates a whopping 270 million photo greeting cards were sent last year, enough for each person in the U.S. save the 30-plus million who live in California.

In a frenzied world filled with mass-market products, people are looking to personalize greetings to friends and family, and advances in technology keep making it easier and cheaper to do so, industry representatives say.

With no film costs or limitations, families can freely experiment with different kinds of photos that convey different images. Increasingly customizable printing options allow them to choose a unique message to match. And photo companies continue to offer more and more design options to wrap up the whole package. The overall effect is an intimate greeting that immediately brings you up to date on someone's life.

"Digital photos have allowed us to do a lot of this," says 50-year industry veteran Brian Ainsworth, owner of Photos Ar' Nice, a photo lab and camera store in Gainesville, Fla. "You couldn't manipulate a negative on paper this way. ... We're seeing a new era of greetings."

Ainsworth installed kiosks in his store five years ago that allowed customers to be in charge of the design of the card, including photo cropping, greeting wording and type style. He says he made a point to offer software that is easy to use so, for example, a mother with an infant in a stroller (which conveniently fits under the kiosk) can create a card in minutes and never have to really take her mind off the baby.

The cards are being produced by professional printers and DIYers alike. The photo marketing group says that more than 102 million cards were done on home computer printers in 2005; close to 13 million on home specialty photo printers; 34 million at instant kiosks; 61 million at minilabs; and another almost 56 million people ordered them online.

Ainsworth says those numbers likely will go up as folded photo cards — cards printed on heavier, more elegant card stock — become the norm, replacing the 4-by-8-inch single sheet card on photo paper that was the standard just a few years ago.

Greeting card companies are responding to this urge to personalize by embracing photo cards instead of knocking them down as competition. Hallmark has increased the number of photo-holder cards, the ones that serve as decorative frames, from 14 last year to 20 this year. Martha Stewart recently partnered with Kodak EasyShare Gallery to create a series of ready-to-go cards that only await the family portrait.

This all goes beyond Christmas cards of course, with Americans putting their pets' faces on a postage stamp and turning their kids into pinup models for a grandparent's calendar. Ainsworth notes that last year he offered only three designs for Halloween photo cards; this year it was nine. And he expects soon there will be many more photo-based wedding announcements and thank-you cards.

Count Stewart among those who sent out Halloween greetings. "It was a double image of my cat Mozart," she says.

While neither Stewart or Kodak could offer any market research, the partners clearly saw an opportunity in the market, leading them to offer 60 card styles, including an accordion style that has room for eight pictures.

Stewart says she receives scores of photo cards. One of her recent favorites was from friends in London. They had set up artificial holiday trees of all different sizes and then snapped a photo of the family in front of them.

She keeps them all, she says, neatly storing them all in boxes. One year she trimmed her tree with the cards.

Photo cards are appropriate to send to anyone, Stewart says, even business associates who have never, and likely will never, meet your children. "It's a good chance to 'introduce' your family."

Nicole Gann, of Newton, Mass., plans to send a photo card of her 4½-year-old daughter and 1½-year-old son this year. She sent two card versions two years ago: Friends and family on the West Coast got one with then-toddler Leah playing in the snow, while anyone who lived in a cold climate got an autumn-day backdrop.

She's attracted both by the ease of creating the cards and the smile that's almost sure to cross a recipient's face.

"I do like getting them from other people, especially people I don't see very often, or people you do see but don't know all their kids. And I don't love those really long letters, but you still feel like you're catching up," Gann, 34, says.