Holding photos in your hands is incomparable to digital images. The fact that we can buy tangible images on photo paper or greeting cards to remind us of special moments is perhaps one of the most important developments in this era of technological advancement.
But which photo service you choose does matter. After months of research and ordering multiple photo products from 10 different online printing services, we discovered that not all photo services will provide the same quality products.
at last,blindsis the service we will commission to produce photo prints of the highest quality. Not only does it offer plenty of photo printing options and gifting options, but the quality was excellent in all of our tests.
best overall
blinds
Overall,blindsSend back the highest quality prints. They're a brighter, lighter print, which means even small wallet-sized images have small details that are visible. These details were lost in prints from every other service we tested.
Good quality is the unifying thread across all Shutterfly products we order: wallets, 4x6, 8x10, photo books, and 20x30 posters, available in a variety of papers. The poster was also well packaged and intact.
But of course, Shutterfly's product range is much more comprehensive than prints and photo books. It offers a large selection of custom holiday cards, invitations, calendars, canvas prints, home decor, and even special items for kids and pets. That's right, you can finally order custom T-shirts for your dog.
If you're looking for a great photo book, you can design your own from its many styles and sizes, or take advantage of the Make My Book service for just $29.99. Make My Book allows you to hire a Shutterfly designer to take your photos and turn them into a beautiful book within three business days. If you decide to order the finished product, you receive the final design, add finishing touches, and pay only for the book.
We were very impressed with Shutterfly. It offers great print and photo products and has a great website and app. But if you're willing to sacrifice a little (not much) for quality and plenty of photo product options, you can save money with our budget pick: Amazon Prints.
Advantage
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high quality printing
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different options
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application
shortcoming
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expensive
best value
Amazon Photos
thisAmazon PrintsThe product is pretty basic, but the photo quality is decent, the price is reasonable, and they ship photos to you for free.
The Amazon Photos app automatically backs up photos from your phone or tablet's camera roll for easy ordering later (and peace of mind knowing your memories are stored in the cloud). Amazon also offers unlimited photo storage for free with Prime membership.
Because Amazon Prints doesn't offer wallet-sized images, we can't compare the quality of these smaller images to that of other services. But if you're looking for affordable prices in standard sizes and fine print, Amazon is a great option. It also offers a basic set of other services, including photo albums, invitations, enlargements, holiday cards, calendars, and announcements.
If you're looking for more options for photo products, our top pick, Shutterfly, is a better bet.
Advantage
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high quality printing
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photo opportunism
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application
shortcoming
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not many options
Things You Should Know About Online Photo Development Services
1. (Print) size matters. a lot of.
Our tests have shown very clearly that the same image with the same photo service can produce wildly different print results from one size to another. If you're only interested in printing 4x6s and 5x7s, pretty much any photo service will get you decent prints. However, when you start moving to less common print sizes like 18x24 or wallet-sized photos, print quality suffers.
2. Black and white photos are difficult to print.
The services we tested were popular for producing high-quality black-and-white photos. Those poorly-resulting photos lose a lot of detail if the print is too dark or too light. Fortunately, we did the research for you.
3. This is not a "you get what you pay for" category.
Often, saving money means getting a lower quality product. In our testing, we found that's not the case with photo printing services. Some of our most affordable services send us back the highest quality images.
4. Raw image quality is important.
If your images are bad to begin with, expect your reprints to be just as bad or worse. Even the best photo service can't make up for a bad photo.
5. Different places need different places.
Some photo printing sites are too complicated for those of us who aren't professional photographers. When testing it, it was easy to see that some of these services are designed for professional photographers, while others are for consumers looking for cute Christmas gifts or birthday announcements. Our overall winner, Shutterfly, is easy to use and offers a wide range of options for the shopping needs of the average consumer, while delivering high-quality print that professionals will appreciate.
Order Holiday Cards
If you're buying a printing service to order custom holiday cards or announcements, all the services we tested can fill your order. They both offer similar photo card templates, and you can design almost identical cards on any of these sites. However, there are a few things to consider when ordering photo cards.
Most of these services require at least an order of 20 to 25 cards. So, if you have a small recipient list, use a service with no minimum order requirements. Of the 10 services we tested, only Walmart Photo, Nations Photo Lab, AdoramaPix/Printique, and RitzPix have no minimum order requirements for photo cards and invitations.
On a related note, most services advertise their custom cards for "as low as...". This price assumes you order a large number of cards. The odds are your actual priced card will be significantly higher than what they advertise. Unless you order 3,000 cards. But who did it?
When it comes to small-format black-and-white photos, many of the test photos we received from these services did struggle with print quality. Black and white holiday photos can look very elegant, but if you choose the wrong photo service, your black and white holiday cards may appear washed out or too dark to see details. Our top pick, Shutterfly, does a great job with small black-and-white photos. We do not recommend most other cards for black and white photos.
Other Online Photo Printing Services We Tested
walmart photo
Walmart is known for its product selection and reasonable prices, so it's no surprisewalmart photo serviceProvides both of these things. Many photo products are available for same-day or one-hour pickup, and all orders over $25 get free shipping. Walmart Photo offers metal easels, wall hangings, Christmas cards, plates, jewelry, invitations, phone cases -- you name it. This is a nice breed.
We are very pleased with the prints we received. As with most other services, the wallet is a little darker than necessary, but not to the point that the average buyer will notice. From the Services menu in the Walmart app, select Print Photos and you can import photos from your camera roll, Facebook or Instagram to order prints for pickup or home delivery.
To choose from one of their many other photo gift options such as wall art, photo books, blankets, mugs, visit Walmart.com and place your order there.
Overall, our experience with Walmart Photos has been good. The only problem we have is that the 4x6 photos can only be picked up at the store and cannot be mailed to your home.
Advantage
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different options
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same day pickup
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application
shortcoming
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slight chromatic aberration
Snapfish
they print, we order from thereSnapfishDecent but nothing to get excited about. The larger print works well, but the purse is a darker shade, and the colors were a bit off in one of our color portrait photos (it had a lot of green grass, but the brown dog ended up looking a little green too).
The untrained eye may not notice quality issues, but the price is higher than similar services. If you're okay with getting good, but not crazy good photo quality, you might as well save a few bucks and check out Walmart Photo or Amazon Prints. If you plan to order photo books, we recommend that you avoid Snapfish. Print lines are clearly visible, and while we love the feel and flexibility of their photo books, Shutterfly's photo book print quality is much better.
It's worth noting, however, that Snapfish offers a plethora of photo products (holiday cards, birth announcements, photo books, invitations, etc.) and the ability to import photos from Facebook, Google Photos, Instagram, Flickr, and mobile devices. So you get some extra money.
Advantage
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different options
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More import options
shortcoming
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slight chromatic aberration
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low quality photo album
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expensive
CVS photo
ourCVS photoThe packaging in which the print arrived was not reassuring (just a paper envelope with a cardboard back), but luckily the images inside were undamaged. The picture quality is good, but as with almost all of these services, the wallet is a bit dark and details are lost. We also noticed that the 8x10 cuts poorly.
The CVS app allows same-day photo and card printing, and photos can be imported from your device, Facebook, or your CVS account. The site offers more photo product options and import services. It can pull your photos from Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Flickr, and many photo products are almost as powerful as most other photo services. You can order photo books, calendars, wall art, holiday cards, birth announcements, wedding invitations, and more.
Like Snapfish, we think CVS' photo service is all about the money. If you're on a tight budget, we recommend printing with Amazon, or paying more for Shutterfly's superior print quality.
Advantage
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different options
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same day pickup
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application
shortcoming
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The envelope is dangerously thin
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Minor color and cutting errors
Walgreens Pictures
our experienceWalgreens PicturesAlmost the same as CVS. Walgreens Photo offers a variety of photo products from photo cubes to potholders to iPad cases. They even have a huge selection of custom Christmas decorations. Many of their products are available for same day pickup at your local Walgreens.
Walgreens Photo is built into the regular Walgreens app, allowing you to order any product that's eligible for same-day pickup. To order products from the rest of the catalog, visit the Walgreens website and order there. It offers a wide range of custom cards, photo jewelry, beverages, passports and photo books, and more.
Both the website and app are easy to use, and while Walgreens "cannot guarantee the durability of photos stored on Walgreens.com," there is no limit to the number of photos you can upload, and you don't have to purchase a subscription to store your photos there.
The prints we receive in our Walgreens orders are solid. No serious problems. However, what they received was a thin paper envelope with no padding - it's not hard to imagine photos getting a little rough in transit. However, ours arrived in good condition.
Advantage
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different options
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same day pickup
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application
shortcoming
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The envelope is dangerously thin
national photo gallery
national photo galleryOffers mid-range pricing, good print quality, and an interesting selection of photo products. While there's no app, the national site is a joy to use. It doesn't offer photo uploads from sources other than your hard drive, so don't expect to import your Facebook photos or Instagram photos, but the desktop upload process is simple, and the site offers a variety of paper types, mounting options, and photo cropping options.
The print quality on the wallets we ordered was good, but we had mixed feelings about their die-cut, pop-up design. (Jackson hated it, Sarah loved it.)
Some prints came out darker than we'd like, but for most images, we had no complaints. All around, Nations Photo Lab is a solid photo service with good print quality, a wide range of products to choose from, and mat/frame/display options for your special photos. We just wish it had an app.
Products offered include framed prints, photo cards, holiday cards, announcements, invitations, photo albums and books, bracelets, decorations and more.
Advantage
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high quality printing
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different options
shortcoming
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no application
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print a bit dark
AdoramaPix (renamed Printique)
Editor's note: After our testing, Adorama rebranded itself as Printique. We have not yet tested services under the new brand.
Of the 10 services we tested, AdoramaPix has now becomei print, with the safest packaging to date. In a way, it almost feels like overkill. Surprisingly, the extra security packaging didn't lead to higher costs. In fact, AdoramaPix is one of the most affordable services we've tested.
Unfortunately, all of the prints we received were darker than the original image. This is true in any size print we order, not just wallets like other services. AdoramaPix has an app, but it only allows you to upload photos to your AdoramaPix library.
However, the site is feature-rich, allowing you to upload photos from services such as Facebook, Google Photos, and Instagram. It offers some unique options when it comes to photo offerings, including metal-bound albums, woodblock prints, and leather-bound albums (insert host joke here). Of course, it also offers standard options: photo books, custom cards, calendars, wall decorations, and more.
Advantage
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safe packaging
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affordable
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application
shortcoming
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low quality print
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The application is limited
Buy now at Printique
Ritz Hotel
When we ordered prints from the RitzPix website, we had a few hiccups with the upload process. Some of our images tried to load several times. Unfortunately, we had a similar problem (with a different image) with the RitzPix app. The app's navigation is also a bit confusing, and we didn't find it very intuitive.
Our RitzPix photos were a bit worn out when they arrived at our door. They were sent in paper envelopes with many of the corners bent. Aside from the condition of the image, the quality of the print isn't much to get excited about either. The smaller the print, the darker the image. When we got to the purse, the colors and shades were very different.
This worked fine for our larger photos, but we don't recommend using them for photos smaller than 8x10.
In addition to print quality, RitxPix offers a great selection of prints, banners, calendars, apparel, albums and journals, custom cards and stationery.
Advantage
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different options
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application
shortcoming
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low quality print
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Problems with apps and websites
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The envelope is dangerously thin
pixel
Our Mpix pictures arrive very securely packaged - the pictures are covered in plastic and the box is padded to keep them safe in transit. However, despite the above packaging, the print we received was much darker than the original. This is most noticeable in wallet-sized images, where a lot of detail is lost.
The quality of photos taken with a DSLR camera didn't suffer much, so while professional photographers can use the MPix for larger photos, the other services we tested were more likely to deliver photos with sufficient brightness. MPix's website and app offer multiple ways to upload photos from different services such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, Dropbox, and more.
Mpix offers a curated selection of custom photo products such as birth announcements, multiple photo books, holiday cards, metallic collages, photo jewelry and keepsake boxes.
Browsing websites and apps is simple and intuitive, but it's not worth much because of the subpar print quality.
Advantage
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safe packaging
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different options
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application
shortcoming
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low quality print
How We Test Online Printing Services
tester
Hello, my name is Sarah Kovacs. After spending many, many years of money and effort trying to find the perfect gift for my loved one, I've come to the conclusion that photo gifts really are the only surefire way to give someone something extra special.
I have three kids and know that if I draw a blank on gifts for my grandparents, nothing will make them happier than seeing the smiling faces of their kids and grandkids – whether they’re on coffee mugs, Rug or framed print for the office.
Over the years, I've reviewed hundreds of products, websites, and even software. Trained in design, I have a solid understanding of intuitive layouts that give me options without overwhelming me.
While I can talk about a typical user's experience with these online photo service sites, I'm not a professional photographer with a deep understanding of what constitutes a perfect quality photo. Fortunately, our former lead photographer at Reviewed, Jackson Ruckar, can provide professional critiques of the images we receive from each service.
When Ruckar first picked up a camera 15 years ago, he was an addict. Since then, he has worked as a photojournalist for the U.S. Army, various magazines, and now USA Today. When reviewing photo printing services, he focuses primarily on color accuracy and print defects.
test
We've selected 10 of the most popular online printing services and ordered multiple products from each: 8x10s, 4x6s, and wallets. Two of the photos we used were taken on an iPhone SE, two were taken on an iPhone X, and two were captured by our professional photographer on a DSLR camera. One image from each camera is black and white and one is full color, so we can see how each service handles color and grayscale.
Instead of consulting each other, Jackson and I rated each image based on its quality relative to the original and how consistent one image was from the other (we ordered copies to compare them to each other) .
I took the time to browse each service's website and app (if applicable) on iOS and Android to gauge ease of use and see what special features each service can offer. After these considerations, we narrowed down our selection to the top five for reprint quality and ease of use.
From these services we ordered 20x30 enlargements and albums to see how they handle these special orders.
When we consider the quality of the original print, the quality of the special order, the ease of use and special features of each service, and of course the price, we find thatblindsIt is the best service.
##More Articles You May Like*The best portable photo printers*10 Things to Make Your iPhone Photos Look Professional*14 Foolproof Ways to Keep Your Photos Safe in the Cloud
Meet the testers
As a photojournalist, Jackson spent time with bands, the military, and professional baseball teams before joining Reviewed.com's camera crew. Outside of Reviewed.com, you'll find him looking for his next game to ease his "gamer ADD," or beard.
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Sarah Kovac is Reviewed's award-winning writer and accessibility editor. Previously, she has worked with Wirecutter, TIME, PCMag, Prevention, The Atlantic, Reviews.com, CNN, GOOD, Upworthy, Mom.me, and SheKnows, among others.
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