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Gone are the days of dropping off your roll of 35mm film at One Hour photo developers. Thanks to the digital world, photography is instantaneous, and you don’t have to wait to see how your photos turn out.
But are your photos just collecting dust in the cloud? Why not preserve your memories in a beautiful keepsake book that you’ll look at for years to come?
Best Sites For Printing Photo Books Online
Numerous companies offer online photo book printing. They range in price and features — some even provide services for photographers and authors to self-publish, mass produce and distribute their personal creations. These three services stand out from the rest making them our top picks.
Note about the pricing: it changes frequently, and there are usually special offers and discount codes. Make sure you check out our coupon sections on this page and click on our links for the most up-to-date prices and promos before purchasing.
Artifact Uprising Review
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Founded by a team of two sisters and a husband in 2012, Artifact Uprising is a mission-driven company that’s a terrific pick for artists, graphic designers or anyone who’s looking for a simple, no-frills service with an impressive, high-quality book.
Each hard-cover book is made with a thick, matte paper, a fabric cover in a choice of 10 colors and a partial or full dust jacket (which you can design as well).
Although Artifact Uprising has a slightly higher price point (for hardcover books) and it doesn’t offer fancy templates, its photo books are by far the most beautiful and “premium.” The platform is very simple to use and gives you a professional and priceless book or gift to treasure for years to come.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Softcover: starts at $15 for 5.5×5.5″ book (40-page minimum)
- Hardback: starts at $59 for 6×8″ book (40-page minimum)
- Additional Pages: $0.25-$1.50/page (depending on format/size)
- Turnaround Time: 8 days for production + shipping
- Volume Discount: 20% off for 10+ books
Coupon
Read our In-Depth Artifact Uprising Review
Shutterfly Review
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Shutterfly is another popular photo-sharing service which offers a variety of photo printing services and products including photo books at affordable prices.
A major player in the photo printing world since 1999, Shutterfly offers a wide selection of templates, customizations and book creation options in addition to competitive pricing.
If you want to create books on the go, you can use its Photo Story iPad app which even gives you the ability to draw using touch screen doodling.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Softcover: stars at $15.99 for an 8×8″ book (20 pages)
- Hardcover: stars at $19.99 for an 8×8″ book (20 pages)
- Additional Pages: $0.65-$2.39 per page, depending on size
- Turnaround Time: Economy/Standard is 6-10 days (includes shipping); also offers rush service
- Discounts: Offers a variety of seasonal discounts, promotions and exclusive offers throughout the year
Coupon
Read Our In-Depth Shutterfly Review
Blurb Review
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Founded in 2005, Blurb is a book printing service and then some, offering many extra distribution features. Blurb is great for both personal use and aspiring authors alike who want to create books, photo books, ebooks, notebooks, trade books or magazines for personal use or for sharing with a larger audience.
You can use its online editor or 2 downloadable software options to create books from your desktop without the internet.
Blurb also integrates with InDesign and Lightroom to easily upload your publications and photos (no other photo book services offers this feature).
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Pricing
- Softcover: starts at $14.99 for 7×7″ book (20 pages)
- Hardcover: starts at $28.99 for 7×7″ book (20 pages)
- Additional Pages: $0.20-$1.50 per page depending on size
- Turnaround Time: 4-5 days for production + shipping
- Volume Discount: 30-40% off for 20+ books
Coupon
Read Our In-Depth Review of Blurb
Compare Photo Book Pricing & Features
| Artifact Uprising | Shutterfly | Blurb | Lulu | Mpix | PastBook | PhotoBucket | Picaboo | Snapfish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website | Visit Website |
| Lowest Price Book | $15 for 5.5ÌÑ5.5‰Û_ softcover | $15.99 for a 8ÌÑ8‰Û_ softcover | $14.99 for 7x7" softcover | $1.72 for paperback | $19.99 for softcover | $30 for 8.5x6" softcover | $25.00 for 4x6" softcover | $19.99 for 8x6" softcover | $12.99 for 5x7" softcover |
| Minimum # of Pages | 40 Pages | 20 Pages | 20 Pages | 24 | 20 | 16 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Maximum # of Pages | 380 Pages | 101 Pages | 440 Pages | 300 | 100 | 500 | 74 | 160 | 150 |
| Price for Extra Pages | $0.25-$1.50/page | $0.65-$2.39 per page | $0.20-$1.50 per page | Unavailable | .50 per page | Price Increases Based on Increments of 50, 100, 200, 300, 500) | $0.30-$.57 per page | $0.75-$1.90 per page | Varies |
| Hard Cover |  | 3 | | | | | | | |
| Soft Cover | | | | | | | | | |
| Other Features | Layflat, Circular Diecut Cover | Layflat, Circular Diecut Cover, Leather Cover, Crushed Silk Cover | Layflat, Linen Cover, Pearl Photo Paper, Magazine, Ebooks. | Coil Bound, Perfect Bound, Stitch Bound | Panoramic Photo Book | Premium Matte | Layflat | Layflat, Flush Mount, Mini Books | Layflat, Linen Cover, Leather Cover |
| Discounts | Offers a variety of seasonal discounts, promotions and exclusive offers throughout the year | 10-40% off for volume orders | 5-20% off for 15+ books | 35% for additional books | Contact for discounts of 20+ | Up to 60% for orders of 10+ | Offers a variety of seasonal discounts, promotions and exclusive offers throughout the year | ||
| Production Time | 2-8 Days | 1-2 Days | 4-5 Days | 3-5 Days | 1-2 Days | n/a | 3 Days | 3-10 Days | 3 Days |
| Shipping Time | 3-18 Days | 1-10 Days | 7-11 Days | 1-11 Days | 1-10 Days | 7-10 Days (includes printing time) | 5-12 Days (includes printing time) | 1-10 Days | 1-8 Days |
| Distribution Option | | ||||||||
| Templates/Editor | | | | | | ||||
| Customer Service | Email & Phone | Phone | Support Ticket | Limited | Email & Support Ticket | Chat | Live Chat, Phone, Email | Live Chat, Phone, Email | |
| Other Products | Frames, Cards, Prints | Cards, Stationary, Photo Gifts | N/A | Calendars | Wall Art, Photo Gifts, Prints | n/a | Wall Art, Canvas Prints, Photo Gifts | Cards, Photo Crystals, Calendars, Home Decor | Home Decor, Calendars, Photo Gifts, Canvas Prints |
Other Photo Book Companies
Here are a few other popular photo book companies we reviewed that are worth considering as well.
Lulu | Mpix | PastBook | PhotoBucket | Picaboo | Snapfish
Lulu Review
Lulu is not a photo printing company. Rather it’s a community of writers and designers looking to sell their work to a larger audience.
This company has published more than one million books since 2002, helping to create and shape the self-publishing industry. Because of this reason, we have included them in our review.
Overall, Lulu is a nice option for those who want to print large quantities or who wish to sell their printed and digital books via third-party retailers (or on their own website). It’s also a great site to browse and purchase others’ self-published books.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Black and white Paperbacks starting at $1.72 (for 48 pages) and $13.13 for black and white Premium Hardcover (for 24 pages)
- Turnaround Time: 3-8 days (includes shipping). Download e-books instantly
- Additional Pages: Varies
- Volume Discount: 3-20% off for 15+ books
Mpix Review
Mpix was founded in 2003 in Pittsburg, Kansas by Miller Professional Imaging, a local, family photography business.
Although a lesser known company, its nimble team works hard to compete, produce and quickly print and ship its products.
Being a smaller company also gives them the advantage of having a leg up on the bigger names when it comes to customer service.
Because Mpix’s owners are photographers themselves, they strive to have the best quality papers, colors and processes so you can trust your photos will turn out looking great.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Softcover and Economy books start at $19.99
- Turnaround Time: 1 day (excludes shipping).
- Additional Pages: .50 each
PastBook Review
PastBook is different from other photo books in that it specializes in auto-creating books of your past. With one click of a “connect” button you can have a yearbook made within seconds.
By syncing to your Facebook or Instagram account, it automatically puts your uploaded/shared photos in chronological order along with the existing photo captions.
You can also invite friends or relatives to contribute and add their own favorite moments (or directly upload your own photos).
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Softcover starts at $30 for small (8.5×6″) and starts at $45 for big hardcover (12×8″) both for 26 pages. Price includes taxes.
- Turn Around Time: 7-10 Days
- Shipping is a flat $5.00, and they claim to ship to anywhere in the world
- Additional pages: go up to 50, 100, 200, 300 or 500 pages for set price (not pay per page like other companies)
- Get extra copies printed for friends and family for a 35% discount at checkout
Photobucket Review
Photobucket is an online photo album service that’s been around since 2003. It allows you to upload your photos into galleries and then order various printed goods, including greeting cards and photo books.
This site offers iPhone and Android apps that allow you to upload, share, edit and retouch photos. You can even design and order a photo book using the app and pick it up the same day at your local drug store in as quickly as an hour.
Photobucket makes it easy and quick to create books for yourself since you can easily import your images from Facebook and Instagram or use your existing Photobucket account.
The books are clean, minimalist and high-quality, but they lack some of the bells and whistles when it comes to customizing your paper types, adding design embellishments, etc.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Soft Cover photo books start at $25.00 for 4×6″ softcover
- Turnaround Time: 3 days (plus shipping) or same day (via the app).
- Additional Pages: $0.30-$.57 per page
Picaboo Review
Based in Redwood City, California, Picaboo was founded in 2002 by two friends who were college classmates. They printed their first book in 2005, and since then the company has printed more than 2 million photo books.
The clean, easy to navigate website has no frills and is very straight-forward. Picaboo also offers Yearbook software, which gives schools the ability to collaborate on custom yearbooks. This software comes with its own storefront to sell books on demand with a relatively short 3-week turnaround.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Starting at $19.99 for softcover 8×6″ book (20 pages) and lay-flat hardcover books start at $64.99 for 8×8″ book (20 pages)
- Additional Pages: $0.50-$1.90 per page
- Turnaround Time: 2-10 days for production plus shipping (overnight available)
- Discounts: Up to 60% for orders of 10+
Snapfish Review
Snapfish is a popular photo printing service that prints your photos on everything from photo books to a variety of decor and gifts like mugs, shirts and more. It’s quick and easy to make photo books in a snap using Snapfish.
Now a part of the HP family of products, Snapfish prints your photo books using high-quality gloss or matte finishes. It offers plenty of customizable options for your desired design, layout, size and book type.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
- Softcover 5×7″ starts at $12.99 (for 20 pages) and hardcover 8×8″ starts at $28.99 (for 20 pages)
- Additional Pages: $0.99 -$2.99 per page depending on size
- Turnaround Time: 1-5 days for processing + shipping
- Discounts: Offers a variety of seasonal discounts, promotions and special offers throughout the year
How To Create A Photo Book
Watch how easily and quickly you can create a photo book on Snapfish in 5 simple steps.
Photo Book Tips & Tricks
You don’t need a fancy DSLR Camera to create breath-taking photos (although they can certainly help). Most iPhones or smartphones take high-resolution photos that are suitable for printing. Our content manager Kimberly offered her own photography advice and must-have tools for great picture taking in a blog post on Bigstock.
Need some additional ideas for what type of book to create with your photos? Check out these 12 ways to supercharge your photo album where we share ideas on what you can make with photobooks (only as endless as your imagination). You also might consider using stock photography (from our sister site, We Rock Your Web) when creating recipe books or other fictional books.
What photo sharing service do you use when printing albums?
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– To start, the process of purchasing the books and recieiving codes to use as gift cards when you actually want to have the books printed is confusing and unecessarily complicated.
– The interface for putting your album together is pretty limiting, not intuitive and takes some time to figure out. It is also pretty slow moving.
– But most frustrating of all: YOU CANNOT TRUST ARTIFACT UPRISING TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR WORK. After my now-husband lost an entire album a few years ago (for a trip we went on to Asia) that he wanted to make me as a gift, I knew I had to be diligent about keeping track of my work. I am SO glad that I took a screen shot of my album layout (after +12 hours of work). When I went back to the site a few days later to make some changes to my layouts, my album was GONE (just like my husband had experienced). Since they dont have customer service on weekends (which is when I have time to work on my wedding album) I had to submit an email and wait until Tuesday, completely stressed that all my work was lost, before a CS rep got in touch with me. After being asked a series of frankly annoying questions about my project to try to recover it, they were in fact able to locate it and link it to my account. Phew. I made some changes and, once agin, took a screen shot of my work and logged out.
– Fast forward to the following weekend, when I wanted to make a few changes and order my books, and though the projects showed up in my account, every frame that was supposed to show a photo showed a gray box with a question mark. Ugh. What now? Again, I submitted a ticket and waited until the middle of the week until a CS rep got in touch with me. Two of the cutomer service reps ended up having to recreate my entire album because somehow the original project got ruined. At least I didn’t have to do it myself!
– So I finally had my album layout completed and was ready to have them printed (I bought the wedding album series with one 12×12 album and two 10×10 albums), when I realized the layout I created was for a 10×10 book. No problem, I figured, I’m sure there’s an easy way to scale up for the bigger book, which is still a square format. Not so. In order to print the 12×12 book I would have to recreate the entire 70 page album from scratch using the 12×12 template. At this point I wasn’t even surprised. Instead of dealing with that whole headache, because I had already spent far too much time on these albums, I opted to just print three 10×10 albums and used the savings from the larger album as a credit for some printed photos. Not a huge deal, but definitely not high quality service.
– I was given a 10% discount for all of my troubles, which was a nice gesture, and actually saved a nice chunk of change since my order was so expensive in the first place.
– My albums and photos finally arrived, looking mostly great. I like the print quality, and the pages of the layflat album are really nice and thick. Unfortunately, the embossing on the outside does not look as clean and elegant as I was hoping. There are places where the gold foil looks like it is rubbed away (and remember, it’s a brand new album).
– The much bigger problem, however, is that of the three albums I had printed, one of the albums actually had an entire spread missing and another spread duplicated. A second album had all the right pictures in the right places, but on one page there is a three-inch long smudge on the page underneath a photo of my father-daughter dance. Not cool. These albums cost $400+ each and no one is checking them for quality control? I emailed the company about these flaws (at this point I’ve spent A LOT of time emailing back and forth with the customer service reps), and am hopeful that they will make it right.
Moral of the story: save yourself A LOT of headache and extra trouble by NOT using Artifact Uprising until they can improve their user-experience, the reliability of their platform, their responsiveness, and the quality of their work.
I have kept a holiday journal which means lots of text interspersed with lots of high resolution photos. I sent it through daily emails to friends and family. They suggest I print it out in book form.
I pretty much want to keep the layout as it was in the emails. The photos were inserted into the text, not sent as attachments, as they are an integral part of the story.
Which photo book do you think would be the easiest / most appropriate to choose?
I like the idea of being able to sell the finished product as well as having my own personal copies printed.
Thanks!
Blurb on the other hand is maybe more convenient for me, because I can use Lightroom for making a book. You can also choose the paper quality you want. I don’t like the glossy dust jacket and image wrap though.
I would not recommend Blurb. Their design software is appalling and after a succession of poor service (pages repeating, running images, etc.) I finally gave up and moved on.
Artifact Uprising looks promising and so does Lulu.