Best Photo Books Online: Lulu vs Blurb vs Artifact Uprising vs Shutterfly & More

Thank you for the great article. My question is: Do you know of any service that prints extremely horizontal or vertical books? Something in the 16:9 ratio or 2:1 ratio or close? I have been laying out a photobook with a side column and I don’t want the photos impeded by the column. So 3/4 of the page is photos (at a ratio that makes it easy to bleed a standard image size and still have space left over. 16×8 or smaller 8×4 would be cool. Any ideas?

Unfortunately, I have had a miserable experience with Artifact Uprising. I used them to print my wedding albums and some framed photos, and the entire experience was difficult and frustrating.

– 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 used Mpix for a book to put together highlights from a recent trip to show friends and family and the turn around time is crazy fast! I got the book within 3 days of placing the order. And they are super affordable too for the quality. Plus I prefer the matte look and canvas cover (versus glossy and photo cover).

Have you been able to look at MILK albums in comparison to Artifact Uprising?

Which company would you recommend for making a professional high-end looking wedding album?

Hello. Thank you for this overview review. My child has an autobiography assignment that needs to be formatted into book form. I was going to try Shutterfly but have heard it is not friendly to text-heavy pages. I thought to give Lulu a try based on your review, but sounds like it is best for when you have to make multiple copies. I’d like to use something that will be easy to use for text-heavy pages but will print pictures beautifully. 🙂 Some nice backgrounds or embellishing options would be cute too. Oh and of course all for a reasonable price. Too much to ask for? Thanks for the advice.

Pardon a silly question, new to self publishing. when you state “20 pages”, does that mean 20 sheets of paper or 10 sheets (counting each side as a page)?

I’ve used Blurb and Artifact Uprising. Blurb is good for photo books but takes more time. Artifact is amazing for Instagram based books. Since I post my best kid photos on Instagram, making yearly books takes about 15 minutes on my iPhone. The smaller format books are great for grandparents to carry in a purse or such as brag books. Great print quality.

I am kicking myself because I lost the link to a photo book layout I liked. Does anyone know the company that produces a lay-flat hard cover book with a layout that opens from the center out? I think it had 2 spines, both on the outside. Anyone know about this layout presentation?

I’m reading reviews of Blurb after a disastrous experience with Blurb BookSmart creating a book of family history stories and photos. I’m waiting to receive it now and crossing my fingers that BS (excuse the fitting abbreviation!) didn’t change it AGAIN after I saved and uploaded it! I’ve made numerous books with BookSmart, although I prefer Shutterfly by far for photo books. I’ve never had the problems I had this time, and I suspect that now that Blurb has come out with BookWright, they’re failing to update BS to work with newer operating systems. My desktop got a new hard drive that automatically upgraded to El Capitan, and BS was absolutely unusable on it. I imported a back-up into my laptop, which is still using Yosemite, and I finally managed to get the book done with such horrible problems that I nearly threw the computer out the window. BS would insert extra blank lines, remove lines of text, move entire paragraphs, shift photos up to cut off heads, crash and crash and crash repeatedly. What caused the most crashes was trying to edit text, so I’ve learned that the only possible way to use Blurb in the future is to create and edit the text in Word, copy and paste to BS, and then LEAVE IT ALONE! However, after looking at your reviews, I think I might try Lulu, since the second book will also be a family history book. I really can’t recommend BS (BookSmart) to anyone, anymore!

Pamela, thanks for reaching out! Your digital holiday journal with friends and family sounds like a wonderful tradition and that’s a great idea to put it into a print format. In this case I would definitely say LuLu is the best fit. They offer very affordable options for any quantity (small or large) and a variety of formats (paperback and even ebook). You can also create a website where others can purchase and they offer professionals who can help with the layout/desisgn (although their templates are easy to use). Hopefully that helps and good luck creating your book! Let us know how it turns out.

Advice please.

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!

I went with Blurb for a travel photo book because I could not reorganize pages in AU. This was a big problem in laying out a 100 page photo album.

Hello, I wanted to share my experiences with Blurb and Artifact Uprising. Just got my new squared book in from AU and unfortunately I am a bit disappointed. The paper quality is not what you want for your best photos to be printed on. I don’t like it being kinda see-through. The small and medium format prints (not page filling) of photos (I used 1000px) aren’t printed that great as well. But what I do like is the filled pages (I used high resolution photos for these), the linen cover and the matt dust jacket. And I think the book would be better if you’d go for no less than 100 pages.

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.

Thanks for the great article.
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.

I use MILK Books. Elegant page templates, beautiful linen bound hard cover photo books and albums, quality art paper, excellent customer service. I have tried a few companies now, and I won’t print anywhere else after finding MILK!