Photo Book Printer Reviews

What is a Photo Book Printer?

A photo book printer is a program or service that takes all those photos on your digital camera or computer that have been sitting on your computer or camera for the last 3 years or so and lets you create a photo book (album) out of them. This can be a very elaborate book with captions, stories and backgrounds to go along with your pictures or a very simple book with - well pictures.

When deciding to create your photo book you essentially have two options. You can do it yourself with preinstalled software like Apple's iPhoto or you can get a third party professional, like Shuterfly, to do it. Here is a quick review of two inexpensive photo book printers and one free photo book printer.

iPhoto

Actually, this is only free if you have an Apple device/computer with iPhoto on it (sorry PC users -- ). iPhoto makes it incredibly easy to create Photo Books especially if you are already using iPhoto to organize and store your photos. Basically all you have to do is chose a template, chose the pictures do a little click and drag action, maybe some captions or writing, hit print and -viola. Your photo book is ready for viewing. The main downsides here are that you are somewhat limited by the presets in the templates with what you can do. The quality is pretty much reliant on you, your printer and the type of paper you use. Unless you have a stellar printer and good photo quality paper your images are going to be grainy and probably bleed a little. But come on you literally can't bet the price.

Shutterfly

Shutterfly is probably the most widely known online photo printing company so it is no surprise that they do photo books as well. One of the nicest things about Shutterfly is that it is so widely used. This means that there is a great community support page where you can find answers to many questions and also great ideas for layouts and pages. They offer great quality pages that are thick and bright and the binding is strong. The user interface is easy to use and offers many customizable options so your photo book can be as complex or as simple as you want. They also offer an impressive preview of your photo book before you purchase so you can see exactly what you are getting before you buy. Pricing is also very competitive.

AdoramaPix

One of the most attractive features about this site is that it will allow you to set a price for your book and put it up for sale. This is attractive to many users because it allows them to then offset the cost of their book by selling it to others. Other attractive features of this site include high quality printing and paper. They use real silver-halide photo paper (opposed to the high gloss photo paper you find in box stores). AdoramaPix also offers a unique book binding that allows the pages of your photo book to lay flat without exposing a binding. The quality of photo book you get for AdoramaPix for the price you pay is going to be hard to beat.

Sources:

Shutterfly, www.shutterfly.com

AdoramaPix, www.adoramapix.com