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Last week we asked you to share your favorite photo printing site, then we rounded up the top five contenders for a vote. We’re back with the results.
Leading the pack was Snapfish with a healthy 27%. Snapfish is entering its tenth year as an online photo printing service and offers some of the lowest prices in the industry. Following Snapfish was Costco’s online printing service, lagging behind Snapfish but still with a respectable 17%. Close behind Costco was Shutterfly with 16% and then Mpix (14%)—a site geared more towards professional photographers. In last place was AdoramaPix with 8% of the vote. AdoramaPix sported the largest selection of paper and options but didn’t have the bargain basement prices that certainly helped other sites gain an edge.
Have a favorite service that wasn’t listed? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five send us an email at tips at lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line.
Digital cameras are fantastic for letting us experiment, take tons of photos, and search for the perfect shot. Digital picture frames and at-home prints are often poor substitutes for real photos. Get a great print at one of these five photo-printing sites.
Photo by Shermeee.
Once upon a time people took photos and dutifully carted their film down to the photo shop to get developed, waiting to see how the photos turned out. Now people immediately check whether or not the shot was good on the display of their digital camera, and more often than not stuff the photos onto their hard drives or upload them to their Flickr accounts, but never get around to actually printing them and preserving them in a physical form. If you’ve been meaning to get around to printing more photos and saving them from their fate of digital obscurity, the following five Lifehacker reader-selected sites can help you.
For the sake of consistency among the pricing notes, each site’s price will be listed as the current price (as of 1/17/2010) for one 4×6 and one 8×10, two of the most common U.S. photographic print sizes and good indicators of the overall pricing scheme at the site. Pricing is only one element of photo printing, however, and we would strongly suggest reading our notes here and checking out the individual sites before selecting one over the other based on a few cent price difference.
It's also worth noting that reviewing photo-printing services is very similar to reviewing, say, netbook computers. The end products are so similar to each other that the real test of whether or not you like one photo service over another photo service is to upload a couple photos and see if the little things—like the bulk uploader, the built-in editing tools, and the ordering interface—are features you are comfortable with—just like something as small as the keyboard spacing can make or break a netbook purchase.
Snapfish is the most generous of the photo printing sites in the Hive Five. They offer 50 free 4×6 photos to first time customers—and have done so for years—so it's a great place to start when trying out different photo sites. They also have some of the lowest pricing on basic prints, like glossy 4x6s, you'll find anywhere. Snapfish also offers a happy medium between storing and ordering prints online and sometimes wanting or needing them immediately. Snapfish allows you to order your prints for delivery through the mail or for in-store pickup at stores like Walgreen's, Walmart, or Meijer. Snapfish has an upload tool called PictureMover that will auto-detect when your camera or camera card is inserted into your computer and optionally upload the photos to a new album. Snapfish has—rather confusing—tiered pricing for every product they offer. Rather than even attempt to decode their shipping tables, you should always stop by RetailMeNot and grab a “free shipping” coupon code—Snapfish is almost perpetually running free shipping deals.
Shutterfly doesn't offer rock bottom prices compared to other online outfits—although for small prints they are certainly reasonable—but it does shine with the most polished organizing and sharing system of the sites featured here today. It's obvious a lot of time and thought was put into making it really easy to share photos and prints with friends and family. Although Shutterfly doesn't offer a variety of pickup locations like Snapfish, you can order prints through Shutterfly for pickup at Target stores that have in-house photo processing. Shutterfly also has tiered—albeit less confusing—shipping rates which start at $1.79 for basic shipping and rise accordingly. You can view them here.
MPix offers a wide variety of print sizes (25+) and a diverse portfolio of additional services like mounting on standouts and canvas printing. They also, unlike some of the cheaper outfits, offer silver-based black and white printing to help digital photographers really show off their black and white prints in a more authentic way. MPix, unlike many other online photo services, also deals in film, but the price per exposure for development, scanning, and uploading to your MPix albums is $0.19 per exposure—we cringe to think what an 8GB SD card would cost to process at the film-rate. Shipping starts at $3.00 per order, additional rates are available here.
AdoramaPix is the photo processing division of the enormous Adorama photography store—offering photo development services for photographers was a natural extension of their retail business. They offer the largest selection of photo paper of any contender in the Hive Five. You can select from seven different papers including those from the Kodak Endura line, Kodak Metallic, and True B&W for better black and white photos. Adorama offers 25 free 4×6 prints with every new account. Shipping is $2.95 for 50 prints of 5×7 size and under, $4.99 for any size prints of any quantity. Additional shipping rates detailed here.
Many people use Costco for printing because of the convenience of uploading their prints and then picking them up later that day at Costco while doing their shopping. The strong point of Costco’s printing services is definitely a combination of reasonable pricing and in-store pickup. The mail-order side of things isn’t a strong point with longer-than-average shipping times and lack-luster support. That said, if you’re already a Costco customer and you’re looking for convenient pickup without a heavy emphasis on print or paper variety, it’s an easy sell. Shipping is free for 4×6 prints, variable pricing for larger prints.
Which Photo Printing Service Is Best?(polls)
Have an experience with one of the above vendors—or bummed your favorite didn't make the list? Let's hear about it in the comments.
iPhone only: The iPhone’s built-in camera is capable, but its features (or lack thereof) aren’t exactly electrifying. Gorillacam adds all the tools you wish the default Camera app had and then some, including timed shots, time-lapse, burst mode, and more.
If you've ever watched the perfect shot pass you by because you're stuck waiting for the last photo you took to save to the Camera Roll, then you'll love Gorillacam's Auto-Save—it works in the background to save pictures while you keep taking more. If you want to take your pics at set intervals anywhere from one second to two minutes apart, then fire up the Time-Lapse feature. Alternatively, you could use 3-Shot Burst to take three rapid-fire pics in succession.
Gorillacam’s got enough features right there to make this free app well worth the download, but Gorillacam does even more. A countdown timer lets you take self-portraits, and Grid Overlay helps you line up and compose shots like a pro. Add to that a shot-leveler and a toggle that turns the whole screen into a shutter button and you’ve got yourself a must-have app to enhance your iPhone’s camera.
Gorillacam comes from the same company that brought you this awesome mobile phone tripod and the classic Gorillapod, and the app really goes to the heart of several missing features in the iPhone’s camera app. What dream feature would make your phone’s camera perfect? Share your thoughts in the comments.
