Shutterfly: My favorite online digital photo album company (Giveaway winner announced in post below)

In November of 2006 as I was watching a news program one evening, a segment came on that was comparing three digital photo album companies. Back then I was still using my first digital camera, a little Sony Cybershot I’d bought after reading a review. And I thought a photo album would make a great present for someone.

The news program was comparing Kodak, Snapfish and Shutterfly. They showcased stories of three women who had each volunteered to make photo books using the three companies. Camera crews filmed each of the women as they progressed from taking the photographs, to uploading them and then designing their books online.

After everyone received their albums they got together, along with several people from the news program, to review the products .

For ease of use, all the companies were voted about the same. But Shutterfly won the comparison due to its overall picture quality.

So I went online to investigate and that holiday, I ended up making my first photo album and gave it to my in-laws as a gift. Everyone in the family was impressed and my mother-in-law actually called me the next day to tell me again how much she loved her present.

Since then, I’ve made several photo books using Shutterfly, but I’ve also tried other online digital processing companies just to see what they were like. In all, I’ve used Shutterfly, Kodak, Blurb, Lulu and Snapfish. I never ordered the book from Lulu because I was so annoyed with the entire process that I ended up calling their customer service. Recently, Pioneer Woman offered a photobook contest using Snapfish and that’s when I tried out that company. I wasn’t planning on ordering my entry for her contest but Snapfish ended up offering half price to readers of PW’s site, so I bought two of my books and when they came, I gave one to my mother-in-law for Mother’s Day this year.

I wasn’t very impressed with my Snapfish book, though. (And my mother-in-law never called me the next day to tell me again how much she loved it.) So when it came to recording our big Road Trip last month, there was no other choice for me but Shutterfly.

Let me show you some of the album:

I ordered a 12X12 photo book and an 8X8 copy to send to our friends as a gift. The copy was a breeze to make. I just clicked on “make a copy of this book” and voila! I adjusted type in several of the pages and within minutes, the copy was finished. The book arrived less than a week after I’d ordered it and it is beautiful.

I love all the choices of page backgrounds so I went a little crazy. Normally my photo books are pretty quiet.

I uploaded my images at full size and it was a snap using the bulk uploader. I’m so familiar with the program, it took me very little time to design this book.

There are so many choices for backgrounds, page layouts and even photo borders.

The colors and image quality of all of my photographs are spot on.

When the book came, I actually got a little teary-eyed because it was so beautiful.

Nah, not really. But I was smiling wide as I turned each page.

My friends called to say that they loved their book. And do you want to know what my husband said about it? The only thing he said about it?

“There’s only one picture of George in the whole book,” is what he said.

Sigh.

Until tomorrow, my friends . . .