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Group Test: Photo Albums
Digital photos can now be converted into a bound photo album. We test four
services
There are plenty of websites and services where you can upload photographs
and, after a few days and some form filling, receive a bound photo album. We
thought it was high time they were tried out.
We picked four of the best-known online photo printing labs: BonusPrint,
Kodak EasyShare
Gallery, PhotoBox and SnapFish. In each case we used the same set of photos,
chosen to provide a realistic range of colours, subject matter and picture
quality. We chose medium-sized photo books with 20 pages (10 sheets printed both
sides), and these all came out at £20, which is clearly a favourite price point
among these makers.
But how easy would it be to design and order our books, how long would we
have to wait before they arrived, and would they live up to our expectations?
Ordering photo books online is surprisingly easy, and because it’s all done
at home, you can take the time to understand all the options and check the order
thoroughly.
Could you produce albums like this at home? You could, but you’d need a good
desktop-publishing program and might have to spend a little time designing
layouts.
The quality of the printouts from a photo inkjet will be better, but few
printers (or photo papers) are designed for double-sided printing, and you’ll
have trouble getting home-made books bound to the same standard as these.
Our favourite and winner of the Buy It award was
Kodak. The
picture quality was very good, it had the best choice of page backgrounds and
probably the best overall finish. It also arrived before the others, three days
after we placed the order. Our least favourite, purely because of the delay and
disappointing customer service, was the
Snapfish book.
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