Although the EasyShare name suggests this online gallery service is designed for owners of Kodak cameras, anyone can use it.

The website has a nice design that’s easy to understand and navigate, and the registration process is straightforward. You need an account to upload photos, and photos must be uploaded into an album before you can create a photo book. This is a standard system for most online photo labs.

Uploading is done using a plug-in tool that installs quickly and has a simple and informative interface. The next step is to choose the folder on your hard disk that contains the photos you want to upload; the tool shows their thumbnails so that you can select individual shots.

There’s a progress bar that shows how quickly the upload is moving, and gives you confirmation when it has been successfully completed.

Once the photos have been uploaded to an album, you can use this to create a photo book. If you use autofill to load the book it means much less work, and page templates will be chosen automatically. Watch out when you arrive at the checkout, though – extra pages will be added to the book automatically if you’ve selected too many photos for the standard 20 pages, and that means more cost.

Here, as with the other photo books we tried, you might find it better in the long run to add photos individually. This is easier than changing automatically-generated page layouts. To add pictures manually, you simply drag photos from the filmstrip underneath the layout area on to the empty frames on the pages.

There are several colours and finishes to choose from for the cover, including a leather option selling for £5 extra. Even more impressive was the range of 15 different colours and backgroundpatterns for the inside pages.

Colours were reproduced well, but as with the other photo books we ordered, the printing and the paper used didn’t have the feeland rich contrast of inkjet photo prints. The definition is also slightly reduced compared with that of inkjet prints, and more in line with magazine or book reproduction quality.

The pale green/beige canvas finish we chose for our photo book had a nice, high-quality feel and the photo showing through the cut-out centre section was protected by a translucent sheet. Inside, the black canvas finish we chose for the pages looked good too, although this is a printed effect only, and the pages had a smooth, satin finish.

It might not have been the biggest album physically, but we thought it was the best presented. This, combined with the speedy and straightforward service, made the Kodak EasyShare Gallery service our favourite.

This article is part of a group test of photo albums.
See also:
BonusPrint
PhotoBox
Snapfish
Choose the best imge format
Go local
Photo Albums
A table of features can be read via our pdf downloads above.