Photo Books To Buy 2021

There are so many ways to use our photo book creator to make your album perfect for you. Finalize your custom photo albums creation by choosing from finishing options including paper type, layflat pages, hardcover and softcover options, and gift boxes. Whether you prefer a simpler look or a premium design, there are various options and details that will suit your picture albums and bring it all together. With Shutterfly, you can make the best photo books that will last as a keepsake you cherish forever. For more ways to display your favorite moments, order photo prints or create custom wall art with Shutterfly. To keep in touch with loved ones, send one-of-a-kind photo cards that will bring your recipients joy. Photo gifts like blankets, coffee mugs, puzzles, and more items made with your pictures are the best way to highlight each of your favorite moments on something special. For the best Shutterfly deals on photo books, check out our Special Offers page.

photo books to buy

Give your photo book a boost with premium glossy pages! A higher level of gloss finish alongside a smooth surface makes colors appear more vibrant with exceptional depth. Available on 8x11 Hardcover and 8x11 Matte Hardcover photo books.

A custom photo book is the ideal gift for family and friends. You will give more than just a photo album, you will remember the special times you've shared together; a visit to the zoo, a birthday celebration or a vacation together - keep these memories forever with a photo book! Use our templates to create your softcover or hardcover photo book filled with cherished family photos and unforgettable memories.

It is so easy to make your own photo book using our array of simple to use designs, backgrounds, and layouts, which are suitable to every occasion. Our custom web and app builder features help you customize photo layouts, move, shuffle and resize photos, and add text or embellishments.

All our standard photobook pages are 140lb thick, however we also offer an extra-thick premium paper in our layflat photo books. Our layflat pages are extra-thick due to the matte laminate added to each page.

Yes, it is possible to have a photo span across two pages. Our layflat photo books are ideal for this type of spread. The seamless layflat binding of our layflat photo books allows you to spread your photo elegantly across two pages. Although it is possible to span a photo across two pages on all our books, we would always recommend you use layflat photo books for this type of page design and if you choose our premium layflat book format, the pages will be printed on an extra thick luster-silk finish for maximum durability. The binding with other book types will cause the photo to be cropped in the middle of the spread.

Yes, photo book creation is easy. You can even create photo books in our free app. Our easy-to-use photo book tools provide a straightforward and intuitive way for you to get building with ease. We also have some helpful video tutorials to further guide you if needed.

Exclusive to our Premium Photo Books, MILK Jackets provide an extra layer of protection to your memories. Custom printed with your favorite photos and personalized text, Jackets safeguard your memories in style. Now available for add-on in the Design Studio for an extra cost.

But recycled paper is just the beginning. Each of our personalized photo albums is printed using the press printing method, rather than the environmentally harmful silver halide method that is traditionally used by most companies. By rendering photos through a series of tiny dots, this process minimizes our impact on the environment and allows us to formulate our own unique color profile on press. The increased ability to fine-tune color curves results in a warm and pleasant aesthetic that elevates every image. After all, we believe the best photo books are born in the details.

Mixbook makes creating photo albums fun by gathering images from your computer, social media profiles, online photo-storage accounts, and even your smartphone. In our testing, it offered the best book-building experience of the bunch, as well as some of the best themed layouts available. Our finished album looked vibrant, with accurate colors, and had a high-quality feel in the hand.

For our update of this review in 2021, I used the same set of vacation photos to make 20-page photo books using four different services. The photos included both DSLR shots taken by professional photographers and iPhone snaps taken during my trip to Italy and France in fall 2019. I specifically selected images that can be harder to print, to see how each service performed when tasked with HDR (high dynamic range) images, tricky colors, black-and-white photos, and even dimly lit iPhone snapshots.

For our 2020 tests, we took the finished books to Taylor McAtee, printing expert and owner of Stretch and Staple, a print shop in Seattle, to compare and contrast print and page quality. McAtee printed several of the images we used in our test albums on fine-art paper as a control. When showing the books to him, we covered up any identifying marks so that he could give his unbiased opinion.

We also showed the photo books to friends who enjoy making family photo albums, and they provided helpful, real-world observations, such as which paper finish might hold up best in the grubby hands of a 5-year-old.

Considering its easy-to-use software and the overall quality of the finished product, Walmart Photo offers good value in a photo book. It was just as easy to import images from a computer or online photo-storage and sharing platforms (like Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr) as it was with our top pick. (Though Mixbook offers direct uploading from your smartphone, and Walmart does not.)

Nations Photo Lab, our pick for the best online photo-printing service, delivered some of the most accurate colors of any photo book we tested, though the cover image looked muddier and less sharp than the Shutterfly and Apple covers. But the biggest issue was the crudeness of the photo-book software, which requires you to upload photos one by one into the selected layout. After making photo books with tools that let you upload dozens of photos at a time and sort through them to arrange the book, I could never imagine going back. It was also difficult to add captions, since the default box was tiny and hard to read and click on.

Mixbook had some of the most vibrant color pages among the 17 books we tested, and the colors matched our original photographs most closely. Mixbook also had more user-friendly software than most of the other books we looked at.

Drawing on the work of high-profile photographers including Saul Leiter, Rinko Kawauchi, Sally Mann, Edward Weston, Teju Cole and more, this book gives you inspiration and stories which will help broaden your photographic knowledge and offers new perspectives on creativity.

Claiming to be the only black and white book of photographs dedicated to Venice on the market, this charming edition is well worth a look for those interested in both monochrome and travel photography.

This curation of prints from the Polaroid archive includes an astonishing array of styles, formats and subjects shot by famous and not-so-well-known photographers who used Polaroid products through its history. It contains a potted history of the cameras, as well as a nerd-heaven index of the cameras and materials used to take each shot.

Selected by our regular columnist Tim Clinch, this book is a second edition of the original, first published in 2000. The project itself began in 1990, with this extra edition revisiting the project and includes 40 previously unpublished photographs.

A photo book also provides an opportunity to deliberately arrange images to tell a story, and to embellish them with creative touches in arrangement, page backgrounds, text, clip art, and other effects. But which photo book service delivers not only the best quality images, but also provides the best tools so that you can put together the book you want without frustration? And, which allows you to make a photo book without putting too big a dent in your wallet?

This design naturally boosted Printique's quality scores. But Printique won all our image quality categories (except sharpness/detail, where it tied with Mimeo). Colors and skin tones are especially naturalistic and pleasing. Printique owes much of its image quality to a high-grade, semigloss finish called Lustre. However, that finish also kicked up the most glare of all the books we reviewed.

However, what elevates Mixbook above other photo books is that its software is user friendly and fun, offering plenty of customization options. For instance, it provides 644 book templates to get started. It also allows you to adjust borders, drop shadows, and image opacity. For photos, Mixbook provides both effects (filters) and basic image editing: brightness, saturation, and contrast (a rare capability). And Mixbook's live tech support could be a decisive factor for frustrated creators.

Costco offers outstanding value among all the services we reviewed. Typically, we evaluate hardcover books of around 8 x 8 inches. But Costco's only hardcover offering is a much roomier 11.25 x 8.75-inch, 30-page version that, at $19.99 is still substantially cheaper than its smaller, 20-page competitors. (For the same price, you can also get a two-pack of 8 x 8-inch softcover books.) Costco also offers the cheapest shipping by far (compared to similar delivery timeframes with rivals).

Costco's design software is barebones. It offers by far the smallest selection of book design templates. And its selection of photo frames is limited, with no customization options. The software also has a retro look reminiscent of web interfaces from a decade or two ago. However, Costco does offer a rich selection of page backgrounds (both patterns and a wide array of solid colors). Its clip art stands out for high detail and dimensionality that beats the flat, cartoonish look of other services'. 041b061a72