6. Shutterfly

Shutterfly

Shutterfly was also part our roundup last year, and returns here for a photo book review.

As with Snapfish and Kodak, we chose the 5x7-inch photo book size with Shutterfly. At Shutterfly, the 5x7 “Casual Book” costs $12.99 with the first 20 pages included and each additional page costs 50 cents.

The Shutterfly system provides a simple layout selection mechanism with filters for how many pictures you want on each page.

Shutterfly also provides photo manipulation and enhancement so you can make your pictures really pop.

Overall, the layout, picture editing and photo book creation experience on Shutterfly was easy and obvious. There were no obvious glitches in this system.

The time from order confirmation to order-shipment confirmation took approximately 43 hours.

The finished book from Shutterfly was wrapped in a heavier cardstock cover than Picaboo’s product, and was closer to the vinyl type of finish that Kodak provided.

Shutterfly’s online editing tools provide for image enhancements that looked sharp on the screen. The final printed product, however, was not an exact replica of the screen’s brilliance. Notice the wall on the building on the left side of the picture below. It’s supposed to be brown, not green, and the onscreen color was more true to life. On the image on the right side of the page you can see a true lush and vivid green.

The green building image aside, the sturdy binding made for a high-quality soft cover book.