7. Photoworks

Photo Works is a photo service that American Greetings operates and is very similar to that Shutterfly and Snapfish’s photo book services. As was the case with Picaboo, PhotoWorks also supports Flickr, so if you’re a Flickr user getting your images into PhotoWorks is easy.

Again, the baseline size that we chose was a 5x7 (though PhotoWorks adds a little extra, calling theirs a 5.25 x7). Pricing at that size is $12.95 for the first 20 pages with each extra page costing an additional 99 cents.

For layouts, PhotoWorks offers the choice of filtering by number of pictures, which is helpful, as well as an auto-fill feature.

But when actually using the layout engine, it felt very clunky and wasn’t nearly as fluid a drag-and-drop operation as the other services we tested. Instead of simply clicking a layout to make a change, you have to physically click the layout and then click save. This is a minor point, but it’s something that gets to be annoying when you’re building lots of pages and have to click more than you really want too.

PhotoWorks’ photo tools are limited to basic image rotation and the service doesn’t have any in-line photo enhancement capabilities.

Photo Works is another reasonably slick service with only some minor usability-related issues. It was 52 hours from the time we received our order confirmation to the time we received our order-shipment confirmation .

The PhotoWorks cover quality was similar to that of Snapfish — a heavy card stock with a matte finish.

Interior image quality was bright and crisp, appearing just how it did on screen. Notice how the white borders on the small images below help these images to stand out a bit (as compared to Snapfish, for example).

The physical size of the PhotoWorks book we received was 5.25" x 7", as expected. But while the extra quarter inch may not sound like much in comparison to the Kodak book’s 5x7 inches, the PhotoWorks book just looked and felt more substantial.