PhotoWorks Reviewer's Comments

PhotoWorks.com is a fairly good online photo printing service that offers a simple ordering process, fast turnaround times and a pretty neat little set of extras. However, at $.19 per print, we felt the pricing was still expensive.

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Ease of Use - Ordering Process:  

The PhotoWorks site is well-organized, clean and easy to navigate. This service makes the process of uploading your digital images and placing your order a real snap. While ordering, you can select either glossy or matte finish, borders or borderless prints, which size you want and how many you need.

Quality of Prints:  

To test for quality, we sent the same digital photos to all of the online photo developers we reviewed. Photoworks’ prints were nice, but there was something about all of them that was indistinct, they just didn’t seem as crisp as some of the other prints.

• Sunset: The color was nice and well balanced. Our models didn’t seem dark or washed out.
• Black and White: Photowork’s black and white image was a little dark and compared to some of the other prints it had a hint of red.
• Aerial: Photoworks cleaned up our aerial shot a little, but it was still very obvious that the photo was taken on a cloudy day.

Note: To check quality, we took each set of prints received from the online photo developer and laid them down, side-by-side for comparison.

Pricing:  

PhotoWorks.com is probably one of the more expensive services we reviewed. Although  $.19 per print isn’t extraordinarily outrageous, we found that there are many other services, with better name recognition and brandings selling prints for much less.

This was the only service we reviewed that accepted PayPal.

Service and Site Features:  

PhotoWorks includes many of the basic features you’d expect to see from an online photo printing service including album sharing, online storage and editing tools. We found that although PhotoWorks has one of the most aesthetically pleasing online editing tools we used, it took a long time to load and the effects weren’t particularly worth the wait.

We really enjoyed that PhotoWorks allowed you to import pictures from Flickr, a very popular photo sharing website. And they evaluated, on a scale, how good your photographs were for printing.

PhotoWorks.com digital photo developing offers a great selection of photo-based gifts including puzzles, tote bags, porcelain Christmas ornaments, magnets, mosaic tile murals and more. This service will even put your digital photo onto a canvas.

Shipping Costs/ Turn Around Time:  

PhotoWorks.com charged $1.95 to ship us four 4 x 6 inch prints, when the actual postage for USPS First class mail was $1.14. This means $.81 went toward their handling and packaging costs. This amount for shipping is kind of expensive amongst most online photo developers; however, unlike most of the services we reviewed, your shipping cost will go up after 20 prints, not 10.  

Our photographs were sent in a standard cardboard photo folder and packaged in a light-weight cardboard packing envelope.

We gave each service we reviewed 1 to 6 business days to ship us our finished prints in order to receive a high score in this category; PhotoWorks.com met our requirements.

PhotoWorks.com also ships all over the world.

Summary:  

PhotoWorks.com is an organized and easy to navigate site with a wide variety of special gifts. And since they also ship all over the world, you can take advantage of their services, no matter where you live. But their higher shipping prices and slightly cloudy prints was a turnoff for us.