Sophisticated while still being fun, Shutterfly provides its account holders with an exhaustive list of site features. Some of our favorite site features include the multiple ways this photo printing service allows you to share your photos with friends and family.
Memories are precious, and with Shutterfly you have the ability to preserve them with a photo book, scrapbook page and more. Turn your favorite vacation photo into wall art, construct a collage of your favorite family moments, create and send graduation, wedding and baby announcements. With this photo printing service, the options are as limitless as your imagination. Because of these features and more, we are proud to present Shutterfly with the TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award for being one of the best digital photo printing services on the market today.
More than any other digital printing service we reviewed, Shutterfly has really embraced the community aspect of photo sharing. With this digital photo printing service, you can create your own digital photo book (or scrapbook) for the community to look at, comment on, place on a personal webpage and even purchase. Many community members have shared the books they created for their wedding, family vacations and more. You are even able to create a photo book using your Facebook pictures. The Shutterfly Customer Videos are also a fun feature, as you can watch men and women talk about the photo books they created using this photo printing service. This site feature is the perfect place to get inspiration and showcase the vast possibilities for your own print projects. In fact, they have a section dedicated to inspiration in the community. Some of the topics include:
Wedding – Tips on how to create great wedding shots, as well as how to create unique photo prints to give as gifts to your guests.
Travel – Shutterfly members share what they do with their travel photos as well as their ideas and stories from their vacation.
New Baby – You have hundreds of photos of your new arrival, now what do you do with them? Get inspiration.
Photography – Shutterfly community members share their tips and tricks, professional or not, on how to take the perfect photo.
With this digital photo printing service, you can also create your personal photo share website. Shutterfly assigns you a personalized URL and a wide selection of templates to host your photos and blog. Friends can also leave comments. Your website will support pictures and albums, as well as digital projects like your photo book, journal entries, video, calendars, forums, polls, RSS feeds, widgets and more. Your friends and family can view your pictures on your Shutterfly website, and they can order prints of the photos you've shared, if they create an account. With this digital photo printing service, you can also share your photos through email.
This digital photo printing service offers Shutterfly Studio, a free software download that helps you manage, organize and edit your photos. The photo printing service has unlimited photo storage space, and regardless of how often you purchase, your photos will never be deleted.
You can upload your photos from your hard drive and iPhone, as well as your Picasa and Facebook accounts using various Shutterfly applications, and then when you are ready, you can order prints or easily import them into your Shutterfly account.
Shutterfly’s photo gift store is most impressive and has a plethora of products for you to choose from, including:
- Photo books
- Cards and stationary
- Prints, including wall decals, posters, scrapbook pages and collage posters
- Calendars
- Mugs
- Playing cards
- Key chains and jewelry
- Ornaments
- Home and office products
- Clothing and accessories
- Puzzles and books
To test for quality, we sent the same digital photos to a variety of digital photo printing services. To check for quality, we took each set of prints and compared them side by side. Below is our evaluation of the prints we received from Shutterfly.
Sunset – The sunset in the background looked fantastic, but the foreground was too dark, which cast shadows on our models.
Black and White – This is definitely the truest black and white photo we got back from a digital photo printing service. Compared to the returned image, the original photograph looks intentionally sepia toned.
Aerial – Shutterfly managed to take a cloudy skyline, clean it up and make it pop. The processing made damp and dreary London look like a sunny day in California.
This photo printing service has a variety of ways that you can upload your photographs to their photo printing service, including the following methods:
Express uploader – This uploader is a desktop application that allows you to upload photos from your computer. Just drag and drop your images into the uploader.
iPhoto plugin – You can install the plugin and export your photos to this photo printing service directly.
iPhone and iPad – You can download the Shutterfly app from the iTunes App Store. With the app, you can upload your images to your personal Share site.
One-by-one uploader – This digital printing service requires Flash. If your computer does not support this application, you can upload images one-by-one using your Shutterfly account.
CD mail-in service – This upload option may be ideal for those with a slow internet connection. You can transfer your photos to a CD and mail it to Shutterfly.
Picasa – This photo printing service allows you to upload photos from your Picasa account directly into your Shutterfly photo albums.
Standard uploader – Upload your photos through your web browser using the Flash Upload tool.
You can choose to have your prints mailed to your home, or you can send your digital print projects to your local Target, Walgreens or CSV. Remember, however, that price and digital project availability varies depending on the store.
The Shutterfly community, as discussed earlier, is not only a fantastic source of inspiration, it is also a great place to ask questions. Support topics include general support, photo book support, cards and stationary topics, share sites support and the tips and tricks to using this photo printing service.
Shutterfly has an extensive help service, including a powerful site search and a FAQs search feature that yields accurate results. An email address for customer support is available as well as a support phone line.
We are impressed with the large variety of photo gifts available, but if you choose to send your projects to print at a store, be aware that the product availability differs from store to store. The online community is fabulous and we enjoyed viewing different digital printing projects and accumulating ideas for our own photo books, invitations and more. The community is one of several sharing features this photo printing service provides. The personal website is another great feature that family and friends will enjoy perusing and ordering prints from. Overall, Shutterfly is one of the best digital photo printing services online.
