Review: Creating a photo book with Shutterfly

One of my favorite pastimes is making photo books, especially around the holidays. I'm trying to get better at creating family yearbooks, but creating a photo book from scratch is an extremely lengthy process for me. I used Shutterfly to design my latest personal project a month ago, and just got the finished product yesterday. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the end result.

I've tried several services including iPhoto, Blurb, and just recently Shutterfly. I'm a heavy Flickr user, and wish there was some sort of integration with Shutterfly because these guys can do it all. On the site you'll find ways to print your photos on cards, calendars, DVDs, shirts, posters, photo books, and the list goes on. Here you'll find a complete list of the products offered, which obviously extends beyond the usual photo book project.

I've heard really good things about Shutterfly, so I had to try its service this time around. You have to create an account to start your project, but the process should only take you a couple of minutes. Once you set up your account, you're given the option to add pictures to your account or select a product to personalize. Shutterfly offers free, unlimited storage for your pictures and the site claims it will never delete your photos so they're always there for future projects.

If you're not sure about the type of project your want get started on, just start adding pictures to your account. Uploading pictures is not perfect, but it does the job. Unlike Flickr, where you can drag and drop photos to the Flickr Uploader, on Shutterfly you simply highlight multiple images you want to add to the new album and hit upload. The website also has a way to upload images individually, but that would be too tedious if you're adding more than one. I wish there was a way to drag and drop photos into the "power uploader" but this method will do for now.

There are some editing tools to help you crop photos, add effects, borders, and fix red eye, but I think they should add a few more fun effects. When you get into the photo book creator, you'll see several tabs for tools that'll help you customize every aspect of your book. A tab for Style, Pictures, Pages, Cover, and Preview are at the top, but you'll spend most of your time in the Pages tab because this is where the design process takes place.

The Pages tab has tools to help you change the layout of the page, background, and edges surrounding each picture. Here you can also drag and drop pictures into the pages, add text, add or delete pages, arrange them, and save any changes made to the book. There are plenty of background combinations to choose from, so you'll have to be careful about spending too much time here. Once you're done, you can see a preview of the finished book, and go back to make any last minute changes.

Shutterfly really has a lot of options to choose from, which is great because you get to determine every detail of your book. Once you're done, you simply hit order, and wait for the book to ship. Each Shutterfly book includes the first 20 pages, then you have to purchase each additional page for a small fee.

Like I mentioned earlier, I got the final product yesterday and was extremely impressed with what I got back. I decided to go with the 12x12 Memory Book option with a dark brown leather cover because I figured it would look extremely elegant, and I wasn't disappointed. The pictures looked pretty good, except for a few one that were a little dark and over saturated with color. This varied from page to page, so I can only assume it had a lot to do with the images themselves.

I wish I would've taken a little more time to look over all the photo book themes, because I didn't realize the site had such a great selection of special themes to choose from. The Martha Stewart theme is great for family and wedding photos, but if you're creating a kid's book, you have plenty of character-themed books to choose from that include SpongeBob, Dora the Explorer, and Go, Diego, Go! among others.

Photobooks are available in several sizes, and you have the option to choose from a photo, leather, and padded cover. Prices are pretty affordable too, especially during the holiday season, so check them out. I wholeheartedly recommend this service to anyone who likes to create photobooks.

If you're feeling uninspired, take a few minutes to visit the Shutterfly community section where users proudly display their hard work and get feedback from other Shutterfly users. This photo book gallery can give you plenty of inspiration if you don't know where to start. The books here are also fun to look through, and gives you a glimpse of what you can do with your project.