Photo Books with Shutterfly

For almost LE's first year of life, I put together photo books every two months or so with Shutterfly. We switched from Blurb books due to the quality and ease of making the books. Blurb's system was way too buggy for Macs when I made the switch (which is rumored to be fixed now).

With Shutterfly, it is easy to make the layouts in InDesign and upload the jpegs into a blank book. They have layout options for those who don't have design programs or who want to use the cute designs that they prepare for you. The issue I had was when I wanted to add photos in a certain way and wasn't able to change it up the way I wanted.

Inside look at one of the books we did using Shutterfly's design

Recently, Shutterfly made their online system completely customizable. You can go on their website, use their designs, and completely manipulate the photo layouts to however you want. It's a great option for those who don't want to start from scratch but have an opinion on how they want it done.

Of course, Shutterfly has products other than photo books. I've used them for their photo prints picked up at Target (same quality as places like Walmart and Snapfish); greeting cards; baptism invites; Christmas cards; and large poster prints for a banquet. Quite honestly, Shutterfly's designs and card quality aren't my favorite; I prefer to use Tiny Prints for that, though, interestingly, Shutterfly did just acquire Tiny Prints this year.

Baptism Invite

Christmas Card 2010

I must say that my favorite part about Shutterfly is their customer relations. They give promo codes galor and have great on-site sales. I've also called customer service multiple times, and I have nothing but good things to say about their customer service.

Speaking of promos... though all of these opinions are my own, Shutterfly has offered me one free photo book in exchange for a blog post.