Review: Shutterfly Photo Book Contrast a Disappointment

by Alfreda
(Canada)

I created a Shutterfly book and I loved the online software. I loved the layouts, I loved the backgrounds. The book itself was very high quality with a shiny cover and thick photo paper.

I found, however, that the contrast on the photos was off. There was one photo I really noticed that looked great on the screen but was quite dark in the book. It was so dark in fact that I would not have printed it, although it looked very bright on my screen.

The rest of the photos were fine, except that in some cases the subject would be clear but the background would be almost black if the room was dark. This didn't bother me that much, since I think the background detracts from the subject, but it bothered my husband immensely. I will be looking for another company for my next book.

Right now I am doing my wedding album in blurb. I like that you can totally customize the layouts, but it is missing the option to rotate the photo box. I really liked a couple of the Shutterfly layouts where one photo would be straight, and the second would be rotated about 45 degrees with the corners overlapping. I also found that I had to create all my own layouts in blurb since the layouts they provide are less than ideal. The original layouts all tend to push the phots right against each other in a collage style. I like a bit of whitespace around each photo to separate them from each other. Plus they don't separate their layouts so you can filter by number of photos so finding a layout is a challange. Blurb was the first photobook I found that had the perfect layout for a children's book, however. Smilebook would have worked, but they don't ship to Canada :(

Does anybody have a recommendation for a company that has a good selection of layouts, photos that actually appear the same in print as on screen, and ships to Canada? It would be greatly appreciated.