Considerations When Looking for the Best Online Digital Photo Printing Service

The best online photo printing service is one that is convenient, easy to use and offers a balance of flexibility, creativity, quality and reasonable prices. The issue is, with the large number of photo companies and price and feature variations, it's sometimes difficult to decide which service to utilize. Here is what to look for when choosing an online digital photo processor.

Capabilities

These days, digital photo processors offer many more services than just photo printing. You may choose from a huge selection of custom photo gifts and merchandise ranging from custom calendars and photo books to personalized greeting cards, mouse pads, decorations and more. Shutterfly particularly excels at this and offers a vast range of customized photo gifts.

The best online digital photo printing services, however, also offer social media integration. A few websites enable users to upload pictures from social sites lke Flickr and produce web photo galleries for online sharing. A few sites such as Kodak Gallery and Shutterfly provide free photo sharing sites.

Prices

You would be surprised at the different price structures among the various photo sites, so it is smart to look at a few. On average, a digital photo printing service costs between 8 cents to 27 cents for a 4x6 print, which is a pretty big range. Nevertheless, printing at home usually costs a lot more, as much as $0.27 up to $0.50 each print, taking into account the price of ink and paper and the printer model. When you print your photos using an online service, you will find that you can get very good prints without paying at the high end of the scale. Several online photo printing services including Snapfish deliver quality prints at quite inexpensive prices.

Quality

The top photo printing services will print your photos to closely match the colors of the digital image and crop them properly. Several photo printers, such as Kodak Gallery, also optimize photos for accurate color and exposure. Most companies offer a choice of glossy or matte prints and use acid-free archival photo paper.

More and more sites are offering the convenience of in-store pick-up at retail locations. However, if printing is done at the retail partner there may be some quality variation versus having photos processed directly by the digital printing service.

Online Photo Editor

Quite a few photo sites provide photo editing to some degree. A few companies only have basic editing like redeye and cropping whilst other sites offer color correction, lightness/darkness adjustments and maybe a few other corrections. If additional corrections need to be made, using your own image editing software is your best bet.

Digital Photo Storage

Many companies offer the lure of free, unlimited photo storage but be aware that you usually have to make a purchase at least once a year to keep your account open. Shutterfly is one company that does not delete your photos and there is no minimum purchase requirement. Usually you can use your stored photos for making prints or photo products, but you can't download them in the original size; Kodak Gallery is one exception.

Finding the best online photo printing service is a matter of deciding what is important to you, whether it be the lowest price or the variety of customized photo gifts, and finding the photo printer that most closely meets what you are looking for. Luckily, you will find there are lots of great photo companies that will fit your needs.

Valerie Goettsch is publisher of the photo review site www.digitalphotos101.com featuring reviews and tips on digital photo services, image editing software and digital cameras. To learn more about the best online photo printing services, click here.