Digital Home Thoughts: Shootout at the Printing Corral: Online Photo Processing Reviewed Head to Head

Shutterfly Details


Our prints from Shutterfly arrived on Monday, the same day as Ofoto. They also came from California. The envelope was sturdy paperboard and the picture envelope made of card-stock, much like those from Ofoto. What was strange, though, is that there were no inserts. Just the pictures and an index print. We were surprised at the lack of advertising.

We did encounter a glitch while uploading our pictures. Kevin uploaded the pictures and called the album "Kevin's Test Album". The apostrophe got encoded and the title became "Kevin &s Test Album". It was simple to rename the album and the apostrophe then worked the second time. The site uses some very slick Dynamic HTML in its interface, and it looks and works great.

The Shutterfly prints were the best of the three. They looked excellent. Skin tones were natural, colors were bright, and the flowers jumped off the page. There were printed on FUJIcolor CrystalArchive paper and felt a bit thinner than 35mm prints. We feel that the pictures from Shutterfly were the most natural, and looked just like we had dropped off a 35mm roll to be developed at a photo shop.

In the weeks since we ordered our prints, Shutterfly began offering matte finish for all print sizes.