Once upon a time I started a photo album, sometime after Wyatt was born. I was a new mom, and I was determined that my child’s every move would be documented and immortalized in our bookshelves (okay, not every move, but close). I took a million pictures and put them into albums, and I thought I would do this for each child.
Every now and then the kids will pull out those photo albums documenting Wyatt’s first years, and they love looking at pictures of our family - but every time they do I feel guilty because only Wyatt is featured in the books! The kids love looking through all the pictures, but I know Gwen and Clyde will soon be asking soon where all the pictures of them are. I never wanted to be one of those moms that takes less pictures of subsequent children, and I think I have done a pretty good job of documenting milestones for second, third, and fourth child. But getting the photos printed? FAIL.
I have been recently trying to get my act together, and I am slowly sorting through old pictures on my computer for printing. One of these days I intend to get caught up on the three “lost years”, but I am happy to report that over the last few months I have done a much better job of getting photos printed thanks to one thing - photo-printing apps!
There are three apps I have tried so far, and I wanted to share my thoughts on each for any of you other mamas who have trouble getting those pictures off of you camera or phone and into your hands!
Service: Artifact Uprising has several photo products, including square prints, calendar prints, photo books, and thank-you cards. I tried the square prints.
App: I wasn’t thrilled with my experience with the app. It only allows you to print from whatever photo apps you have on your phone, so I wasn’t able to print any Facebook photos from it since I don’t have the Facebook app on my phone. When I went in to choose which Instagram photos I wanted to print, it kept repeating the same photos and wouldn’t show my entire feed. I feel like my version of the app must have had some bugs, so not everyone may have the same experience.
Product: The square print set comes with 25 photos, printed on a very slightly textured 5x5” cardstock, with a small white border. They shipped quickly, and I loved the final product! The colors were printed perfectly. I feel like the photos weren’t quite as sharp as I wanted, but I think that was a fault with Instagram, not with the printing.
Price: $21.99/set of 25 prints, plus shipping. However, I believe they frequently have promotions for a set of free prints and you only have to pay the $8 shipping. I probably wouldn’t pay the full amount, personally, but if you can get one of these deals it is definitely worth the money for shipping!
Service: Parabo offers square print sets, color and B&W “engineer” prints (like a photo poster), various other styles of prints, calendars, and photo books. I got a set of the square photo prints with a code for a free set.
App: I actually really liked the interface with the Parabo app (plus the colors/branding within the app was just my style). You are able to pull photos from Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, or your camera roll, and I loved all the options. It was easy to choose which photos to include and to edit the crop on the photos.
Product: These square prints were smaller than Artifact Uprising, about 4x4”, with a slightly thicker border and smoother paper. They took a little longer to get to me than with A/U, but I am not sure if this was because they took longer to print or because of my mail carrier. I thought the prints were adorable and good quality. Comparing the A/U set to the Parabo set, I would say the quality was equal.
Price: $16/set of 25 prints, plus shipping. I also had a code for a free set of prints with Parabo though, so I just paid $8 for shipping. I am hoping they do this promotion again, because I liked ordering from them! Bonus: I got a coupon for $10 off a photo book from Parabo, so I will definitely be trying that product as well - update coming!
Service: Chatbooks is a photo printing service that will send you little books of your Instagram feed or Facebook albums. You can either order individual “custom” books with photos from your camera roll, or sign up for a subscription and have a book sent to you each time you reach 60 new photos. I am signed up for a subscription service of my Instagram feed, and I get an email each time a book is about to print so I know my card is about to be charged, and I can edit the book before printing.
App: I feel like the app is really easy to use, and seems to work wonderfully with both Instagram and Facebook. It is also really easy to customize your book by picking a cover or removing photos that I don’t want to include.
Product: These books are so cute! They are 6X6”, and look so cute stacked on my end table. The pages are a glossy photo paper. I feel like the photos don’t look as crisp on the paper as they do on my Instagram feed, but I think that may be Instagram and not Chatbooks since they look this way through all three of the apps. The kids LOVE looking through these books, and I don’t worry too much because it would be easy to order a replacement volume if one of the pages rips.
Price: $6/book, including shipping. By far the best value for your money of all the services I have tried so far! (Hint: This is not a sponsored post AT ALL - I'm sharing because I've used these apps. But if you use my referral code "XC9PVVKU" in Chatbooks, you can try your first book for free, and I'll get a little credit to use in the app. Which I will definitely use, so thank you.)
It is so convenient to order prints and photo products from my phone, and I have no idea what took me so long to try out these apps. Anything online that gets done these days is usually something that can be done from my phone, and I am loving that I can order prints so easily while I am nursing Clarice! I’ll probably do another one of these posts to update you all as I try more apps, but I was happy with the products from each of these. I’ll probably be using each of these again.
Have you printed any photos through apps? Any recommendations for me?
I have tried snap fish and shutterfly. Such a great idea! Thanks for sharing!
I LOVE Chatbooks! I love that the photos are already in book form and have dates and captions on them. I even used Chatbooks to make photo books for the grandparents' Christmas gifts last year :)
I'm right there with you! I haven't printed pictures off in forever. The most recent family picture I have is when Emerson was 1 1/2. He's 3 now. The only printed and framed picture of Oliver I have, is one the church gave us when we dedicated him. yikes. I'm behind on my game too! I keep telling myself I'm going to print the pictures and put them albums and make the memory books. But so far, that hasn't happened. I should maybe make that my only goal for the month of May. haha. But seriously. It's awful. I've heard of Chat books before, but never tried them out. That just might be the way to go! I'll have to check it out :)
I love the idea of chatbooks! That sounds so clever. I'm hopping over there now to check it out.
I havent heard of any of these but now I'm so curious! I will certainly be looking into them
I have heard such good things about Chatbooks! Glad to read some more about each of the options! And what does it say about you when you aren't the mom to EVER have printed out any photos of your children (either #1 or #2) ;)
I have been wanting to get my whole instagram feed in chat books, but the upfront cost of backordering like 4 years of books is a lot, even at $6 a book :/ I am thinking of maybe ordering a few at a time until I get there or something, not sure how to do it. I also heard they went up to $8 a book, do you know if that is true??
I know you can actually have them just send you one book a month until you get caught up - that's what I did! And I think technically the books are $6 and the shipping is $2, so it adds up to $8.
It is so hard to sort through pictures and get them printed! I feel better that I at least have these prints and Chapbooks, haha!
I'm giving Chatbooks to our moms for Mother's Day too! They make great gifts.
Thanks, Tara!
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