York Photo
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Pros Low prices, lots of photo products, good customization. 20 free photos when you sign up. Cons No live chat. Limited phone help. Not as feature-rich as some other online photo services.  |
Print Price: 9¢ Print Quality:  Ease of Use: Pricing: Features: Customer Service: Shipping/Turnaround: |
Overview
York Photo Labs, which got its start developing and printing film, has been around for 60+ years. Today they feature a wide variety of photo products in addition to prints and enlargements. They offer prices a tad lower than many other online digital photo printing services and prices get even better with weekly deals and coupon codes promotions. There are 100+ photo products you can create and there are simple online tools for editing, enhancing and designing your photo items. They still develop and print color 35mm film.
Main Features
- Custom Book Builder allowing extensive customization and flexibility for making photo books.
- New customization tools for customizing other products like greeting cards.
- Quick sharing via email and Facebook.
- Extensive selection of photo products and gifts.
- With your free account you get secure, unlimited photo storage and sharing as long as you make a purchase once a year.
Photo Albums and Organizing
Uploading images to photo albums is fast and easy with clear instructions.. You can use the express uploader to upload multiple photos, upload images one at a time and import from Facebook. Within the album view you can edit and enhance, rename, copy, and delete photos and rotate or flip pictures. You can also sort alphabetically and oldest/newest and vice-versa, but there is no custom sort. It was nice to be able to copy/move selected images to a different album.
Sharing
You can share individual images or albums via email or Facebook. I was under the impression there were additional sharing options but at this time I only found the above.
Customization
There is a new custom book builder that enables you to move, resize, add and delete photos on every page. You can add text where you want, move and resize it. There are also thousands of pieces of clip art and page backgrounds to enhance your book. You just select the one you like and drag it to your book page. You can also edit and enhance your images from within the book creator, which is a plus. There are similar options for customizing cards and gifts. You can completely change the design and colors if you want. These new options make York more competitive with companies such as Shutterfly and Mixbook, both of which offer great customization.
Editing
There is basic image editing such as adding color effects, cropping, adjusting brightness, contrast and sharpness and you can add special effect frames such as vignettes or drop shadows. As mentioned you can also edit images from the photo book creator mode.
Photo Products & Gifts
You can order 100+ photo gifts. To give you an idea, there are gallery wrapped canvas prints and wall panels, metal panels, collage posters, calendars, greeting cards, photo books, ornaments, stationery and notebooks, home decor including pillows, blankets, easel panels, clocks, keepsake boxes, coasters, place mats, pet bowl, puzzles, playing cards and more.
Ease of Use
The site is very easy to navigate and the process for uploading images and creating projects like books and cards is quite straightforward.
Print Quality
I tested several sample prints and found the colors were vibrant and true-to-life. One thing I sometimes see with other photo printing services is that the cropping of images on the top and bottom sometimes leaves something to be desired. As you may know, digital prints are The prints York made were nicely cropped.
Custom Service
There is a good FAQ and how-to section. You can contact Customer Service via email or by phone (9-5 ET Mon-Fri only) but there is no 800-number. There is no live chat at this time.
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