Dare to Share

The festive period is drawing to a close and you’ve now got a thousand new pictures stored on that fancy new camera you received for Christmas - Some of people you know, some of random folk that you befriended on a drunken night down the pub and a few of Uncle Knobhead performing a crazy dance for the family. Whatever they may be, what are you going to do with them now? Print them, that’s what.

So where do you go? What do you do? What size do you get?

Photobox: I love this site, I’ve used it for years and even though they’ve had a change of ownership they still remain fantastic for customer service, quality of the photos and speed in which you receive your prints. A few benefits includes

• Refer a friend scheme where you get 50 free prints (and so do they) for every friend that orders prints from the link you send them.
• At the time of writing Quidco also offer £5 cashback plus 50 free prints. If this offer isn’t on then check all the cashback sites for latest offers.
• Postage starts at just £1.35 - even when you order a lot of prints this tends to remain at this price. They also offer world-wide delivery at very reasonable prices.
• Lots of other products available including posters, photobooks, mugs, calendars and lots, lots more
• If getting standard photos I’d recommend the Matt with Borders - try them and let me know what you think.
• Always seem to have different offers each month so well worth signing up for their newsletter

Snapfish: I’ve only used them a few times and the thing I like about them is you can pick your photos up from any Jessops store and therefore not pay any postage. Great if there’s a store nearby. The print quality is pretty good, not as good as Photobox, and I do find, if you like borders on your prints, they tend to be quite wide. Ever wondered what happened to Truprint (where you used to send your film in a little bag and magically receive some photos in the post) - well they’re now powered by Snapfish, just thought I’d let you know.

High Street Stores: You can get your digital prints developed just about anywhere nowadays from Boots and Jessops to Asda and Tesco. These do offer convenience and I do get the odd photo or two printed but I also find they can cost a lot more their online competitors, the quality’s not as good and there’s also not as much choice with what you can get printed.

moo.com: Not strictly a place to get your photos printed but they do have some great products where you can your digital pictures printed on to, such as postcards, stickers, greetings cards and business cards. All very reasonably priced and if you do encounter any problems then their customer service is quick to resolve any issues - I once had the incorrect business cards sent and they then reprinted mine and also gave me a code to get 50 free cards whenever I liked.

Photo Printer: There’s quite a few great quality printers around now that really do produce excellent quality prints. I think they’re good for the odd photo hear and there but the cost per print can be expensive which is why I wouldn’t really recommend this option.

Useful tips

“Standard” sized photos: The majority of digital camera’s produce a 6″x4½” photo and not the standard 6″x4″ size you may be used to (digital SLR’s tend to produce the standard size). If you intend to display them in a photo album or frame then just check the sizes or crop them to the standard size (all of the online sites allow you to do this).

Print Credits: Most of the online companies offer credits whereby you pay for say 400 credits and then you can use those credits throughout the year - these usually cost a lot less than paying for your prints each and every time you use the site. Just be aware that there’s sometimes an expiry date for those credits.

Online Photos: Don’t be scared or put off by using an online site. A few of the people, I know, have not used them because they thought they’d be too difficult. These companies have thought about this and it really shows in how you upload, select and crop your pictures online - it’s dead easy!

Cashback: Check out the cashback sites to see if they have any offers at the time. They usually at least have free prints and sometime cashback incentives as well.

Use more than one site: There’s quite a few companies that now print your photos online so it’s often worth joining them all and see which one you feel most comfortable using and which produces the best quality prints. Most of them have opening offers where you receive a set amount of prints for free and often only pay for the postage. So join them all, get free photos and choose your fav.