As recommended by readers of Electric Speed (November 2026)

• I use Picaboo to make albums for our family vacations. It's easy to use with dozens of templates or freeform photo placement, and the lay flat albums are spectacular with vivid color and high quality paper. There are always discounts available. I've been using them for more than a decade and have never been disappointed. I've also made a calendar through them, but there are less expensive options for something only used for a year. —Tammy Euliano, MD
• My husband is a professional photographer, which comes in handy since we lived on a boat for years and now slow-travel the world. He exclusively uses a British company, BobBooks.co.uk, when curating photo books. Their customer service is exceptional, as is their quality (even by professional standards). Customers can design the page layouts to suit their taste and create unique, coffee table-book quality mementos. Of special note is their lay-flat page format, great for panoramic images. Bob Books does ship to North America and offers very reasonable shipping prices. —Wendy Hawkes
• I've been using Shutterfly for years to make photo books for gifts. The platform is very easy to use (with lots of different templates and price ranges). Another plus, they always have promo codes, either for discounts or free shipping. —Zev Lawson Edwards
• My husband does an annual photo book for the family and has since 2006. We've used every website he could find, but eventually went back to Shutterfly after Costco folded their photo services. He's able to organize photos and the pages print beautifully. Additionally, Shutterfly usually runs a photo book sale right around Black Friday. Thanks for the reminder that it's time to start on this year's photo book! They make great gifts to grandparents and distant family. —Cristy Robinson
• For photo books, I find mixbook.com to be an outstanding balance of cost and quality. It is simple to use but also provides an excellent range of creative-design options if you want to drill down into its many features. —Wayne Hall
• I’ve used Mpix for years after the recommendation from my photographer. The albums are well constructed, and pictures crisp. The turn around time is remarkably fast. The web interface is intuitive and easy to use. The customer service is great. I once had printing errors and simply sent them photos of the error and they sent me a new book. The prints are beautiful too. If you sign up for emails they always have sales. They are my go to after trying other companies. —Diane Newcomer
• I use Walgreens to print photos. Ordering is easy and they are usually ready for same day pickup. Plus, they often offer discounts making prints very affordable. In addition, I often use my photos to make cards. Since most of their card creation options are templates, I, unfortunately, always seem to struggle to find the “custom” option. —Alis Sefick
• I use two different services for creating photo books. For swank, it’s hard to go past Artifact Uprising. Expensive, but they create beautiful, lie-flat photo books and have easy-to-use online tools for designing the books. Social Print Studio makes delightful, tiny (1.7x1.5") photo books that contain a magnet, so you can stick them on your fridge. Fantastic stocking stuffers. At $36 for 3, each containing 23 photos, they’re very affordable. —Rose Vines
• I use Shutterfly to print photos. You can arrange to pick them up locally or have them mailed to your house. My sister also uses Shutterfly every year to print up a book of pictures of activities through the year that she did with her grandkids. The books are nice to have because otherwise, those pictures would only exist digitally. As with most services, there are always coupons and specials to be found to reduce the price. I've done the same thing with Blurb.com which I used to print small books with old family photos. They make it easy to include text with photos. I've used them to produce books about my dad, my mom, and most recently, to make a book of photos of my mom's paintings. There are usually coupons or specials available to reduce the price. (I prefer making books because I can print copies for everyone. If I pasted pictures into a scrapbook, I would only have the one physical copy.) —Carol Michel
• I used Snapfish to print two pictures that I took while in Italy. We were touring the Deruta pottery factory and I took dozens of pictures with my iPhone 12. Several of the most eye-catching subjects were the stations where the artists hand-paint the raw pottery. There were hundreds of paint vessels and brushes lying haphazardly on the work surface. I took overhead shots so I could capture all of the colors. I uploaded my photos to Snapfish and ordered 11x14 prints. The process was simple. I don’t remember how much I paid, but I think it was around $5 for each print. The results were beautiful. It looks like a professional photographer took the pictures with a high-priced camera. They are always running sales. I’ll definitely use them in the future. —Bill Honnold
• I'm a photographer who sells her work in local galleries and outdoor markets. I depend upon online printers and try to keep my work at the highest affordable quality and my prices low. I have done business with Mpix for years and find their work to be dependable and the company easy to work with. If there are errors, they correct them without question. Their prices are good and shipping is quick. However, for those times I need high quality custom prints that call for special papers and careful finishing, I use WhiteWall. —Patricia Jakobi
• I love Mixbook for photo books and have made several about trips I've taken. —Wendy Krauss
• I use Photoshop Elements or a Mac program, iStudio Publisher, to print individual photos - I edit in Photoshop but find it easier to control sizes and annotations, arrows and so on in iStudio. For photo albums, nothing beats PowerPoint. There are photo album templates around but I prefer to set up a blank page of the size I want. I drag the photos I want to put into an album to my desktop, then into PowerPoint, where it’s very easy to manipulate them, add frames and annotate them, and even adjust colour and contrast. I then save the file as a PDF. Any commercial printer can then print the album more cheaply than ‘photo printers’. I learned about this from our hospital photographer. —Clive Quick
• When I want top-quality prints, I use Mpix. The enlargements are wonderful. But may I recommend their Parallel one-page year-at-a-glance calendar, allowing you to add 12 photos (1 per month) for $3.75. (Yes, $3.75!) They make awesome personalized holiday gifts for family and friends, and super-helpful near a computer. —Renee Enna
• I've been using CVS as my photobook maker, especially for photo albums to give to people as gifts. They have lots of online templates, you just upload your images and plop them in, and then you can pick up the finished photobook at your local CVS! Affordable and easy. —Cecilia Tan
• For printing photos — posters of our travel photos, holiday ornaments, and holiday cards — I tend to use Shutterfly because if you put your project in your cart and wait, after a bit they send you a coupon. And their seasonal coupons are good value. For photo books — I despair of ever getting over my perfectionism to actually finish many photo books. I have a "First Decade of (My Daughter)" project started in Mixbook. I like the interface of Mixbook much better, and you can invite collaborators. I was meant to give this book to her when she turned 10 — she'll be 12 in February. Here's hoping I get it done before she turns 20! —Sandhya Jain-Patel