Photo books

We compare six online photo book printers to see which offers the best product and service

Digital photography has revolutionized the way we take pictures; however, it’s all too easy to leave your best images languishing on a

hard drive. But if printing photos for an album is too last-century for you, try a photo book instead. These are fully customizable books that feature your photos printed directly on the cover and inside pages: an ideal memento for a special event.

Deciding which company to use isn’t easy, with each offering numerous book size, design, and paper options. We selected six highly regarded printers and picked a landscape-format book close to A4 size. Each contained the same colour and monochrome photos, along with a printer test chart image to expose printing anomalies.

But even high print quality isn’t much good unless you’re able to nail the layout and design. That comes down to each manufacturer’s accompanying book creation software, and what tricks it will let you pull off.

Finally, all the books we test-printed were mainly of a very high quality and standard; consequently, we had to scrutinize each book very closely to find any significant faults.