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Suburban America used to contain roughly one 1-hour photo lab for every 500 people. Little kiosks were sprinkled across strip mall parking lots like pepper on a bad steak. Then came the digital camera, and suddenly there was no film to develop. Those kiosks abruptly disappeared, taking our photo printing options with them. Developing film isn't commonplace today, but the desire to have a photograph as an object has never faded. In place of the 1-hour photo booths, there are endless online printing services, most of which produce far better results than the kiosks ever did. Unfortunately, some of them are truly awful at printing your images.
To make sure you don't end up with prints of your kids with orange skin against green skies (yes, that happened in one test), we assembled a collection of photos designed to test color, tonal range, blacks, whites, and more, and fired them off to dozens of services. Here are the best places to print your photos. All prices are for standard 4 x 6 prints. For more immediate results, be sure to check out our Best Instant Cameras and Printers guide.
Updated March 2023: We've added our thoughts on printing books at Mixbook, business cards at Moocards, and photo storage and printing options from SmugMug.
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Best for Most People
When my kids were born I wanted to make sure they, like me, inherited a shoebox full of faded family photographs. I bought a film camera but decided the film was too expensive, so I sold that and bought a DSLR instead. I started using Mpix to print everything. The results have never disappointed me. Mpix is an offshoot of Miller's Professional Imaging (a pro-only printing service), and the pedigree shows in the print quality.
Suggested reading:Mpix prints on Kodak Endura paper and offers a variety of paper options. I tested the E-surface, which renders rich, deep blacks and very true-to-life colors. It holds up well over time; images I printed in 2013 look exactly like they did when I got them.
The website is simple to use. You can import images from the most popular social networks and photo-backup services like Dropbox, Facebook, Google Drive, and OneDrive. (Unfortunately, Instagram isn't on the list.) Once your images are in your Mpix account, you can order prints in virtually any size, including options tailored to images for your phone (4 x 5.3 inches, for example). There are also options to print on canvas, wood prints, and more.
We’ve tested dozens of services, and we continue to stand by our longtime pick, Nations Photo Lab , which will consistently get you great-looking prints shipped safely to your home.
Using an online photo printing service means you don’t need to set up a large, specialized printer or buy and store expensive ink and paper, and you won’t have to learn confusing new software to get a beautiful copy of a picture of your loved ones or a treasured memory.
Nations Photo Lab makes great-looking prints (in sizes ranging from 4 by 4 inches to 30 by 45 inches) and ships them in well-thought-out cardboard packaging that prevented our photos from being damaged en route.
Uploading and ordering images is simple through a web interface or a mobile app, and for a small fee, you can have Nations color-correct any images that look a little off.
If you plan to send your images as a gift to family or friends, or if you’re having them delivered to a client (if you sell your photos), Nations will sell you a cute gift box and package your order in it, bound with ribbon. For a little extra, you can even customize the box with images or your logo. And if your order is $80 or more after any coupons, it will ship for free.
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