Dear wife has made a couple of Shutterfly books of our european trips. She’s an old-school scrapbooker, but worked it out and figured that this was no more expensive than having pictures printed, pay for scrapbook supplies, etc, etc. They turned out rather nice.
Since she made her last photo book in April, Shutterfly has changed its interface. IT IS HORRENDOUS!!! There is so much lag, she can’t line up photos as precisely as she could before. Instead of clicking on a photo to get its cropping and other functions, they are there as soon as you touch the photo with the cursor. Also, the pages of the book are too small to see unless she puts the browser into full screen (and we have a 21 inch screen).
Does anyone out there know of any other company that serves the same function as Shutterfly, but has an interface that humans can use? It infuriates her that she can whip up a PowerPoint and do whatever she wants with the photos in NO TIME at all, while this piece of garbage is almost impossible to use.
You know the phrase “Happy wife = Happy life”? Well… my life isn’t too happy right now.
I hate to hear this. I’ve done tons of books, ornaments and gifts on there. But I haven’t done a book in over a year since we haven’t been anywhere. I hope they fix it!
Thanks for all the comments. My wife is used to whipping out Power Points where she can control picture size, alignment, captions, etc. Shutterfly wants you to basically choose one of their templates and drop your photos in. The problem is if your photo isn’t the same exact shape as the template, you get odd cropping that is aggravating to fix. As she said, if she could just make a book from Power Point and upload it, that would be perfect.
UPDATE: Dear wife played around with Mixbook for a few minutes, and the phrase I kept hearing over and over again was “WOW, why can’t Shutterfuly do this!!” She’s going to start her book over using MIxbook–that would be tons easier than continuing on Shutterfly, and a much more efficient use of her time. And of course, they sent her coupons!
Please tell me that’s not true! I’ve been using Shutterfly for more than 10 years - I use them as gifts for myself, my D, and my 2 best friends that I travel with…I am the unofficial documentarian of our journeys and make us each (if I may be so humble) fabulous photo books - I am heartbroken to hear this news.
That said, our last travel adventure together was Feb 2020, we came home one week before lockdown, and I was tempted by an offer from Mixbook - I made my books there, and they were (are) every bit as nice as Shutterfly - have your wife give them a try - (oh, I just finished reading the thread…glad to hear Mixbook is staying the course)
It’s true, I just made our vacation book on Shutterfly last month and had a lot more trouble modifying picture boxes to fit our photos. Most were from our phones and therefore vertical, Shutterfly likes to use a lot of square shapes. And forget about rotating a photo. I would get it all rotated, cropped, reshaped, and then go on to the next photo and the rotated photo would revert back to a prior, unwanted iteration. I did get a book together but it was rougher going than it used to be.
My DD (a graphic designer) made me a book on Walmart and said it was easy to work with. It looks really nice too.
Dear wife spent a 95 degree, humid afternoon in air-conditioned nirvana starting her Mixbook photo book. Did 13 pages in the amount of time it took her to do ONE page on Shutterfly.
She is definitely a Mixbook convert!! Thanks to all again!!!
I have used Shutterfly for years - have always thought they had the best options. That being said, I haven’t been on there this year - so maybe they’ve changed things (and not for the better!). Dang.
They used to have an advanced editing option where you could do whatever you wanted with the layout - not necessarily use their prepackaged 3/4/5 photos per page. I used that when I had to make a big memory book with pictures and text.
Hi-- my wife found that the advanced editing option was no longer available. Shutterfly seems hellbent on users just dropping photos into their templates and let the algorithm do the cropping, etc. This resulted in garbage when she tried this. She is loving Mixbook’s ease of use.
I used to use My Publisher and loved it, so much flexibility. I then did some Shutterfly books and calendars but haven’t made anything in about five years. Has anyone used Printique? It seems to get good reviews for photobooks. https://www.printique.com/photo-books-and-albums/
I’ve used Shutterfly (a few years ago)and Costco more recently. Costco was by far the better value, with more pages, a larger format, and cheaper price. It took awhile to learn the nuances of the program though. The older Shutterfly seemed more intuitive “out of the box”. I won’t go back to Shutterfly, however. I was very happy with the Costco quality, and it is worth it to me for the better value.
Since I started this thread I thought I should give it its proper happy ending. Dear wife made a book using Mixbook, found the website interface a million times easier to use than Shutterfly. The book just arrived today, and she is thrilled with the quality of the product. In fact, she said to me “I wish I knew about Mixbook a long time ago, I wouldn’t have wasted my time slogging through Shutterfly!”
Thanks to the amazing CC community that had the answers, as usual!!
Thanks for this thread. Last week, I made our July vacation book in Mixbook. It was easy enough to use. I’d say roughly the same as the old Shutterfly. But I got the book in the mail today, and it is BEAUTIFUL. I am so excited. This may be my best book yet.
Great to hear! Dear wife thought Mixbook was MUCH easier to use than the current iteration of Shutterfly. And she thought it was a better book–photos looked razor sharp as compared to Shutterfly (same phone and camera produced the photos).
The fact that you can click on a photo, size AND crop it from the same view was delightful. Corners for sizing, handles at 12, 3, 6, and 9-oclock for cropping.
The old version you could do that if you clicked the advanced editing option. I haven’t looked to see if it’s changed. But mixbook was great. I am a fan! And I agree about the quality of the pictures and book itself.
