Before starting with the article: if you are looking for an online photo development service, from Photographer’s Blog we recommend CEWE. We tried several services and it is the one that has given us the best results. You may access the service from the following link.
Shooting and storing photos digitally is fine. I’m a big fan of digital (conserving the environment, archiving and backup capabilities, etc.). But let’s not kid ourselves, friends, nothing equals the feeling of taking (grabbing, for the Agrentinos ;-P) a bunch of paper photos and looking at them, one by one, with a family member or friend, enjoying the memory that bring each of them. A photo on physical paper is a slightly more “real” photo than the same one on a computer.
Developing digital photos with PhotoBox: one of the best, or maybe… the best
Coinciding with the fact that many readers asked me questions regarding the digital photo developmentI have been asked since PhotoBox make an evaluation of your digital photo printing/developing service. Request that I gladly accepted since I had been wanting to deal with this issue of photo printing for some time.
Then I will explain the steps to follow and I will tell you about my experience with this service.
Create Account
The first step is to create an accountsomething that we will do by filling out a simple form and in which it will take no more than 10-20 seconds.
I liked how simple and fast this process was. Only strictly necessary data is required. In addition, we do not need to go to our mail, open an email and click on any link to verify the email, something that happens in most records and that is usually a bit cumbersome to be honest.
How to place an order on PhotoBox
Once registered in the service, then click on “DIGITAL REVEAL”. Both prices and promotions may vary depending on the time of year, but here is the table of current prices at the time of writing this entry:
To start the process we will click on the button above “REVEAL MY PHOTOS NOW”which will give us a choice between two options:
- Photos from my computer: option to load photos from our computer, memory card, flash drive, etc.
- Photos from my PhotoBox account: allows you to use photos already uploaded previously and available in our virtual gallery of PhotoBox.
The process of selecting and uploading photos is very intuitive. Once the photos are loaded, the default system will offer us options to improve the photos in terms of brightness, contrast, etc. In my case, the photos had already been previously retouched and improved, so I deactivated this option, in order to save time.
At this point we can confirm or change the size we want to print (ranging from 9×13 to 11x15mm), the print finish (gloss, matte, border, etc.) and the number of copies per photo.
From this point, and as soon as we press “ORDER PHOTOS”our order will be sent to the basket waiting for us to finish the order (by clicking on the basket and then on “TO PAY”).
Before paying, we will be asked for the shipping address, for the payment details, and finally the order will be confirmed.
Advantages of PhtoBox Service
Actually I should say “Advantages and Disadvantages”, the truth is that as far as I have been able to experience with the service I have to admit that I have not found even the slightest inconvenience, and that I am normally a very demanding client. I did find, however, advantages that I would like to highlight:
- Speed of service: Those of PhotoBox say that the orders are prepared in 24 hours and are immediately distributed. In this experiment I placed the order very late on Monday night, and on Thursday of the same week I had the shipment delivered to my home, thus accounting for a total of only 3 days between preparation and shipment of the order.
- Ease of use of the service: There are many websites where we can print our digital photos, but most try to offer and expand their range of services so much that they fall into the error/trap that the user ends up overwhelmed and overwhelmed with so many options. PhotoBox offers a good balance between the richness of the service and its ease.
- Variety of products: In addition to photo development, they also offer printed digital books/albums, personalized mugs and calendars, posters, etc.
- Integration with other Services: PhotoBox allows us to load our photos from the computer, or call them from our Flickr account or Picasaamong others.
Final Verdict
Would I print my photos on PhotoBox? I think so. Definitely yes. Would I recommend it to my readers or friends? I would highly recommend it. At the moment I have tested a few printing services and so far it is winning PhotoBox.
I hope they maintain this level of quality for a long time.