Shutterfly: Prints Cards Gifts

Photographs now live almost entirely on screens, and the ones that get looked at years later are the ones somebody printed. Shutterfly exists to close that gap, turning what is on your phone into physical objects: photo books, prints, greeting cards, wedding invitations, wall art, calendars and personalised gifts such as mugs and blankets. Unlimited four by four and four by six prints are included in the app with only shipping to pay, which changes the economics of ordinary printing considerably. Rather than choosing the six best photographs of a year because printing is expensive, you can print the ordinary ones, and the ordinary ones are frequently the ones that matter most a decade later. The photo book designer service handles the task most people abandon. Laying out a hundred photographs across forty pages is genuinely time-consuming, and the twenty four hour service has a Shutterfly designer do it for you, which converts a project that sits unfinished for two years into something that arrives in the post. Everything is designed on the phone, using the photographs already there, with no transferring to a computer. Cards and invitations can be addressed and posted directly. The app is free; printing and delivery are what you pay for, and offers appear regularly, so a large order such as a photo book is worth planning rather than rushing. Printing and shipping take days, so a gift for a particular date should be ordered well ahead.