9 Best Online Photo Printing Services We Tested (2024)

Google Photos compresses photos when uploading them to the cloud, making them less than 16 megapixels. But in my little 7-inch softcover book, I can’t see any pixels or digital work in the images. About half of the shots I took were from my Pixel phone with its 12MP sensor, and the other half from the awesome Ricoh camera with its 24MP sensor. The images in my book look nice and sharp, and I wouldn’t say they’re compressed. —Michael Calore

Best for selling your photos

Starting at $13 per month

If you’re looking for something beyond just printing your shots, SmugMug is our top pick. It is popular with professional photographers because of its online interface, RAW file storage, and print sales options. You can upload your photos and put them in a gallery, you can show that to clients, and even sell prints directly from those galleries.

SmugMug handles all the details of transporting your photos over the Internet to the print lab. It automatically sends your image to the printer when a customer orders a print, which is very useful if you are selling your work. Prints are handled in the US by EZPrint Labs; In Europe, he works with Loxley. However, SmugMug is not free. Access to the Basic plan, which gives you unlimited online storage, private galleries, and tight integration with Adobe Lightroom, among other things, will cost you $13 per month.

Best for printing business cards and postcards

Starting at $21 for business cards and $23 for postcards

I covered SXSW for WIRED in 2006 and one of the weird things I remember was everyone I met handing out clever little half-sized business cards that came from a company called Moo. Moo still offers those cards ($21 for 100 of them), but it has also evolved into a full-service printing shop that can do anything from business cards to custom postcards to water bottles. Moo wouldn’t be my best choice for photographs, because that’s not really his specialty, but for artwork, invitations, postcards, flyers and just about everything else, I’m impressed with him.

I printed some postcards with some custom designs (including photographs and some of my child’s artwork) and was impressed by the color accuracy. All the papers I tried were of high quality and the color matching was probably the best of all the services I tried. You can upload your own designs for most things or use Moo’s templates, which offer some customization options. This would be my only real criticism — Moo’s online tools don’t offer as many customization options as I’d like. Fortunately, it’s easy to do your own work using free software like The lame Then upload your files as PDF or JPG files.

Printing services to avoid

Photo printing on Amazon: This service produced the worst images, not only from this particular test, but the worst prints I’ve ever seen. The best thing I can say about it is that it is fast. I received my prints in less than 24 hours. The problem is that of the 25 printouts I ordered, eight of them had printing errors. Convinced that the 30% failure rate must be a fluke, I fired off another round of 25 (different) images, and this time seven of them printed incorrectly. I suppose that’s some kind of progress, but it’s not progress I’d recommend. I didn’t bother trying again, and I suggest you avoid Amazon’s photo printing service.

Walmart/Target/CVS/Walgreens: Technically, one-hour photo booths are not dead. They have made their way inside pharmacy chains. There is nothing wrong with these services. It’s convenient, and it’s still the fastest way to print your photos as uploaded jobs are generally processed within a few hours. But results vary greatly from one store to another. Just like the old one-hour services, the quality of the prints you get depends on what the machine looks like and how skilled the technician is working that day. You may be able to get good prints from your local store, and it may be worth checking out if you’re not happy with the other options, but for most people, this is very hit or miss.