PrestoPhoto Review

COMPLETE REVIEW

PrestoPhoto is an American company based in North Carolina. PrestoPhoto doesn’t offer as many printing services as most competitors, it is mostly focused on different types of photo books. It does also make calendars, greeting and gift cards, but that is pretty much it.

In terms of photo books, their options are more than generous. This service has one of the largest selections of available sizes, covers, backgrounds and templates we've seen so far.

When it comes to formats and sizes, PrestoPhoto has 15 book sizes which are available in landscape, portrait and square. That’s more than we’ve seen in any printing service. You can choose between mini-books  (3.75X2.5, 5.25X3.5, 7X5, 5X5 and others),  9X7 photo books, 11X8,5, 8.5X8.5, 10X10, 12X12 and more.

There are also several cover choices: imagewrap, saddle stitch, die-cut, dustjacket and several types of paper: lustre 200 photo paper, matte 120, premium 150, semi-gloss, silk.

Regarding their return policy, well, it doesn’t really exist. Although they state on their website that they are willing to “work with you to resolve any issue” if you contact them withing 30 days from receiving your order, they are also very clear on the fact that they don’t accept returns or exchanges for printed products and they can’t cancel orders in manufacturing.

With PrestoPhoto you can import you can either create your book online with the help of their editor or you can import your PDF, which is a useful feature, if you want to create your project with a different software such as Adobe InDesign or others. You can also create an Apple book, uploading your Apple iPhoto or Aperture book to PrestoPhoto. This way, even though Apple has discontinued their own printing for those programs, you can still print the books with PrestoPhoto and it will cost you less. A 50 pages, 11X8,5 Imagewrap Hardcover Premium Quality will cost you $49,99.

Another thing we liked about this printing service was the fact that there are more than 130 original templates to choose from.

What we didn’t like was the online editor, which is not exactly user-friendly and seems to lack some important functions and options, such as drag and drop, resize images and an undo button. You might also spend quite some time trying to figure out where everything is and how to do simple things like moving a photo and so on. The layouts could also be displayed in a more attractive and suggestive way.

When it comes to the quality of the printing, PrestoPhoto is not the best. Regardless of the image resolution, while some pages come out sharp and impressive, others will turn out blurry and low quality, with visible pixels, no matter what you do. There are some other minor imperfections as well, related to the gluing or binding, which may catch the eye of the picky customer.

PrestoPhoto offers several delivery options: through FedEx and USPS, overnight, express saver, FedEx 2Day, USPS priority mail or media mail. Except from overnight delivery, delivery times vary from 2 days to 2-3 weeks, depending on the shipping method you choose. Either way, even if you go with FedEx Priority Overnight, you have to keep in mind that your photo book will have to be manufactured as well, which will take from 4 to 6 business days, for softcover and 5-7 business days for hardcover photo books.

Here are the available options: https://www.prestophoto.com/help/Ship+Options+and+Delivery+Times

PrestoPhoto offers international shipping, too.