| PhotoWorks - Digital Print Review 2010 |
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Ease of Use - Ordering Process:  PhotoWorks website is well-organized, clean and very easy to navigate. This service makes the process of uploading your digital images and placing your order a smooth ride. While ordering, you can select either borders or borderless prints, glossy or matte finish, what size you want and the quantity you need. |
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Quality of Prints:
 When we tried PhotoWorks - they charged $2.15 to ship us nine 4 x 6 inch prints, when the actual postage for First class mail by USPS was $0.83. This means $1.32 was charged toward their packaging and handling costs. This difference in the amount of shipping is actually quite normal amongst most online photo printing services, but PhotoWorks puts very little of it towards packaging. Our prints arrived in a single, un-reinforced envelope. Close-up Photos: A slight difference in tone and some cropping was noticeable in the prints that we received. We did like that the facial colors were very close to the original digital photo. Scenic & Background Photos: We liked the crisp details and vibrant colors these distant photo prints offered. However, we noticed that the overall print had a different tone and that our original photo was cropped. |
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Pricing:
PhotoWorks has relatively expensive per-print prices as compared to many other services. Hence, it simply can't compete with some of our top picks. |
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Shipping Costs:
 PhotoWorks charged $2.15 to ship us nine - 4 x 6 inch prints, when the actual postage for a First class mail by USPS was $.83. This means $1.32 went toward their packaging and handling costs. This difference in the amount of shipping is actually quite normal amongst most online photo printing services, but PhotoWorks puts very little of it towards packaging. Our prints arrived in a single, un-reinforced envelope. |
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Turn Around Time:
For each service provider that we reviewed; we gave them one to four days to ship us our finished prints in order to receive a high score in this category. PhotoWorks positively met our requirements. PhotoWorks also ships all over the world. |
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Other Services:
PhotoWorks digital photo printing offers some unique photo-based gifts that other companies don't offer; such as porcelain Christmas ornaments, puzzles, magnets, tote bags, mosaic tile murals and more. This service will even put your digital photos onto a canvas. Using PhotoWorks service, you can also download a free, simple-to-use photo editing program that allows you to crop photos, fix red-eye, change sizes from landscape or portrait and add cool effects like Posterize, Black & White, Sepia, Emboss, Blur, Pixellate, Invert, and Cartoon. |
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Summary:
PhotoWorks is a very easy to navigate website; nicely organized and with a wide variety of special gifts. Since they also ship all over the world, you can take advantage of their services, no matter where you live. However, their higher shipping costs and a possible lack of proper packaging was a bit of a turn-off to us. |
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A comprehensive list of features and a side-by-side comparison on every digital online photo printing and sharing service provider is available on our "Compare Services" Page. |
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