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Here's where users test and review products and give their feedback. If you'd like to run a product test please email [email protected] .

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Product tests

Find out what mn testers thought of onceupon photo books.

JustineBMumsnet · 25/09/2019 12:21

This is the feedback thread for the Mumsnet users with children under 5 who have tested OnceUpon photo books. Here’s what OnceUpon has to say: “Once Upon is a new way to make photo books. Download the app, add your favourite photos, tell your best stories and watch as Once Upon instantly turns them into a designed book. With Once Upon, it’s easy to create your book filled with special moments – think messy spaghetti face or that time your 5 year old decided to give himself a haircut.” Testers , please give your feedback by answering the questions below:

  • What did you like most about using the OnceUpon app?
  • What was your book about?
  • How do you like your first OnceUpon book?
  • Did using OnceUpon inspire you to make more photo books? If so, what types of books do you have in mind?
  • Did you try the collaboration feature? If yes, what are your thoughts on it?

What did you like most about using the OnceUpon app? I really liked how simple the design aspects were. Each page was easy to set up, and it was easy to move the photos about on the page. However it didn't over complicate things like other similar photo book providers- they can end up looking messy.

Star

  • What did you like most about using the OnceUpon app? I do not need to finish in one go and can come back to the project
  • What was your book about? The most recent two years’ stories from every day life
  • How do you like your first OnceUpon book? Love it
  • Did using OnceUpon inspire you to make more photo books? If so, what types of books do you have in mind? Not yet but will be
  • Did you try the collaboration feature? If yes, what are your thoughts on it? No
  • What was your book about? My kids with their nana, She doesnt live in the Uk so it was great to choose the photos with my children as it brought many memories back

This reply has been deleted

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What did you like most about using the OnceUpon app? I liked how easy it was to upload pictures and use on multiple devices, I used on my iPad and iPhone. I also liked how easy it was to arrange the pictures and move the pages up and down. What was your book about? My book was about my sonsfirst year. I was meaning to make a photo book of his first year and this gave me the opportunity to do it. How do you like your first OnceUpon book? I absolutely loved it, it was fab. I really enjoyed uploading all the pictures of my sons first year and was quite nostalgic for me looking back at the pictures and memories. The only thing that I would want to be added was to add text on the same page as the pictures, there was too much blank space on some of the pages with just text on them. Did using OnceUpon inspire you to make more photo books? If so what type of books do you have in mind? Yes and I would definitely use the same company as I was impressed with the finished product. I would like to create more books for my son as he gets older. Maybe a book about our adventures next time. Did you try the collaboration feature? If so what are your thoughts on it? No I didn't, I was very conscious on the time limit as I knew I had to do it quickly so I can post feedback, if I had more time I would definitely ask my husband and parents to get involved. Thank you giving me the opportunity to testing out this product I loved it.

What did you like most about using the OnceUpon app? Very easy to used and didn’t hav3 lots of options. Sle3k and simple

Hi! Here calling all Yoyo pushchairs owners. We finally decided to get one since we travel every three months on a plane. Do you know if a bugaboo all weather footmuff would fit on it? I really don't want to spend another £90 on one as I have two already! Any advice much appreciated.

Grin

Thank you!!! 😍😍🤩X

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Big Book Review

Read More, Discover More – Uncover Your Next Great Book

Once Upon Photo Book Review

Reviewing the Once Upon Photo Book is a delightful task, as this meticulously designed product brings cherished memories to life in a tangible form. With its high-quality printing and durable binding , this photo book is the perfect way to preserve and showcase your most precious moments. Whether it’s a wedding , family vacation , or special milestone , the Once Upon Photo Book is sure to impress both with its design and print quality . Let’s examine all the details and features that make this photo book a standout choice for anyone looking to create a timeless keepsake .

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways:

  • High-Quality Images: Once Upon Photo Book Review offers high-quality images for the photo books, ensuring that your memories are preserved beautifully.
  • Easy Customization: The platform provides easy customization options, allowing you to create personalized photo books that suit your style and preferences.
  • Professional Printing: With Once Upon Photo Book Review, you can expect professional printing services that deliver top-notch results for your photo books.

Delving into Design

Aesthetic appeal and cover art.

Any photo book is first judged by its cover, and the aesthetic appeal plays a crucial role in attracting the reader’s attention. The cover art sets the tone for the entire book, offering a glimpse into the visual treat that lies within.

Navigating Through the Pages

When you probe the photo book, the aesthetic layout and design of each page enhance the overall reading experience. The way the photos are arranged, the use of white space, and the font choice all contribute to how seamlessly you can navigate through the pages .

Another necessary aspect of navigating through the pages is the flow of the story. A well-designed photo book will guide you through a visual journey, leading your eyes from one stunning image to the next, maintaining engagement and interest throughout.

Storytelling Through Images

Photo quality and color accuracy.

Accuracy is key when it comes to photo quality and color in your photo book. Some printing services offer high-quality paper and advanced printing techniques that ensure your images come out crisp and vibrant.

Layouts and Customization Options

To truly tell a story through your photo book, the layout and customization options play a crucial role. Some platforms provide a wide range of templates, backgrounds, and designs for you to choose from, enabling you to creatively showcase your images.

Once Upon Photo Book Review: Dive Into Your Next Adventure

Understanding your options for layouts and customization is vital in creating a photo book that truly reflects your vision. From selecting the perfect template to customizing text and embellishments, the possibilities are endless. Experimenting with different layouts can help you find the perfect design to complement your images and narrative.

Usability and Features

Software ease of use.

Keep in mind that the software provided by Once Upon Photo Books is incredibly user-friendly. You don’t need to be a tech genius to navigate through the platform, upload your photos, and design your photo book. The step-by-step process is intuitive and straightforward, making the creation process a breeze.

Range of Features and Tools

The ease of use doesn’t compromise on the features and tools available. Once Upon Photo Books offers a wide range of customization options including various layouts, backgrounds, stickers, and text options. Plus, you can easily enhance your photos with filters and editing tools directly on the platform. From basic designs to intricate layouts, options are plentiful to cater to your personal style and preferences.

It’s worth noting that the platform allows for intricate photo editing with features like cropping, rotating, and adjusting colors. Additionally, collaborative tools enable you to work on a project with friends or family members in real-time, perfect for creating a joint memento or gift. The ability to save projects and come back to them later further enhances the user experience, allowing you to take your time and perfect your creation.

Value for Money

Pricing breakdown.

Not all photo book services are created equal when it comes to pricing. Some companies may offer low upfront costs but then tack on extra fees for features that should be included in the base price. It’s important to carefully review the pricing breakdown before committing to a service.

Comparing Quality to Cost

As far as photo books, it’s important to assess the quality of the product in relation to the cost. Some companies may charge a higher price for premium materials and printing techniques, while others may offer a budget-friendly option with lower quality. It’s crucial to find the right balance between cost and quality to ensure you’re getting the best value for your money.

When comparing the quality to cost, it’s important to consider factors such as paper quality, printing resolution, binding, and cover materials. Pay attention to customer reviews and samples of the company’s work to ensure you’re getting a photo book that meets your expectations.

From above, Once Upon Photo Book Review is a highly recommended service for creating personalized and high-quality photo books. With their user-friendly platform, wide range of design options, and excellent customer service, capturing and preserving memories has never been easier. Whether you’re creating a gift for a loved one or documenting your own special moments, Once Upon is sure to exceed your expectations.

Q: What is the Once Upon Photo Book Review about?

A: Once Upon Photo Book Review is a platform where users can create personalized photo books with high-quality prints and materials to preserve their memories in a creative and customizable way.

Q: How does Once Upon Photo Book Review work?

A: To start, users can select the type of photo book they want to create, upload their photos, customize the layout and design with various templates and editing tools, and then place an order for printing and delivery.

Q: What makes Once Upon Photo Book Review stand out from other photo book services?

A: Once Upon Photo Book Review offers a wide range of design options, high-quality printing materials, user-friendly customization tools, and fast delivery, making it a convenient and creative choice for preserving memories.

once upon photo books reviews

Swiss Stories

  • 30 June 2020
  • Photography

Create an annual photo album from your phone – a review of Once Upon

once upon photo books reviews

Amongst all the ridiculous things I said before I had children (´I will remain calm and serene through childbirth, ´my kids will never watch TV´) was the claim that I would still find plenty of time to complete my annual photo album after I had kids.

IMG_1847.jpg

Starting way back in 5 BC (five years before children), I had always thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating my annual photo album. I used the software from Australian company Momento and spent hours sitting at my computer, creating layouts and writing cheesy captions.

Then in 2016, my first son came along, and I very quickly fell behind.

One year, then two years, then three years. Even when I was four years behind, I kept telling myself that I was only a productive evening or two from getting back up to date. Yeah, right.

Finally, in 4 AD (four years after the death of my pelvic floor), I had to admit to myself that the process I had enjoyed before kids was not going to work anymore. Then, with spookily perfect timing, and proving that it knows me better than I know myself, the Instagram algorithm served me up an ad claiming it would help me create a stylish photo album straight from my phone.

Was this ad from the Swedish company called Once Upon , an answer to my photo album prayers? Spoiler alert – it’s is. Otherwise, this article would be entirely pointless.

The Process

Downloading the app and setting up an account was straightforward, requiring no complicated forms or credit card details. Setting up a new album was also a simple process, with the starting template including only a title page and one blank spread (two pages), adding additional spreads easily as you go.

For each spread, you simply need to make three decisions:

Select between one and six photos.

Select a layout for the photos., add an optional title and/or caption..

There is a maximum of 100 spreads per book, which should arguably be plenty to summarise one year. However, because I am useless at editing and think every photo of my sons is ‘just the cutest, I couldn’t possibly leave it out’, I actually ended up with two books per year.

When it came time to order the books, again it was intuitive. I selected the size (I went classic 27x27cm), cover (hardback) and paper (standard glossy), entered my address and payment details and sent it off to the printer!

SFTJun2020_onceuponreview-8.jpg

The Product

A couple of weeks later, I got the message I had been waiting for – that my albums were just a couple of days away (yay!). But my excitement quickly died down on reading that I needed to pay the CHF17.00 in import duties (boo!).

When they arrived, I immediately unboxed them (not in the manner of a YouTube kids video, but rather just literally taking them out of the box), and I was very pleasantly surprised with what I saw.

The size feels quite big and luxurious, the cover is excellent quality, and all the layouts and text look uncluttered and much classier than anything I could have ever achieved with my own design skills. The resolution of the photos was excellent; the only ones that were a bit blurry were the ones where the app had indicated a quality warning, which I had arrogantly ignored. While thick and good quality, the standard glossy paper is indeed quite glossy (fancy that), and I think for future books I will pay the bit extra for premium matte paper.

once upon photo books reviews

The Verdict

I’m a convert and will continue using Once Upon for my annual photo albums (and potentially some other photo album projects).

Three main features have turned me very quickly into an annoying evangelist for this product:

  •  I can do the whole thing on my phone, where let’s face it, I already spend a lot of time, so at least now some of it can be productive.
  • Goodbye decision fatigue, thanks to a minimal selection of layouts, title and text options.
  • All praise Swedish design. The photobooks live up to its Swedish heritage, in that they are simple, stylish and high quality.

In terms of negatives or areas for improvement, I should mention that the books are not particularly cheap (each hardcover 100 spread book was 90CHF) and that there is no possibility to edit or even crop photos within the app. I can’t forget the dreaded import duties either. I thought not being able to add captions to individual images was also a downside. Still, on reflection, I would quickly get myself four years behind again if someone gave me that option, so best keep any easily procrastinative tasks away from me.

Whether you use Once Upon or one of the many other options out there, I offer you my new mantra when it comes to creating and printing photo albums (one which my pre-kids self would be disgusted by): “done is better than perfect”. So get them done, before you end up with a backlog of a decade, in which case a productive evening or two most certainly will not get you back up to date.

About the author

Ellen

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The 12 Best Travel Photo Book Makers of 2024

Create a forever keepsake and preserve your precious vacation memories with a photo book.

once upon photo books reviews

In This Article

  • Our Top Picks
  • Tips for Choosing

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Why Trust T+L

Travel + Leisure / Alli Waataja

The old cliché dictates that a picture is worth a thousand words, and certainly photos are one of the best souvenirs you can bring home when you travel. But, let’s be honest: how often do you really scroll back through your phone reel or revisit those online albums? A photo book is a much more tangible, attractive way to keep those memories safe and accessible forever. 

There are many photo book makers out there, all with slightly different offerings. Some specialize in simple, budget-friendly books that you can make for every trip while others excel at luxurious coffee table art books meant to commemorate once-in-a-lifetime adventures. We’ve researched the best options to help you choose the right photo book maker for your next vacation — and beyond.

Best Overall

Artifact Uprising

The gorgeous, high-quality products come in a range of styles and materials to suit all tastes and budgets. 

You won’t find themed layouts or same-day production here. 

Whether you’re looking for a budget-friendly softcover photo book to add to your travel collection or a premium layflat coffee table book to commemorate your destination wedding, Artifact Uprising has you covered. The company offers a full range of photo book sizes, shapes, and layouts including some more unusual options (board books for babies, for example, or Insta-friendly books designed especially for square images). Each book promises exceptional print quality and durable construction. 

You can customize every aspect of your photo book, although options vary depending on the product you choose. Examples include cover color and material (with possibilities including softcover, hardcover, linen, and leather), foil stamping, paper finish, the layout of your photos and text, and the page count. Most templates include 20 pages with an additional fee for each page thereafter. You won’t find colorful themes here; all products print on white paper for a clean, uncluttered look that puts your images front and center. 

For the most professional result possible, consider paying extra to collaborate with one of the company’s in-house design specialists. Production times vary from three to eight days depending on the complexity of your project. There are also four shipping options that range from standard to rush.

Best Budget

Their full range of customizable templates and colored backgrounds makes it easy to get the look you want. 

Expect additional fees for any project over 20 pages, upgraded paper, and finish choices. 

Although Snapfish also offers costlier products, their classic photo books are some of the most affordable out there. If you opt for a 7x5 or 6x8 softcover or hardcover book and stick to the included 20-page limit, you can easily spend under $20. Affordable upgrades include premium gloss pages and/or a matte cover; but bear in mind that extra pages can quickly add up. Making your photo book is simple. Choose the size and orientation, then design your own from scratch or use one of many premade templates.

Travel-themed templates include roadtrip, destination stamps, and tropical beach escape. After personalizing them with your photos and text. you can change the background color and add embellishments to each page. Optional layflat binding is worth the extra cost for seamless double-page spreads. If you find yourself with extra room in the budget, you can upgrade to a linen or leather cover. Production times vary, with the quickest delivery taking around three days with rushed shipping, but there are four total shipping options to cater to every budget.

Easiest to Use

Shutterfly’s in-house designers can create a photo book for you in 24 hours; all you have to do is provide your images. 

If you’re in a hurry, bear in mind that rush production and delivery is only available for certain products.

Most photo book makers require you to upload your images and then manually build each page or use an auto-uploader to add the pictures to a premade template. The first option is time consuming and the second often results in images being cropped or grouped in strange ways. Shutterfly offers a third option: upload your photos, then let an in-house designer create your book for you in 24 hours. Upon reviewing their design, you can order as-is or tweak it to suit your specifications. 

Best of all? This design service is offered free of charge. You can even use the Shutterfly app to upload photos directly from your phone. If you don’t want to use this service, no problem. You can still create photo books manually or use the faster autofill option. There are plenty of templates to choose from, with six square and rectangular size options and four cover types (softcover, matte or glossy hardcover, or premium leather). Production and delivery can take between one and 10 business days depending on the product and shipping option selected.

Best Themed Templates

Mixbook photo book.

With more than 700 themed templates to choose from, there’s an option for every kind of vacation. 

Not all templates offer the same number of free pages, so be sure to check before deciding. 

Mixbook photo books are divided into three main types: hardcover, softcover, and layflat for those seamless double-page spreads. Whichever you go for, there are more than 700 templates to choose from. These can be browsed by category with categories like year in review, seasonal, and, of course, templates for every major life event from weddings to baby’s first year. Travel-specific templates include options for photos only, or photos and text in a dizzying array of different layouts. 

Some are customizable to any trip while others are specific to certain adventures with themed graphics, text, and embellishments. There’s one for Disney trips, another for Royal Caribbean cruises, and another for national park adventures. You can also start with a completely blank canvas. Books can be landscape, portrait, or square and there are different paper and cover finishes to choose from. Production typically takes one to two business days with four shipping options available.

Best for Complex Designs

Canva photo books.

More than just a photo book maker, Canva lets you edit your photos and share your design with a team of collaborators. 

Some templates and features are only available with a paid Canva Pro account. 

For full creative freedom, choose Canva. Decide on a landscape or square book, then choose a hard or softcover. Next, browse thousands of templates (including a category dedicated to travel) and upload images from your phone, tablet, or desktop. All templates are fully customizable, which means you can change the font, the colors, and add icons and graphics. You can also edit your photos as you go with options to crop and rotate, adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation, and enhance with different filters and frames. 

All layouts can be adjusted to suit the number of photos you want on each page. If you upgrade to Canva Pro, you can remove backgrounds with a single click (kind of like cutting and pasting elements of real photos for a traditional scrapbook.) Canva autosaves as you go and creates an editing link that you can share to ask for input from friends and family. Recycled packaging and free standard shipping round out this company’s benefits.

Best for Simple Designs

Chatbooks is affordable and easy to use with the option to subscribe for repeat orders. 

Customization options are limited.  

If your photo book goals are a little less ambitious, opt for stackable, collectible designs from Chatbooks. The company’s classic photo books offer high quality printing at a price tag that’s reasonable enough to justify regular creations (if you like, you can even sign up for a monthly subscription.) How do they do this? By keeping things simple. You won’t find fancy templates or colored backgrounds, or an endless array of customizable graphics and fonts.

Instead, upload photos from your desktop or phone. Then, decide how many you want to appear on each page. If the answer is just one, choose whether you want it to cover the full page or have a white border around it. You can leave the layout text-free or add a simple location tag and/or caption. Other design choices include the book’s size, whether it has a hard or softcover, the color of the spine, and the cover. Books are made in the U.S. and include a generous 30 pages, with the option to buy more up to a total of 366. Standard shipping is free.

Best for Fast Printing

Walmart photo.

Walmart lets you design, order, and collect your photo book in-store, all on the same day. 

Most photo books must be no more than 40 pages to be eligible for same-day pickup. 

Walmart offers a solution for anyone who’s designing a photo book on a deadline, with more than 80 layouts that can be created online and then picked up in-store on the same day. You can choose from a variety of square and rectangular sizes in several different styles including softcover, matte and glossy hardcover; layflat; and premium layflat (with extra thick pages and a matte finish). Alternatively, upgrade to a linen or leather cover, or opt for a die-cut style that showcases your favorite image through a window. 

There are many themed templates to choose from, though most of them are fairly basic (don’t expect Canva-level creative flair.) Most templates include 20 pages with the option to buy more, but be aware that there’s usually a 40-page limit if you want to pick your book up the same day. If you have a little more time to work with and want extra pages, you can also opt for home delivery with free shipping on orders over $35.

Best Coffee Table Books

Once upon photo books.

Once Upon focuses on simple layouts that can be shared with and edited by multiple people. 

Designs may be a little too basic for fans of complex templates and embellishments. 

Once Upon offers three options for simple yet visually striking coffee table books. These include large and medium hardcover photo books with a sturdy build and a title of your choice printed on the spine, and medium softcover books for a flexible, lightweight feel that’s reminiscent of a luxury magazine. Choose whether you want silk matte or glossy pages, then create your book by uploading pictures directly from your phone, tablet, or desktop. 

Layouts are simple, with no themed templates, background colors, or fancy fonts. Instead, choose the number of photos you want featured on each page and let Once Upon create a collage automatically on the white background. You can edit the order in which they appear and add simple captions or separate text pages. Want to collaborate with your co-travelers? Share the editing link or QR code to get their input. The first 20 pages are included with a maximum of 200 available. Expect delivery in six to 12 business days.

Best Board Books

Pinhole Press

From their wipeable pages to their easy-turn binding, board books from Pinhole Press are designed especially with little kids in mind. 

The number of included pages varies from one template to the next, and not all templates allow you to add more. 

If you love the idea of making a photo book for the baby or toddler in your life but want it to last more than a few hours, check out Pinhole Press. Their board books are made especially for little people with rigid, high-gloss pages that can be wiped clean of errant crumbs or juice drops. A spiral binding makes for seamless page turning, while the 5.25 x 5.25 inch size is ideal for tiny hands. We love the clear, bright photos and just-right text size. 

There are lots of different templates to choose from, including a story board book that’s perfect for commemorating baby’s first vacation. The company also offers educational templates (think ABCs, colors, emotions, count with me, and my first cookbook options). Some have space for a fixed number of pages and photos while others let you pay to add more. For slightly older kids, consider Pinhole’s Itty Bitty books (miniature sized for long journeys) or their All About books with space for 10 photos alongside fill-in prompts your child can write on.

Best Mini Books

Nations photo lab albums.

Nations Photo Lab

Buzz Books are cost-effective and require minimal storage space, making them the perfect collector’s item.

Beyond choosing which photo appears on each page, customization options are very limited. 

Nations Photo Lab offers a full range of photo book products including templates for everything from travel to weddings and boudoir photography. Depending which one you choose, you can customize the binding, cover material, page thickness, and more. We particularly like their Buzz Books for those in search of something simple. At 6 x 6 inches, they’re both small enough and affordable enough to justify purchasing one for every trip. 

There are more than 120 pre-designed, soft-touch covers to choose from (you can also create your own) but the inside of each Buzz Book is the same: 40 pages, with one photo per page. The photos are printed on professional-quality Mohawk Matte paper against a white background for full visual effect. There are multiple shipping options available, including USPS First Class which delivers in two to six business days.

Best Sustainable

Paper Culture

Paper Culture photo books are made with recycled paper and every order placed equals a tree planted.  

Shipping rates are relatively expensive. 

Paper Culture is a certified Green Business that offsets its carbon footprint and has been recognized by the EPA as a Top 10 climate leader. All photo books use 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper and with a tree planted for every order, you can feel good about your purchase on multiple levels. Books are 8 x 8 or 8 x 10 inches and you can choose a hardcover, a layflat hardcover, or a layflat with a foil-embossed Kraft cover and personalized dust jacket. 

There are multiple templates divided into categories such as travel, holiday, or wedding. Whichever you go for, you’ll be able to create an end result that’s entirely unique since all elements are customizable. Choose the layout and order of your photos, add text in different fonts and colors, and change the background color of each page. Templates include 20 pages with the possibility of purchasing more. Shipping options range from standard to next-day express.

Best Video Books

Heirloom lets you add up to one hour of video to a physical book that plays original audio with crystal clear quality. 

Video books can show vertical or horizontal footage, but not both. 

For a slightly different approach to preserving your travel memories, consider Heirloom which adds your videos to a physical book so that they can be looked at and enjoyed over and over again. Each book includes a five-inch HD screen. You can choose for yours to be oriented horizontally or vertically (more appropriate for those that typically shoot footage on their phone.) There are three options: up to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or one hour. 

Here’s how it works: purchase your video book online, then receive an email with instructions on how to add video using the online builder. Your book will then be created and mailed to you. You don’t have to limit yourself to video. The books can also display photos as a slideshow and even mix photos and videos together. Add a personal message. Then, choose from 16 premade covers or pay extra for a custom cover printed with your own design. All video books include a charger and expedited delivery is a possibility.

Tips for Choosing a Photo Book Website

Be turnaround time.

If you need your photo book in a hurry, make sure to take production and delivery times into consideration when choosing which company to use. A handful — usually more budget-friendly ones — offer same-day production and the option to collect in-store, which is ideal for last-minute gifts. Others take several days to produce your book, but then offer expedited or rushed shipping to cut delivery time down to a minimum. Others can take two or more weeks to deliver. Check product descriptions carefully, since turnaround times can differ within the same company depending on the size and complexity of the photo book you choose. 

Look closely at the templates offered

Think about your desired photo book aesthetic and then look for a company with templates to match. These can vary from the simplistic (your photos and perhaps some text on a plain white background) to the complex (different background colors and designs, optional filters and frames, the ability to create collages and add text bubbles or other graphics.) Some companies offer templates that have been pre-designed to suit a specific theme, whether that’s travel in general or a Disney trip, tropical cruise, or camping adventure. 

Prioritize ease of use

If you have a background in design or count scrapbooking among your hobbies, you may relish in the challenge of building a photo book from scratch. But if you’re pressed for time or simply don’t want to spend hours choosing which photos go where and how to make them look their best, look for a photo book maker that does the hard work for you. This can either be through an autofill service that arranges your photos on the page (usually, you can tweak this afterwards) or through a collaboration over email or live chat with one of the company’s in-house designers. The latter service often costs extra but sometimes, as with Shutterfly, is offered free of charge. 

Image quality is key

The most important thing when making a photo book is ensuring that the photos look as good as possible. This means choosing a professional, well-reviewed company that uses quality paper and printing methods. It also means submitting photos that are good quality. Most photo book companies will have guidelines for optimum image size and resolution, and others will come up with a warning message if the image you’ve selected is not of a sufficiently high quality. You can usually choose to use it anyway, but be prepared for it to look a little grainy or pixelated. Top tip: use your lowest resolution photos for the smallest spaces on collage pages. 

Yes, most photo book makers can be used on your tablet or smartphone, either via a mobile-friendly website or with a special app. Just bear in mind that complicated layouts or photo books with lots of collage pages are often much easier to view and organize on a larger screen. 

The cost of a photo book varies hugely from under $20 to over $200. The price depends on which company you use but also on the size of the photo book, how many pages you want, and the materials you choose. Most templates include some pages in their starting price (20-25 on average), with a per-page fee for longer books. Softcover books are typically the cheapest, followed by hardcover and then linen and leather options. Traditional binding is cheaper than layflat, but layflat looks much better if you’re planning on having photos extend across a double page spread. Other factors that could increase cost include custom covers, premium paper finishes, design assistance, and expedited shipping. 

You want to find a company that prints photos that look as close as possible to the original, whether it was taken on a professional DSLR camera or downloaded from Facebook or Instagram. Images shouldn’t look grainy, blurry, or over- or undersaturated. Choose a photo book maker that uses professional printers and high-quality paper, and be sure to check customer reviews for the best insight into the kind of results you can expect. Don’t forget, though, pictures can only ever look as good as they were to begin with. So choose the crispest, best resolution images you have and use a light hand when editing them for a natural look. 

Why Trust Travel + Leisure

Jessica Macdonald is a published photographer with a passion for finding new ways to preserve and display her travel photos. For this article, she drew on her own experience with photo book makers and also spent several hours researching the best options online. She compared services, prices, and reviews before choosing her category winners.

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once upon photo books reviews

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The Best Photo Book Service

A photo book shown open to a picture collage.

By Erin Roberts

We live in a digital world overflowing with images and screens. By creating a tangible photo book, you can reconnect with your images, as well as those moments in time. And photo books make sharing memories with family and friends so much easier.

After conducting more than 100 hours of research and testing (which included creating 23 photo books and consulting with a master printer on the results), we recommend Mixbook as the best online photo book service.

Everything we recommend

once upon photo books reviews

Easy-to-design photo books with vibrant colors

This service offers the best book-building experience, modern design options, color-accurate photo reproduction, great customer service, and a powerful app.

Buying Options

Budget pick.

once upon photo books reviews

Affordable photo books for gifts or small projects

If you want to print multiple copies of a photo book to give as gifts (or for projects that aren’t meant to be keepsakes), this service delivers good-enough books at an affordable price.

Creating photo albums is fun with Mixbook , which gathers images from your computer, social media profiles, online photo-storage accounts, and even your smartphone. In our testing, it offered the best book-building experience of the bunch, as well as some of the best themed layouts. Our finished album looked vibrant, with accurate colors, and had a high-quality feel.

If you just need a basic photo book, VistaPrint can get the job done at a cost significantly lower than our top pick. It offers some of the best album-creation software we tested, including a Smart Assistant option that made album design a snap. Although the cover photo wasn’t as color accurate as that of our top pick, the photos inside were almost indistinguishable, as was the paper quality.

The research

Why you should trust us, who this is for, how we picked and tested, our pick: mixbook, budget pick: vistaprint, tips for making your best photo book, the competition, frequently asked questions.

To discover which features are important in a photo book service, we’ve researched more than 50 companies and created 23 albums since the first iteration of this guide. We’ve compiled a mixture of images from high-resolution DSLR cameras and iPhones, selecting specific examples for both color and resolution testing, and used them to directly compare the image quality of different albums.

When updating this guide, we’ve consulted several experts, including Taylor McAtee, printing expert and owner of Stretch and Staple , a print shop in Seattle. We also crowdsourced input from friends who enjoy making albums with their family photos.

If you want to create an album of your digital photos, a photo book service is absolutely the way to go. Today’s digital photo books look much sleeker and more elegant than the scrapbooks of old. They’re also much easier to replace if an original gets damaged.

Digital photo books can be customized to fit any purpose, such as for a baby book, a family trip album, or even a school yearbook. They also make great gifts for grandparents and family. And if you’re a photographer, photo books are a wonderful way to curate your work in something that can be reproduced for distribution.

If you want to make a fancier book to document a special event, such as a wedding, consider upgrading to a layflat book, which has a unique type of binding that allows two-page spreads to lie completely flat, with no crease in the middle. You could also consider choosing a more luxurious cover, such as leather or crushed silk, to match the occasion.

If you have a collection of vintage photo albums or boxes of family photos sitting around, you might want to scan those photos and upgrade to a digital photo book.

A pile of four photo books, each with the same image of a couple on the cover.

In researching online photo book services, we looked for those that allow you to create a customizable book with captions and multiple photos on one page. We eliminated services that don’t let you at least arrange and reorder photos. And, on the flipside, we dismissed any that looked too technical or complex for people with no design experience.

Many photo-printing services offer frequent, deep discounts and promotions throughout the year, so it can be difficult to make an accurate pricing comparison—but holidays and annual shopping events are a great time to finally click the albums you have waiting in your cart. Otherwise, we can’t say for sure whether one service will be cheaper than another at any given time, so we prioritized services that offered basic, 20-page, approximately 8-by-11-inch books for under $50.

In general, these are the key features we considered:

  • Customization options: The best photo book services strike a fine balance between offering a creative, diverse range of editing options and overwhelming people with a dizzying range. The service should work for photo junkies and for people who just want to quickly make a wedding album.
  • Intuitive photo book software: The editing tools should be easy to grasp, even at an amateur level. Ideally, they should include all of the basics, such as a black-and-white filter, shadows, brightness, contrast, and saturation, plus the ability to rotate, resize, and reorder images.
  • Elegant, ready-made layouts: You should be able to choose from a wide range of photo layouts that can suit any number of photos in a variety of orientations. You should never feel the need to create your own design.
  • Flexibility in design: For more-ambitious people, a good photo book service allows you to design a layout from scratch.
  • Print quality that’s true to the source files: The photo book shouldn’t make your high-resolution photos look blurry, grainy, or oversaturated. It should capture the resolution and colors as accurately as possible, even if you mostly use photos from Instagram.
  • Variety of cover and binding options: The cover is the first thing people see when they look at a photo book. We preferred services with a range of options that look nice and can withstand years of handling.
  • High-quality paper choices: We looked for paper that is durable, of high quality, and resistant to tearing. Photo book services should offer a variety of paper types, such as gloss, semigloss, and pearlescent.
  • Easy to reprint and revisit: Unlike traditional, scrapbook-like photo albums, digital photo books can be reproduced at any time. Therefore, the service you use should save your photos, layouts, and projects so you can return to print or edit them whenever you want.
  • Flexible upload options: A good service should at least be able to receive photos from your computer, as well as from online platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
  • Layflat spreads: These spreads allow you to depict one picture across two pages without the center crease of a traditional bound book. Though this sounds fancy, it’s a common offering from photo book services and a worthwhile upgrade in photography or wedding books. We didn’t make this option a requirement, but we gave extra points if a service offered it.

A printing expert examining the quality of the photo books we had made for testing.

To test these services, we made 20-page photo books using DSLR shots taken by professional photographers, as well as iPhone snaps taken during my honeymoon trip to Tahiti. We specifically selected images that can be harder to print to see how each service performed when tasked with HDR (high dynamic range) images, tricky colors, black-and-white photos, and even dimly lit iPhone snapshots.

We laid out each book in the same order, using the service’s most basic, white template. We also used each service’s default font for captions, sticking with whichever typeface and size were assigned to the theme we chose. All of the companies allow you to change fonts, but that can be a hassle, and we decided the default font would look nice enough. For each book, we also used the default cover and paper options (which are the cheapest or second-cheapest available).

Over the years and several rounds of testing, we’ve asked printing expert Taylor McAtee to compare and contrast print and page quality. We’ve asked friends who enjoy making family photo albums to examine the photo books, and they’ve provided helpful, real-world observations, such as which paper finish might hold up best in the grubby hands of a 5-year-old.

Our best photo book pick, the Mixbook, shown with a picture of a couple on the cover.

Mixbook has easy-to-use and intuitive design software, vibrant and accurate colors, and modern layouts that make it our pick for the best photo book service for most people. It is one of the few services that offers a dedicated mobile app in case you prefer designing from your phone, and you can invite collaborators to help with or review a project before it goes to print.

Versatile image-uploading options makes it easy to find the photos you want. If most of your iPhone photos end up trapped inside your phone (like ours do), you’ll likely find that adding mobile images directly to Mixbook makes the design process much more efficient.

Using a QR code on your computer screen, Mixbook guides you in selecting and loading pictures from your phone. After you refresh your screen, voilà—your iPhone snaps are now available for you to add to your current project. You can also upload directly from a computer, your social media (Facebook and Instagram), and photo storage accounts (Google and SmugMug).

Its book-building software is the easiest to use. The Auto-Create option feels like magic: after you’ve uploaded your images, a single click of a button builds your book using “only the best images.” It’s an efficient way to get a solid first draft, and it’s easy to customize from that point.

Unlike some of its competitors, Mixbook offers a swap button to swiftly replace one image for another. You can quickly change layouts too: The software displays recommended layouts using your images and may be filtered by number of images per design.

It offers helpful tips to make sure you never feel lost. Mixbook’s guidance boxes were the most helpful resource of any service we tested. These pop-ups, which you can close as needed, provide tips as you start to build a book.

Its photo-editing tools are simple and efficient. These include the same basic options offered by most other services: brightness, saturation, contrast, and opacity. You can crop and zoom in and out of photos easily, though the free-rotation tool was tricky (to fix your horizon lines, you have to click and hold down the arrow in the circle).

Six filters can give your printed photos an Instagram feel; you can also play with shadows and borders or even make a heart-shaped image. Text was easy to insert, and Mixbook offers a plethora of font choices and controls.

A Mixbook photo book shown open to a picture collage.

Thoughtful little touches make a big difference. When you’re pulling from an available image library in Mixbook, you simply have to hover over a photo to make it bigger. We really liked this feature, since it can be tough to choose your next image based on a tiny thumbnail. (When we used other services, we sometimes had to add the actual photo just to determine if it was the one we’d meant to include in the first place.)

It offers more templates than the competition. Each well-designed template can be kept as is or modified.

Mixbook offers 138 “everyday” album templates, from the simple Minimal White design (which we chose) to birthday, wedding, and seasonal themes. Plus, the themed layouts show actual photo examples, a truly useful feature when envisioning what you’ll create.

Photo reproductions are vibrant and color-accurate. As in previous testing, our 20-page, 11-by-8.5-inch Mixbook photo book was one of the most vibrant among all of the books we created, and the colors most-closely matched those in our original photographs.

Mixbook did a good job of correcting a tricky photo of me about to board a helicopter for the first time: I’m a too-dark, shadowy subject in front of the sunny landing platform where a helicopter and pilot wait. Mixbook struck a better balance of the contrast, picking up more detail in my face while retaining the vibrant background colors.

We reached out to Mixbook to ask about its color-correction practices. CEO and co-founder Andrew Laffoon confirmed that Mixbook automatically applies “very minimal” autocorrection, and that the feature can’t be turned off.

Mixbook uses high-quality paper. Of the six books we created in our most recent round of testing, Mixbook’s simplest album option came with the second-thickest pages—akin to the pages of a coffee-table book. The pages felt durable enough to stand up to the grubby paws of a small child, and they had enough sheen that we also thought they could endure a small mess and be wiped clean.

Its pricing is on a par with that of competitors. Mixbook albums cost about as much as or slightly more than other comparable albums in this category. But it’s always worth seeking out a discount, since the service usually offers an active 50%-off coupon .

If you don’t see a coupon at checkout, you can always make the book and then wait to purchase it until you can get a discount. This is especially handy if you opt for upgrades, like layflat pages, which can nearly double the price of an album.

Mixbook doesn’t spam you with email ads. Unlike Snapfish , which took our order as an invitation to send promotional emails daily, Mixbook didn’t automatically inundate our inboxes with promos once we created an account. We actually had to go into account settings to sign up for Mixbook’s email offers (and you can unsubscribe just as easily).

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Other photo book services offer more photo editing tools. We worked with Mixbook’s available brightness, saturation, and contrast sliders to boost a cloudy day photo. Though the results looked a bit better on screen, the printed version still appeared dark. Of course, you could use an external image-editing program, but we often found we needed to make another small tweak or two once we placed images on the page; editing that image elsewhere and then reimporting it to use in our design felt like a time-consuming chore. A more robust editing suite within Mixbook’s interface would mean we could make any necessary edits seamlessly while creating a photo book.

Two people on a beach, on the cover of a VistaPrint photo book.

For a basic photo book at a lower price than our top pick, VistaPrint gets the job done, even if the cover photo was a little oversaturated and the design process wasn’t quite as smooth.

It lacks our top pick’s cute design templates. When you start creating your VistaPrint photo book, you can only select from seven size options, and it doesn’t have any design templates to start from. You can add some 1990s clip art or masks within the editor, but that’s not nearly as attractive or easy as selecting from one of the hundreds of templates Mixbook offers.

Adding photos is easy, yet limited. Unlike our top pick, VistaPrint only allows uploads from your computer and doesn’t allow for HEIC files, which is how iPhones and iPads save images by default.

You can change your device’s camera settings to shoot JPEG, and it’s not difficult to convert HEIC files to JPEG after the fact, but it is one more hurdle that can get in the way when you’re itching to start designing. You could opt to create a book via VistaPrint’s mobile site, which works fine with HEIC files, but that platform isn’t as easy to use as the desktop site.

A VistaPrint photo book shown open to a picture collages.

Photo-editing tools are few, but print quality was nearly perfect. VistaPrint’s editor offers even fewer photo-editing tools than our top pick, and it doesn’t offer a way to fix an imperfect horizon line—a photographer’s pet peeve. By default, VistaPrint will “enhance” all photos automatically; a pop-up window bears this warning as you begin to create your photo book.

We left the auto-enhancement option on, and the results were as good as our top pick, with accurate color reproduction and impressive corrections on our tricky test images. Only the cover image appeared oversaturated, and VistaPrint had two tries at this, since the first copy arrived with a slight wrinkle in the corner of the cover.

Customer service is responsive, too. VistaPrint was responsive to our complaint; it requested images of the damage and then sent us a new copy for free. The new book arrived in just a few days. The cover was unwrinkled but still a bit oversaturated, which made skin tones appear too pink.

It’s a great book and good value. If you just need a simple book, perhaps at a price that makes multiple copies possible, VistaPrint is a solid option. The final result was a very close second to our top pick in terms of color accuracy and page quality, with just a few flaws noticed during the creation process and a not-quite color-accurate cover.

Printing expert Taylor McAtee said you should trust the experts at whichever photo book service you choose. “Just pick the photos you like,” McAtee said, explaining that because your home computer likely doesn’t have a color-calibrated monitor, the on-screen edits you make could look much different when printed.

He also offered two additional tips for selecting photos for a printed book: Avoid washed-out, intentionally very bright (aka high-key) images, which often don’t look as good in print as they might on a glowing digital screen. And don’t apply Instagram filters or use other editing apps that may compress your iPhone files, since doing so can result in a low-resolution photo when it’s printed.

Snapfish was about the same price as our top pick but, as in past years, delivered a book with dull and muted photos and some of the thinnest pages we saw in testing. Snapfish also sent us the most promotional emails following our order—at an annoying pace of about one every other day.

The photo book we built with Pikto looked a lot like the results from our budget pick, VistaPrint, but the service cost a bit more, and its software was clunkier, with no swap button. It was also difficult to connect with its customer service: No one ever answered our calls during business hours, no chat help was available, and the back-and-forth email assistance we did receive was slow.

Walmart Photo is a past budget pick, but the album we created this year wasn’t as good as in previous years. The cover image was oversaturated, making skin tones appear pink and not true to life. Color accuracy was also off throughout the thin pages, appearing dull compared with the competition.

Though Shutterfly was previously a top pick, the last time we physically tested the service, its image quality was a letdown. We took a fresh look for this update but found for its price, about $10 more than our top pick, other photo book services offer better editing tools.

Though we love the minimalist look of Artifact Uprising ’s designs, the books we ordered were both oversaturated. We tested the Hardcover Photo Book and the Photo-Wrapped Hardcover Book, the two most-expensive options we tested. In each book our photos were oversaturated, but especially so for the Photo-Wrapped Hardcover Book. This made my skin look especially reddish-pink in many photos, as though I had a significant sunburn throughout my trip (I didn’t). While turning up the vibrancy can make an image really pop, the downside can be inaccurate skin tones.

Google Photo’s photo books are the path of least resistance for people who already use Google Photos. Although it’s a fast and brainless solution, the automated process allows for little control or creativity. Photos are autofilled in chronological order, and it’s a hassle to move images around if you’d like a different format. If all of your photos aren’t already stored with Google, that adds another step in the process. Layout and design options are limited, and it doesn’t have image-editing tools.

We also checked out Amazon Photos . As with the Google option, creation is a breeze as long as you’re already using it to store your photos. The online software allows for slightly more control over image placement, but it doesn’t have image-editing tools or enough design options overall.

Apple also allows you to create a photo book right from Photos, using the Motif app. But just like the Google Photo and Amazon Photo, this option is very specific to the platform, and you have very little control over design or photo editing.

We made two books with Blurb —one with its web-based software, Bookify, and another with its downloadable software, BookWright.

We were disappointed with the options available in Bookify; it had very few layouts, and they had too much white space for our liking. We also experienced major glitches with captions.

BookWright, meanwhile, offers a huge range of design options, including layouts and fonts, with very little glitching. It reminded us a great deal of Photoshop or InDesign, so if you’ve used those programs before, you may be familiar with the added controls. We also liked that Blurb allows you to upload a PDF to create your book, and that it offers plug-ins for Adobe InDesign and Lightroom. BookWright could be a good choice for amateur photographers or anyone looking to print a series of books.

Nations Photo Lab , our pick for the best online photo printing service , continues to disappoint us with photo book software that offers almost no photo editing and only basic layouts, at a more expensive price than our top pick.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

Where can I get a same-day photo book?

Our previous budget pick, Walmart Photo , offers same-day pickup. And the site, which has some of the best photo-editing tools available, makes designing and customizing an album easy. Other services, like CVS and Walgreens , offer same-day pickup, but we haven’t tested them.

Which photo book services offer apps?

Several photo book services have a mobile app. Our top pick, Mixbook , has an app for iPhone owners . Though our budget pick, VistaPrint, doesn’t offer a dedicated app, the mobile version of the website is okay.

Which service has the best-quality photo books?

Among the 17 books we tested, Mixbook had some of the most vibrant color pages, and the colors most closely matched the colors in our original photographs. Mixbook also had more user-friendly software than most of the other services we looked at.

Meet your guide

once upon photo books reviews

Erin Roberts

Erin Roberts is a freelance writer reporting on cameras and camera accessories at Wirecutter. She started her career as a photojournalist working in newspapers—shooting film—and was the mobile-imaging editor at DPReview. She is also a professional photographer who has made her living photographing everything from rock stars to humpback whales.

Further reading

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The Best Instant Camera

by Arriana Vasquez and Erin Roberts

The best instant camera for taking high-quality, retro-cool photos is the Fujifilm Instax Square SQ40 .

The DJI Mini 3 hovering above a grassy field.

The 16 Best Tech Gifts for Any Gadget Lover

by Samantha Schoech

Looking for gifts for a tech-obsessed loved one? We have Wirecutter-tested picks, including headphones, speakers, camera tripods, and more.

A collection of varied photo prints from our testing for best online photo printing service, displayed on top of a wooden surface.

The Best Online Photo Printing Service

by Phil Ryan

We’ve tested dozens of online photo printing services, and we’ve consistently found that Nations Photo Lab is the best place to get prints.

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The 19 Best Gifts for Photographers

by Arriana Vasquez and Phil Ryan

Photographers can be picky about gear—which is why selecting a gift for a shutterbug can be a sticky wicket. Here are stellar finds endorsed by our staff photographers and reporting experts.

Once Upon | Photobook Creator Reviews

Once Upon | Photobook Creator Reviews

About: Over 3 000 000 photo fans can’t be wrong – make fantastic photo books easily, right from your phone with Once Upon. Create several books simultaneously, and work on them when it suits you.

  Table of Contents :

  • User Reviews (22)
  • Is it Legit?
  • Is it Safe?
  • Not working
  • Report Issue
  • Contact Support

About Once Upon Photobook Creator

What is Once Upon Photobook Creator?

Once Upon is a mobile app that allows users to create photo books easily from their phone. With over 3 million users, the app offers several pre-designed layout alternatives, collaborative albums, and the ability to select from three alternative formats. Users can choose to go with semi-gloss or a silk matte paper, and prices start from $25. The app also offers automatic iCloud sync and storage, and the photo books are printed in several countries.

once upon photo books reviews

- Collaborative albums – invite as many friends as you like

- Shuffle function to highlight your favourite layout

- Captions let you say a little something about every memory

- Drag-and-drop to arrange your pages in no time

- Copy spreads between your albums to keep multiple versions simple

- Easy image selection with dates sorted by month

- Google Photos connection and automatic iCloud sync

- Storage – we back your images and photo books up to our servers

- Scandinavian design

- Our photo books are printed in the USA, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.

Overall User Satisfaction Rating

Key benefits of once upon photobook creator.

- Perfect for me as I have no social media accounts

- Easy and affordable

- Can send albums to people without internet

- Notified me of low quality pictures

- Easy to navigate

- Good quality of book

22 Once Upon Photobook Creator Reviews

Easier than i expected.

So glad I saw the hilarious ads for OnceUponPhotobookCreator because it is perfect for me. I have no social media accounts so I don’t share pictures online but I have tons of pictures on my phone. Now I have something to do with all my photos that is easy and affordable. Also my MIL doesn’t have internet so now we can send her these albums to keep. So much easier than printing and mailing pictures!

By nickky.Jay

I tried a different app to make my photo book but they wouldn’t do it cause some my pictures were taken with an older phone camera (I knew they’d be blurry but wanted them anyway) OnceUponPhotobookCreator notified me my pictures were low Quality but still printing them any way which makes me so happy

Easy to use!

I’ve tried other sites that were too difficult to navigate that I never finished making a book. Once upon a time makes it simple to add your photos and make a comment on each picture.

By Slgasser

Memory keeper must

I’ve been wanting to make yearly family photo books for years- and just caught up on 5 years worth in just a couple of days. If you have your photos saved to Apple photos, making photo books is a breeze!

By ashleynotI

Beautiful, Excellent Quality

I really love my Once Upon books. I love that I can create from my phone which makes it easy to go in and edit as need be. I also love the feature to add text and anecdotes. Super happy and will use this service as my daughter grows for sure!

By jackielane1234

Beautiful books but lacking a little

I ordered a book and absolutely love the quality but wish it could’ve been more customizable. For example, I would appreciate if I could add a text box wherever I please. Currently the only option for text is for it to take up a whole page. Great app concept but need more of these customizable features.

By Tesmomma

great app and service

Once Upon is a great photo app- easy to use. Customer service had a quick response time and was specific on how to resolve my checking out issue. Thank you so much Once Upon creators. Excited to see what the album will look like!

By aliciaeschemann

Amazing photo album

I’m absolutely in love with the easy handling in OnceUponPhotobookCreator . I actually think it’s a nice way to create a photo book on your phone. You can do it wherever you are and personalize it the way you want it to. It’s a really classic and beautiful design. I would definitely recommend it.

By 1132-bula

Love your books

OnceUponPhotobookCreator is so easy to use. Creates memories in no time. Love the fact that I can use photos directly from phone. Quality is great and comparable if not better to the other companies!

By Dulcisgrl

One thing I love about OnceUponPhotobookCreator is that is organizes your pictures by months and shows you which ones you’ve already selected! So handy when creating your book.

By me name sam

Simple and easy

OnceUponPhotobookCreator was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I just wanted to make a simple picture book. Nothing fancy. This was extremely user friendly. Will definitely recommend!

By Grand in Georgia

Easy Publishing!

What an easy way to publish a book from your own photos! My 1 year old granddaughter loves books, so what greater gift than one about her 1st birthday celebrations! OnceUponPhotobookCreator makes it easy and fun to make.

Quick and easy but

Just wish you’re able to add text to photos and not always just on one side of the page

By birchbeat

Easy to use and links to Google photos

Super easy to use and save as you work through editing. I liked that it linked to Google Photos

Missing tool

There is one simple missing tool which is being able to crop the photos. Also it would be useful to put a text under a photo instead of using a whole page for a small text

By jirakattack

Great picture books!

Found OnceUponPhotobookCreator easy to use and the quality of the product is really nice for the price.

By argithreee

EASY TO USE

really easy to navigate OnceUponPhotobookCreator. Very user friendly unlike some competitors I’ve tried. Excited to see how my book turns out!

By brittanymrose

Love this app

Extremely user friendly and convenient. Made a beautiful book in an hour of my so ‘s first year.

By Mrs.VolkStar

Great experience

So easy to upload photos, complete, and order. Highly recommend ✨

By Bulldogs310!

You should have the option on the left page on how the wording is laid out. Right justification, left or center. Also the font size and type of font.

By Diamondtrim

such a cool app - fantastic - thank you so much for this great app - easy to do - ! such a joy ..

By a.wild.auj

For those of us who wish to remember

OnceUponPhotobookCreator took all the stress out of making a photo book. I made a 26 page book about my experience living vanlife for a season. The hardest and most time consuming part was choosing the photos I wanted to use but once I put them all on an album on my phone, OnceUponPhotobookCreator would search through that specific album, organizing it by the date each photo was taken. From there you choose the photos you want for each page spread and have the option of adding a title or text to the pages. OnceUponPhotobookCreator has preselected layouts and after you click through them you also have the ability to rearrange the photos to fit the layout you like. Every thing looks sleek, clean, and like the inside of a kinfolk or other major print publication. Incredibly professional and stylish. I’m recommending this to everybody who goes on a trip, or has an experience they want to hold immortal on the pages of a book.

Saffron Craig   2 years ago

I don’t want to give you my credit card details. I’d like to use PayPal please?

Julie Harper   2 years ago

I placed my order on Feb 4th so I would have spare time before the 14th for things going wrong. For personal reasons this was extremely important that this year’s valentines be extra special & now it’s ruined

Is Once Upon Photobook Creator Safe?

Yes. Once Upon | Photobook Creator is very safe to use. This is based on our NLP (Natural language processing) analysis of over 3,219 User Reviews sourced from the Appstore and the appstore cumulative rating of 4.9/5 . Justuseapp Safety Score for Once Upon Photobook Creator Is 59.5/100.

Is Once Upon Photobook Creator Legit?

Yes. Once Upon | Photobook Creator is a totally legit app. This conclusion was arrived at by running over 3,219 Once Upon | Photobook Creator User Reviews through our NLP machine learning process to determine if users believe the app is legitimate or not. Based on this, Justuseapp Legitimacy Score for Once Upon Photobook Creator Is 100/100. .

Is Once Upon | Photobook Creator not working?

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New feature – a game changer for photo books image

New feature – a game changer for photo books

1 January 1970

Autofill. Doesn’t that just have a good ring to it? Autofill is what we’re calling our brand-new feature that allows you to upload your images to your photo book in one go. Not sure what we mean? Alright, let us explain.

When you start making a photo book, simply go through your camera roll (or wherever your favorite images are stored) and choose up to 594 images all at once. Now, all you have to do is sit back while the app fills up your spreads. And if you want to add a personal touch to your album, write some well-chosen words to describe your images, and there you have it – a completed photo book.

Autofill still works for the photo books that you’re already working on, of course. Just use the feature to upload all the images you can fit on the remaining spreads. Simple as that!

This makes it easier to prepare and organize images in advance. You could arrange them in folders and choose which folder to upload images from.

Naturally, this makes you want to try out the new feature. Right?

once upon photo books reviews

Let Once Upon do all the work for you!

Just one last step left! With Once Upon close to hand it is easier and more fun than ever to make photo books with all the photos in your phone! Yup, it's true! Making photo books can be fun. Give us a whirl, we promise, you'll love it!

We wish we could speak every language in the world by heart, but unfortunately we can’t. So, our blog is only translated to English, Swedish, Dutch and German. For now. Pick the language you prefer below. Happy story reading!

ps. After you pick a language our entire website will be translated to that language, but you can easily change it back when you’re done reading our stories – you’ll find the language selector at the bottom of the page.

The best photo books in 2024: Mixbook, Shutterfly, Printique, Snapfish and more tested

What service should you use to make the best photo books and photo albums? We reviewed and compared five of the most popular services to find out

The quick list

Best overall, best image quality, other services we tested, how we test photo book services, when is the best time to buy a photo book.

  • How to choose

Mixbook photo book, photo cards and photo calendars

1. Best overall 2. Best image quality 3. Best value 4. Other services we tested 5. How we test 6. Photo book test scores 7. The best time to buy a photo book 8. How to choose

Whatever the occasion, a personalized photo book always makes a great gift. But where do you begin if you want to turn your photos of a summer trip to Spain or a surprise birthday weekend in the mountains into a beautiful present?

We’ve been testing the best photo book services for more than five years by doing what you would do: creating a photo book. In the process, we looked at which service was the easiest to use, which offered the most options for things like clip art and binding, which had the best image quality, and which offered the best value. 

This year, we tested Mixbook, Printique, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Vistaprint. We've also included shipping information where available, as photo books take time to make — and will cost more the longer you wait to order. 

And be sure to check out our picks for the best photo calendars , and best photo cards , and discover 9 tips to make the best holiday cards .

Mixbook logo

Great features, excellent image quality, the easiest-to-use software, and even online chat support make this our top pick overall.

Read more below .

Black Friday photo book deals

If image quality is your number-one criteria when choosing the best photo book service, go with Printique, which also has powerful design software.

Read more below.  

The Vistaprint logo

While not the flashiest of services, Vistaprint had good-enough quality and affordable prices to make this a solid value pick among photo books.

Read more below.

The best photo book services

Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate.

Mixbook photo book, photo cards and photo calendars

Our expert review:

Specifications

Reasons to buy, reasons to avoid.

Mixbook was the best service overall for making photo books of the five we tested. Its combination of ease of use, top-notch image quality and good value should make it appealing to a broad range of users. Newbies will love Mixbook’s fun and easy-to-use software while more advanced users will appreciate the wide range of customization options to help you get creative. And the image quality of our 20-page, hardcover book came in a close second to Printique.

If you’re intimidated about designing a photo book, Mixbook takes out the stress with clear and fun-to-use software that helps make the process a breeze. At the same time, there are hundreds upon hundreds of ways to customize your book, including 644 design templates alone, if you want to take a deeper dive. Mixbook had among the best-looking and most user-friendly project editing software of the services we reviewed, matched only by Snapfish . The interface offers a myriad of options but isn’t cluttered and optimizes the space by providing a roomy preview of your project.

In terms of image quality, our finished book from Mixbook tied Printique for the best cover while coming in second place for its interior pages. For the photo books we created during testing, we used an image of a waterfall we shot at Yellowstone National Park. The photo was captured at sunset and Mixbook did a great job of reproducing detail in both the brighter light at the top of the waterfall and the shadow areas in the valley below. On the inside pages, Mixbook's default Everyday Semi-Gloss finish produced solid, pleasing contrast. Both light and dark skintones in our portraits were rendered true-to-life.

Other things we liked about Mixbook are its well-designed mobile app that lets you manage your projects on the site or create products from the photos on your phone. And finally, Mixbook’s handy 24/7 chat support is built right into the design interface, so it’s always available if you get stuck while making a book.

If you order a photo book from Mixbook, be sure to check out its shipping information and deadlines .

Read our full Mixbook review . 

Printique screenshots

2. Printique

If image quality is your main concern for photo books, Printique is the service for you. While some competing companies have caught up in other ways, Printique still makes the best-looking books around. Their overall stature, however, has slipped a bit, dropping them to second place behind Mixbook after being ranked first for books in years past. What’s changed? Printique’s software feels dated now and is a challenge to use, which could turn off less experienced users. Printique’s photo books are also significantly more expensive than the competition.

For serious photographers (including pros), though, the trade-offs may be worth it. The most distinctive thing about Printique’s books are their very thick, rigid pages, which are similar to what you’d find in a professional wedding photo album. Similarly, even the entry-level books come with a layflat binding that prevents a furrow in the seam between pages, making this design perfect for images that span spreads. The pages display really well with excellent color, skin tone, contrast and sharpness/detail. We also liked the results of a few black-and-white photos we included in our book, which looked dramatic without losing detail.

While Printique’s software offers the most control of the services we tested, we feel it’s better suited to the advanced user than newbies. Seasoned designers will appreciate the variety of rulers, gridlines, submenus, and toolbars offered in Printique’s feature-rich interface, but beginners might be intimidated. 

Another barrier for entry is price. Printique doesn’t really have an “entry-level” book that’s comparable to the other services since it only offers the premium layflat binding option with lavish, thick pages, which cost more. This level of quality doesn’t come cheap.

When ordering a photo book, be sure to check out Printique's shipping information and deadlines , so you know how long to expect before it arrives.

Read our full Printique review .

Vistaprint

3. Vistaprint

If you think Vistaprint is only adept at making business cards and other marketing materials, think again. The company has expanded in recent years to include a wide range of personal print-on-demand services including photo books. While it’s difficult to find the book-making option on Vistaprint’s vast website, once you do, we think you’ll be pleased with the process and the results, as we were. Plus, the prices can’t be beat, making it the best value of all the services for books.

For testing purposes, we made hardcover books with all the services in approximately the 11 x 8.5-inch, landscape format since we felt that size would appeal to most users. At $30, Vistaprint’s book was the cheapest of the five companies; $5 less than Shutterfly, which was the second cheapest, and a whopping $45 less than Printique, which was the most expensive. As an added bonus, Vistaprint’s entry-level books come standard at 24 pages, while all the competition’s books start at 20 pages.

Given the affordable price, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of our photo books from Vistaprint. Our wraparound matte cover shot of a waterfall had rich detail even in the highlight and shadow areas, showing good dynamic range. The white endpapers for the front and rear inside covers have a classy look and feel as does the well stitched binding. The image quality of the interior pages was inconsistent though, with some of our landscape and cityscape images looking vibrant and crisp, while portraits were flat and overexposed at times.

Vistaprint’s software isn’t snazzy, but it gets the job done. It may look basic and a bit dated but unlike Printique’s complicated and outmoded interface, Vistaprint’s rudimentary software provides a relatively stress-free experience for making photo books. Just don’t expect anything fancy or a vast assortment of editing tools and you won’t be disappointed.  

Read our full Vistaprint review .

Shutterfly photo books, calendars and photo cards

4. Shutterfly

Shutterfly is an easy to use and reliable service that does a lot of things right. In particular, the paper quality was great overall, and it did a decent job with its photo printing. Mixbook remains the best photo book service overall for its higher quality and better software, but if you want a relatively stress-free experience in creating solid if not spectacular books from a seasoned brand, Shutterfly is the one for you. 

We thought Shutterfly’s software offered a good compromise between providing full control over a project and not overloading you with too much information. If you get stuck while making a product, just click the question mark icon in the lower left to bring up the help overlay. The only downside is we found the software somewhat slow to use; in particular, there was a noticeable lag of a few seconds before images displayed in a layout.

Despite its robust and intuitive software, the resulting photo books were a mixed bag. While the page quality was the best of all the photo books we reviewed, the color was just ok, with some pale skin tones in portraits getting washed out while darker skin appeared oversaturated with a loss of detail.

The default glossy hardcover was quite eye-catching though, and the color of our waterfall shot looked natural with ample detail. But the shiny cover surface is prone to glare. Inside, the pages have a good weight and the smooth matte finish produced minimal reflection. Some brighter images, however, appeared slightly washed out in print. We also weren’t so keen on the binding, which felt flimsy, and cut off the edges of the images in the center crease. So, while Shutterfly did a good job overall, there are enough misses to fall short of the top tier of Printique and Mixbook.

Before ordering, be sure to check out Shutterfly's shipping guidelines .

Read our full Shutterfly review .

Snapfish review

5. Snapfish

With how easy and user-friendly Snapfish’s software was to use, we really wanted to like this service more than we did. The process of creating photo books, calendars, and cards with Snapfish was so pleasant, we expected the finished products to be equally satisfying. Unfortunately, its photo book came in last among the services we tested.

The bright glossy hardcover of our book didn’t look bad from a distance, but when inspected closer it lacked detail in the flowing waterfall shot. Not awful but not great either. The print quality of the inside pages is where Snapfish really stumbles. The floppy pages in our standard 8 x 11-inch book were the thinnest of all we created from the various companies. On the other hand, while the stitched perfect binding of the book looked cheap, the crease between pages cut off only a small portion of the images. Comparatively, most of the other books in our testing obscured noticeable portions of photos in the binding.     

We wish all of the photo printing brands would emulate Snapfish’s snazzy software. It’s not only simple to use and logically laid out, it turns the process of creating a photo book into a pleasure rather than like pulling teeth. When creating a book, you can scroll through an authentic looking visual representation of the entire book to see all of the pages more easily. Snapfish’s book builder also had the fastest load times of the various companies we tested, with virtually no lag when dragging and dropping images or scrolling through layouts. 

In the end, Snapfish is something of a conundrum. While we would recommend it for anyone who might be intimidated by the process of creating products, those with more discerning image quality taste for books should look elsewhere.

Read our full Snapfish review .

For testing purposes, we created similar custom-designed books from the five services in our evaluation, Mixbook, Printique, Shutterfly, Snapfish and Vistaprint, which we deemed to be the top companies on the market. We made 20 to 24-page hardcover books with all the services in approximately the 11 x 8.5-inch, landscape format since we felt that size would appeal to most users. The only major difference in the five books was the one created with Printique, which only offers a premium layflat binding and professional-quality, thick pages, even as an entry-level option. 

While creating our books, we picked layouts and designs that were similar across the five services as well. For photos, I used my own portraits, landscapes, and cityscapes, which were shot in both studio and natural light. For portraits, the subjects encompassed a variety of skin tones. The three main factors the services were judged on were software, image quality, and value. For the book-making software, we considered both the levels of customization offered and the ease-of-use. 

For image quality, we compared photos across the selection of books, as well as against the original digital images displayed on a MacBook Air retina display. Criteria for judging included cover quality, paper quality, color, skin tones, contrast, and sharpness/detail. For value, we took into account both the price of the photo books and the level of quality of the finished product. So, for instance, a good quality book that cost a low price would get a higher value score than a poor quality book at a similar price. The same value scale was used for more expensive books in our testing.

This year, we evaluated Mixbook, Shutterfly, Printique, Vistaprint, and Snapfish. However, in years past, we've also tested a number of other services, none of whom made it into our top tier. If you'd like to read those older reviews, they're listed below. Just bear in mind that the quality of some of these services may have changed since we last reviewed them.

  Motif review | Artifact Uprising review | Amazon Prints review | Mpix review | Picaboo review | Blurb Bookify review | CVS Photo review | Walmart Photos review | Mimeo review

Procrastination is a natural human instinct, but it will cost you when it comes to photo books. In particular, if the book is a gift for the holidays or if you just want it quickly for yourself, you’re going to be paying more for rush delivery services, which can increase the cost greatly. And in our experience, fast delivery is the one thing that is seldom discounted by book companies. 

So, try to order you books as early as possible. Not only does it save you time, it gives you the chance to look over the book and order a reprint in case there are any errors. Another reason to order as early as possible is that many of the best photo book services offer big discounts throughout the year — up to 50% off in some cases, or with other extras thrown in. 

How to choose the best photo book service for you

Image quality The most important factor for most people is that their book should look good. But what does this mean exactly? In simple terms, it means the quality of the photos should be great — skin tones should be accurate, lighting should be correct, and details should be crisp. In the best photo books, you should have good contrast, deep blacks, and an overall evenness in color gradation. 

Book construction A photo book should also be built well. You shouldn't see pages coming free from the binding, the paper itself should have a substantial weight and feel, and images and text should be aligned properly.

Book-creation software If a company has poor software, you’re likely to either not be able to create the photo book you want or grow frustrated with the process and give up. While ease-of-use is a key factor, customization is also important too and our favorite brands offered a good combination of both with their software. You should be able to fully edit the book templates, easily find background art and more, and make fine adjustments to your photos, too.

Cost Price is also an important factor. With the exception of the most and least expensive options, you won't find too much variation between photo book printing services. However, some services offer options like better paper, different-size books, and things like lay-flat binding, which means you can open the book flat on a table, and not worry about breaking the spine.

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Dan Havlik

Dan Havlik has worked in the photo industry for over decades and is currently editor-in chief of Wild Eye ( www.wildeyemagazine.com ), a new magazine devoted to the celebration of nature, wildlife, and underwater photography. He was previously the editor-in-chief of Outdoor Photographer and Shutterbug magazines. He has been an editor and writer for a variety of other publications and websites including Photo District News (PDN), Rangefinder, Wired, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Consumer Reports, Maxim, Men’s Journal, Imaging Resource, and LAPTOP. Dan is also an avid runner with three marathons under his belt and has written fitness reviews, including guides to the best running shoes and GPS watches, for Business Insider.

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Reviews 4.5.

68,865 total

Most relevant

I had a discrepancy on one of my orders…

I had a discrepancy on one of my orders and I felt it was do to the quality control division on their part but it might have been I didn’t understand their concept on their program. I was going by the grid that they provided on the app. All in all they made provision on reordering the order again. I truly believe they have one of the better programs to do photos! I so hope they come up with a program for the PC I am truly satisfied with how they handled my situation while we are going through a tragedy in our family Thank you Popsa

Date of experience : May 11, 2024

Reply from Popsa

Thank you for the review ✨ We are thrilled to hear our customer service team were able to efficiently and effectively help you fix your order ☺️ We are pleased to be able to bring you joy in your time of need - Harvey

What a beautiful way to quickly save memories

The beautiful options and ease of the program made it easy to choose, edit, and create a beautiful book. It seemed to automatically almost put things in order. dragging and dropping was so nice. So looking forward to the end product and unlike other projects in the past, it didn’t take me hours and hours to do.

Date of experience : May 08, 2024

Thank you for the review 😇 We are thrilled to hear you found it quick and easy to create and edit your photo book using the app 🧞‍♂️We hope to hear from you again - Harvey

Easy process to use

Easy process to use. Looks great idea instead of packets of photos in a drawer. If satisfied with this order then I shall be ordering many more.

Thank you for the review 😊 We are delighted to hear you found the creating and editing process easy to do 😎 We look forward to hearing from you again - Harvey

The website is very user friendly and I…

The website is very user friendly and I liked the new customer discount I received. I'm looking forward to getting my book in the mail and I'm sure I will order more in the future.

Thank you for the review 🤖 We are thrilled to hear you are pleased with the user friendliness of the ordering process and the promotions we offer 🦾 We hope to serve you again - Harvey

It’s so easy to do

It’s so easy to do. Keep a record of my family and our activities. My granddaughter loves looking though the books to spot family members.

Date of experience : May 12, 2024

Thank you for the review 🤖 We are pleased to hear you found it easy to create your photo books 🦾 We hope to serve you again - Harvey

I have used Popsa before and always…

I have used Popsa before and always been happy with the service. This time one of the pictures were cut off. I contacted customer service and they did a complete new order with proper pictures - no charge! Just excellent customer service and products!

Date of experience : May 09, 2024

Thank you for the review 🥳 We are pleased to hear that our customer service team were efficient and effective to help you fix our error 💜 We hope to serve you again soon - Harvey

Disappointed picture book

Not happy with how this book turned out . Pictures were cut off and the whole book was a horrible mess. Whoever prints these books should have noticed and notified my husband that he didn’t adjust properly and informed him how to adjust them. Bad quality control and care . Won’t be using this company again. Highly disappointed , Elizabeth Smith

Date of experience : April 13, 2024

First time user

First time user, took me while to plan the layout but now I have an idea on what to do I will get faster at it. The book is just lovely, the quality is good and I am very happy with the time frame to be delivered.

Date of experience : April 25, 2024

Thank you for the review 😄 We are thrilled to hear you are pleased with your photo book, its quality and the delivery times 🤩 We look forward to serving you again soon - Harvey

Scam Warning

I never leave reviews anywhere but this was the worst online shopping experience I’ve ever had. The app is glitchy, customer service is terrible and inconsistent with their messages. Paid shipping is a scam, product extremely late and still has not arrived. Save yourself the headache.

Date of experience : April 23, 2024

The team is amazing and the work is…

The team is amazing and the work is beautiful! I had a slight issue and they have addressed it quickly and professionally. I’d recommend them any day.

Date of experience : May 10, 2024

Thank you for the review 😃 We are delighted to hear our customer service team were able to efficiently and effectively fix your issue ☺️ We hope to serve you again soon - Harvey

Best Service

Popsa was super easy to work with and I have made several books and will continue to use their service in the future!!! Love em

Thank you for the review 🤪 We are pleased to hear you find it super easy to create your photo books 🕺 We hope to serve you again soon - Harvey

Outstanding service and products!

I recently placed an order with Popsa, and I couldn't be more impressed! 😍 Not only did my order arrive right on time, but the quality was absolutely outstanding. 🎉👏 From start to finish, the process was seamless, and the end result exceeded my expectations. 📸✨ Whether it's their commitment to timely delivery or their dedication to top-notch quality, Popsa truly knows how to exceed customer expectations. 🌟👍 Keep up the fantastic work, Popsa team!

Date of experience : April 30, 2024

Thanks for rating us, Diana 🙌 We’re delighted that you’re pleased with our service and recommend us! 😊 Keep an eye out for our regular promotions to get the best deals 😉 -Louisa

Frustrating. I spent hours creating a photo book…

I spent hours creating a photo book only for it to disappear before I could complete. When I tried a second time the same thing- the message on the page was “oops there is a problem. Try again or go to home page “ I kept trying, when I eventually went back the book was gone again. The next day I went back into the app and a version of my book was there but not the finished one. I finally got it completed.

I will be back for more, such beautiful gift ideas....

Creating anything like this takes some time & thought as you have to choose the photos and quite often there are so many to choose from which can be tough! But once you've done that bit, the process of uploading to Popsa and then creating a photobook to display your wonderful memories to treasure is really very easy & straightforward, I can't wait to see the finished photobook which we ordered for my mother in-laws 70th birthday gift! I know she will love it! Thank you Popsa, will definitely be back for more!

Date of experience : May 02, 2024

That's so lovely to hear, Jill! ✨😍 Thanks for giving us a try. Choosing your photos really is the hardest part! Our products are great for customised gifts for any occasion, and I hope your mother-in-law lovers hers! 😍 We’re so glad we can be part of making your gifts really special 🥰 -Louisa

Super easy to use

Super easy to use. Layout simple as drag and drop. Assorting the pages as a whole is kinda cumbersome to find the feature. But once you do that’s easy as well. Hope they add an easy click drop down to reshuffle pages like they have for page layout.

Thank you for reviewing us, Bryan! 😃 Photos and Pages should be easy to swap around. To swap photos, simply press, hold and then drag. To swap pages select “Pages”, and then drag in the same way ✨ To see the range of things of you can do with your creation, please feel free to check out our Help Page: support.popsa.com/hc/en-gb 😇 -Louisa

It was an amazing experience

It was an amazing experience, the quality of the albums is great... such a great idea... i don't have my memories lost on the drive

Thank you for the review 😃 It is great to hear you are pleased with the quality of your photo book 🤪 We agree, creating personalised products is a great way to permanently store your favourite memories - Harvey

I like the quality of the paper

I like the quality of the paper, choose the photo and move it in the right place, you can make a collage painting however you want, add the color you want to the painting, in short, I think that in my life I haven’t seen a photo company that offers the customer everything that popsa offers. I gave 5 stars = Excellent

Date of experience : May 03, 2024

Thank you for the review 😊 We are thrilled to hear you are pleased the wide range of customisability available when creating your own order 😎 It is also great to hear you are pleased with the quality of the paper we use 🥳 We hope to serve you again soon - Harvey

Great website so easy to move photos…

Great website so easy to move photos around frames and different colour surrounds really pleased with my finished album

Thank you, Mr Lawrence! We’re thrilled you loved our service ❤️ Come and create with us again soon 🥰 -Louisa

Facile effectivement de faire un album…

Facile effectivement de faire un album qui reste un bon souvenir. Quelques réserves cependant sur les formats qui limitent souvent et tronquent photos et le rendu des photos!

Merci de nous avoir évalué, Catherine! 😃 - Vous pouvez déplacer une photo dans un cadre en la faisant glisser avec un doigt, - Vous pouvez redimensionner une photo en la pinçant vers l'intérieur ou vers l'extérieur ! Pour voir l'éventail de choses que vous pouvez faire avec votre création, n'hésitez pas à consulter notre page d'aide : support.popsa.com/hc/fr Nous avons également une équipe de personnes qui attendent pour vous aider à [email protected] si vous avez d'autres questions ! Nous espérons vraiment vous revoir ! 🥰 -Louisa

Such a fun experience!

The app is really easy to use, intuitive, quick and simple. I managed to do this in my lunch break, in traffic, creating on the go. Otherwise impossible. Customer support was very helpful & prompt too. I just wish there were some cute icons or graphics to add to Birthday or Easter occasions. And more options for text/captions/titles.

Thank you so much for the feedback, Lisa 🙏 I really appreciate your suggestion and will forward to our development team 😎 In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your new creation! ✨

Once Upon | Photo Book Creator 4+

Family & photo album maker, once upon publishing ab.

  • #88 in Photo & Video
  • 4.8 • 130 Ratings

Screenshots

Description.

Over 5 000 000 photo fans can’t be wrong – make fantastic photo books and photo prints easily, right from your phone with Once Upon. Create several books and prints simultaneously, and work on them when it suits you. Combining your special moments in a personal, designed book has never been easier. In just a few minutes, you’ll let your pictures live beyond your phone. Do it on the go, or when relaxing at home. How Once Upon works: - Choose up to 594 images from your phone, tablet or computer - Write a few captions (optional) - Select from several pre-designed layout alternatives - Repeat as many times as you wish! One book holds up to 200 pages OUR PHOTO BOOKS You select the format of your book once you’ve created your content. We have three alternative formats: Softcover Medium, Hardcover Medium and Hardcover Large. You can also choose to go with glossy or silk matte paper. Softcover Medium, 20x20 cm Hardcover Medium, 20x20 cm, album title printed on spine Hardcover Large, 27x27 cm, album title printed on spine OUR PHOTO PRINTS Get started on a collection made of high-quality paper you’ll definitely want to keep. Our prints are available in the 13x18 cm size, and you can choose to make them in matte or glossy paper. The format will adjust to either landscape or portrait depending on your photo. OUR FEATURES - Collaborative albums – invite as many friends as you like - Shuffle function to highlight your favourite layout - Captions let you say a little something about every memory - Drag-and-drop to arrange your pages in no time - Copy spreads between your albums to keep multiple versions simple - Easy image selection with dates sorted by month - Google Photos connection and automatic iCloud sync - storage – we back your images and photo books up to our servers - Scandinavian design - Our photo books and photo prints are printed in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA Questions, or just want to say hi? Grab us at [email protected]. Get inspired by fellow photo book fans via our Instagram, @onceuponapp.

Version 4.16.1

You didn't miss this, did you? You can now make photo books and photo prints from your phone or tablet and through your computer's web browser. Plus, in this version of the app, we got rid of a few bugs to help you create seamlessly.

Ratings and Reviews

130 Ratings

needs more customization

more customization would be nice.

Developer Response ,

Hello! Absolutely, we agree. We are constantly working on new features and improvements and in the near future you will see improvements in terms of text function! Have an awesome day! 
/ Team Once Upon

More hassle than it’s worth

Whole app needs updating. Reviews from 2 years ago saying it needs more customization and it doesn’t appear to have changed. You select all your photos in order but then when it generates the book they’re all out of order and you can only change so much. Especially if you’re having to adjust every photo out of 200. Even with the cover you can only pick between black or white background… Really? Are you kidding? Not worth it.
Hi there! Thank you for your review and feedback, it is very valuable for us. Part of our business idea is to make creating photo books very simple, therefore we have limit the choices you can make. But of course we do not want it to make creating photo books harder, so thank you! If you have any further feedback, please send it over to our customer care team at [email protected]. /The Once Upon team

App Privacy

The developer, Once Upon Publishing AB , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy .

Data Used to Track You

The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:

Data Linked to You

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:

  • Financial Info
  • Contact Info
  • User Content
  • Identifiers
  • Diagnostics

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

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once upon photo books reviews

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IMAGES

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VIDEO

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COMMENTS

  1. Find out what MN testers thought of OnceUpon photo books

    Here's what OnceUpon has to say: "Once Upon is a new way to make photo books. Download the app, add your favourite photos, tell your best stories and watch as Once Upon instantly turns them into a designed book. With Once Upon, it's easy to create your book filled with special moments - think messy spaghetti face or that time your 5 ...

  2. Once Upon Photo Books REVIEW

    In this short review I look at a company called Once Upon that specialises in custom photo books that are very easy to crate. More info about them here:https...

  3. Once Upon Photo Book Review

    Once Upon Photo Book ReviewBlog: http://thephotobookguru.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thephotobookguruInstagram: @thephotobookguruVisit Once Upon: h...

  4. Create photo books from your phone

    There's something special about collecting your favorite moments from the past year in a photo book. Because just like that, all your photos come to life and the memories they hold will live on in that book. Forever. Pretty awesome, right? So, it's about time to start your very own collection of memories with these five tips on how to get ...

  5. Once Upon

    How Once Upon works: - Choose up to 594 images from your phone, tablet or computer. - Write a few captions (optional) - Select from several pre-designed layout alternatives. - Repeat as many times as you wish! One book holds up to 200 pages. OUR PHOTO BOOKS. You select the format of your book once you've created your content.

  6. Once Upon Photo Book Review

    From above, Once Upon Photo Book Review is a highly recommended service for creating personalized and high-quality photo books. With their user-friendly platform, wide range of design options, and excellent customer service, capturing and preserving memories has never been easier. Whether you're creating a gift for a loved one or documenting ...

  7. ‎Once Upon

    How Once Upon works: - Choose up to 594 images from your phone, tablet or computer. - Write a few captions (optional) - Select from several pre-designed layout alternatives. - Repeat as many times as you wish! One book holds up to 200 pages. OUR PHOTO BOOKS. You select the format of your book once you've created your content.

  8. Create an annual photo album from your phone

    There is a maximum of 100 spreads per book, which should arguably be plenty to summarise one year. However, because I am useless at editing and think every photo of my sons is 'just the cutest, I couldn't possibly leave it out', I actually ended up with two books per year. When it came time to order the books, again it was intuitive.

  9. Photo book with text and fast delivery

    Then our photo books were made for you. Whether you want to create timeless yearbooks, look back on your travels, immortalize your wedding, or simply relive everyday moments. Add photos to your book bit by bit or make your whole photo book in one go. And since we've taken care of the design you can focus on the fun part.

  10. ‎Once Upon

    How Once Upon works: - Choose up to 594 images from your phone, tablet or computer. - Write a few captions (optional) - Select from several pre-designed layout alternatives. - Repeat as many times as you wish! One book holds up to 200 pages. OUR PHOTO BOOKS. You select the format of your book once you've created your content.

  11. The 12 Best Travel Photo Book Makers of 2024

    Once Upon Photo Books. PHOTO: Once Upon. View on Onceupon.photo. Why We Love It. ... She compared services, prices, and reviews before choosing her category winners. The 13 Best Travel Journals.

  12. The 2 Best Photo Book Services of 2024

    Updated March 21, 2024. Photo: Erin Roberts. By Erin Roberts. FYI. Our top pick remains Mixbook after a new round of testing, but VistaPrint is our new budget pick. March 2024. We live in a ...

  13. Once Upon

    Yes. Once Upon | Photobook Creator is very safe to use. This is based on our NLP (Natural language processing) analysis of over 3,219 User Reviews sourced from the Appstore and the appstore cumulative rating of 4.9/5 . Justuseapp Safety Score for Once Upon Photobook Creator Is 59.5/100.

  14. Once Upon Photo books

    We absolutely love this new photo book app, it makes making albums so easy. We have decided to make one each year of the babies lives so we always have somet...

  15. ‎Once Upon

    How Once Upon works: - Choose up to 594 images from your phone, tablet or computer. - Write a few captions (optional) - Select from several pre-designed layout alternatives. - Repeat as many times as you wish! One book holds up to 200 pages. OUR PHOTO BOOKS. You select the format of your book once you've created your content.

  16. New feature

    When you start making a photo book, simply go through your camera roll (or wherever your favorite images are stored) and choose up to 594 images all at once. Now, all you have to do is sit back while the app fills up your spreads. And if you want to add a personal touch to your album, write some well-chosen words to describe your images, and ...

  17. The best photo books in 2024: Mixbook, Shutterfly, Printique, Snapfish

    For testing purposes, we made hardcover books with all the services in approximately the 11 x 8.5-inch, landscape format since we felt that size would appeal to most users. At $30, Vistaprint's ...

  18. Make your Once Upon book in our webapp

    Make your Once Upon book in our webapp. 31 December 1969. We all use our phone camera for those everyday photos and a lot of our pics are stored right in the phone's camera roll. But maybe you do bring out your real-deal-camera to capture certain moments a bit more vivid, a bit deeper and in a bit more special way?

  19. Popsa Reviews

    Once Upon. onceupon.photo • 6.3K reviews. 4.6. ... Thank you for the review 😇 We are thrilled to hear you found it quick and easy to create and edit your photo book using the app 🧞‍♂️We hope to hear from you again - Harvey. KM. Kathy McCormack. 2 reviews. CA. 14 hours ago. Verified.

  20. ‎Once Upon

    Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots and learn more about Once Upon | Photobook Creator. Download Once Upon | Photobook Creator and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. ‎Over 5 000 000 photo fans can't be wrong - make fantastic photo books and photo prints easily, right from your phone with Once Upon.

  21. ‎Once Upon

    How Once Upon works: - Choose up to 594 images from your phone, tablet or computer. - Write a few captions (optional) - Select from several pre-designed layout alternatives. - Repeat as many times as you wish! One book holds up to 200 pages. OUR PHOTO BOOKS. You select the format of your book once you've created your content.

  22. Year book

    Let all your favorite moments from the year come to life in an annual photo book. You can add the photos bit by bit throughout the year or make the whole yearbook in one go. Either way, the app will take care of the design so you can focus on the fun part. ... Once Upon Publishing AB, SE559073-3670-01 ...

  23. Once Upon Web app

    We're offering them to make your Once Upon experience safe and enjoyable. Some cookies are necessary while others give you more relevant content across third-party platforms. Customize cookies. Create high quality photo books and photo prints to celebrate your memories. Get 20% off your first order by signing up to our newsletter.