Creating a photobook is a wonderful way to preserve and share your cherished memories. Among the numerous Photobook Printing services available, Mixbook stands out as the top choice for most people due to its exceptional ease of use, vibrant color reproduction, and modern design options. Our in-depth testing of 17 different photo book services confirmed that Mixbook consistently delivers high-quality results, making it our recommended service for anyone looking to create a beautiful and lasting photo album.
Mixbook distinguishes itself with its intuitive design software and commitment to color accuracy. In our tests, books printed by Mixbook exhibited some of the most vibrant colors, closely mirroring the original photographs. For those who prefer to design on the go, Mixbook is also one of the few services offering a dedicated mobile app for iPhone users, streamlining the photobook printing process directly from your phone. Collaboration is also made easy, allowing you to invite others to contribute to or review your project before it goes to print.
Our best photobook pick, the Mixbook, showcasing a couple's photo on the cover.
Uploading photos to Mixbook is remarkably versatile, accommodating various sources to ensure you can easily access all your desired images for your photobook printing project. If you, like many, have a wealth of photos stored on your iPhone, Mixbook simplifies the process of adding these mobile images directly to your project, significantly enhancing design efficiency.
Utilizing a QR code displayed on your computer screen, Mixbook guides you through the steps to select and upload pictures directly from your phone. Upon refreshing your screen, your chosen iPhone photos become instantly available for incorporation into your photobook project. Beyond mobile uploads, Mixbook also supports direct uploads from your computer, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and photo storage services including Google Photos and SmugMug, offering a comprehensive suite of options for your photobook printing needs.
Mixbook’s book-building software is designed for ultimate user-friendliness, making photobook printing accessible to everyone. The Auto-Create feature is particularly impressive; with a single click after uploading your images, the software intelligently constructs a complete photobook draft, selecting what it deems “the best images.” This feature provides an excellent starting point, creating a solid foundation that is easily customizable to your preferences for your personalized photobook.
Unlike some competitors in the photobook printing market, Mixbook includes a convenient swap button, allowing for quick and easy image replacement within your layouts. Adjusting layouts is also seamless; the software intelligently suggests layouts tailored to your images and offers filtering options based on the number of photos per design, providing a streamlined and efficient photobook creation experience.
Mixbook excels in providing user support throughout the photobook printing process with helpful tips and guidance. The service incorporates guidance boxes that appear as you begin designing your book. These pop-ups offer valuable tips and suggestions, acting as a helpful resource that you can easily dismiss as needed, ensuring a smooth and supported design journey for your custom photobook.
The photo-editing tools within Mixbook, while simple, are effective and efficient for basic adjustments needed for photobook printing. These tools include essential options such as brightness, saturation, contrast, and opacity adjustments. Cropping and zooming are also straightforward, although the free-rotation tool can be a bit cumbersome, requiring a click-and-hold action on an arrow within a circle to adjust horizon lines.
Six pre-set filters are available to give your printed photos a stylistic touch, reminiscent of Instagram effects. You can also experiment with shadows, borders, and even shape your images into hearts, adding creative flair to your photobook printing project. Adding text is equally user-friendly, with Mixbook offering a wide array of font choices and text controls to personalize your photo album.
A variety of images printed in photo books, including DSLR and smartphone photos, demonstrating print quality.
Mixbook incorporates thoughtful design elements that significantly enhance the user experience for photobook printing. When browsing your image library within Mixbook, simply hovering over a photo enlarges it, a feature we particularly appreciated as it simplifies image selection from thumbnails. This contrasts with other services where we sometimes had to insert a photo into the layout just to properly view it, making Mixbook a more efficient choice for creating your photo album.
Mixbook offers a wider selection of templates than many competitors in the photobook printing space. These templates are well-designed and can be used as they are or easily customized to fit your personal style.
With 172 “everyday” album templates, Mixbook provides options ranging from minimalist designs like the Minimal White template to themes for birthdays, weddings, and seasons. Notably, the themed layouts include actual photo examples, a genuinely useful feature for visualizing your own creation before you start your photobook printing project.
Mixbook stands out for vibrant and color-accurate photo reproductions, crucial for preserving the quality of your memories in photobook printing. Consistent with our previous tests, our 20-page, 11-by-8.5-inch Mixbook photobook was among the most vibrant of all tested, with colors that most accurately matched our original photographs, highlighting Mixbook’s superior color management in photobook printing.
In a challenging test photo featuring a shadowy subject against a bright background, Mixbook demonstrated excellent contrast balance, retrieving more detail in the shadowed area while maintaining the vibrancy of the background colors. This showcases Mixbook’s ability to handle complex lighting scenarios effectively in photobook printing.
Mixbook’s CEO, Andrew Laffoon, confirmed that the service applies “very minimal” automatic color correction, a feature that cannot be disabled. This subtle correction contributes to the consistently high color quality observed in Mixbook’s photobook printing.
Mixbook utilizes high-quality paper for its photobooks, enhancing the overall feel and durability of your printed memories. In our recent round of testing, Mixbook’s standard album option featured pages that were among the thickest, comparable to coffee-table book pages. The paper’s durability and slight sheen suggest it can withstand regular handling and even minor spills, making it ideal for a family photo album.
Mixbook’s pricing is competitive within the photobook printing market, aligning with or only slightly exceeding the cost of comparable albums. However, Mixbook frequently offers substantial discounts, often a 50%-off coupon, making it an even more attractive option. It’s advisable to look for these discounts before purchasing, especially if considering upgrades like layflat pages, which can significantly increase the album price.
Mixbook respects user email preferences, a welcome contrast to some other photobook printing services. Unlike services like Snapfish, Mixbook does not automatically flood your inbox with promotional emails after an order. Subscribing to Mixbook’s email offers requires opting in through account settings, and unsubscribing is just as easy, giving you control over your inbox.
While Mixbook excels in many areas of photobook printing, it has minor limitations in photo editing tools. When we attempted to enhance a cloudy day photo using Mixbook’s brightness, saturation, and contrast sliders, the printed result remained somewhat dark despite on-screen improvements. While external photo editing software can be used, re-importing edited images for minor adjustments within Mixbook can be cumbersome. A more comprehensive suite of editing tools within Mixbook’s interface would further streamline the photobook creation process.
Despite this minor drawback, Mixbook remains our top recommendation for photobook printing due to its exceptional user experience, color accuracy, quality materials, and competitive pricing, making it the ideal service for creating lasting memory keepsakes.
