The 8 Best Online Photo Book Makers of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

Travel + Leisure associate editor Anna Popp has used Shutterfly as her go-to for custom photo gifts for the past few years, praising the company for its high-end materials and excellent print quality. We particularly like the company’s intuitive creation process, which allows you to handle each aspect of the design yourself or to leave some (or all) of it to automatic tools and in-house designers. Shutterfly offers a wide range of travel-specific photo book layouts, most of which include a choice of sizes, cover materials, and page types. We tested the Modern Editorial Moments Photo Book in the 8 x 8 inch size, opting for a glossy hardcover and standard pages. Alternative cover choices range from soft fabric to premium leather.

There are three ways to create your photo book. The “Make It Manually” option lets you use advanced editing tools to personalize every detail of your book, from photo placement to background colors, borders, and captions. Conversely, the free “Make It For Me” service sees a Shutterfly designer create your layout for you in 24 hours. We chose the middle road, “Make It Fast,” which uses optional auto-fill, simple tools, and helpful design suggestions. We ended up moving a few photos around but otherwise loved how the book came out automatically. The process took just 30 minutes, with seven days for production and delivery using the standard shipping service. There is an option to pay for faster turnaround times.

Canva enables you to create a photo book from scratch, but they also offer more than 240 templates to use as a helpful start point. For each one, there are size, cover, and cover finish choices to be made; we opted for a 11 x 8.5 inch hardcover book with a gloss finish. It took us around 2.5 hours to design our photo book using 49 photos across 22 pages. It can take much longer depending on the size of your project, simply because there are so many options in terms of page layouts, borders, graphics, captions, colors, and fonts. 

With that being said, it’s quick to upload photos and move them about. The editing tools are straightforward, and although we used a laptop to create our book, we like that Canva also offers a user-friendly app for designing from your phone. One of our favorite features is the digital proof provided at the end of the design process, so you can see how your book will look before ordering. Any low-quality photos will be flagged at this point so that you can swap them out. Our order arrived quicker than expected and matched the digital proof exactly.

Softcover photo books are generally more affordable and take up less shelf space than their hardcover counterparts. Popp loves Papier’s gorgeous paperback option, having used it recently to create a photo journal of a girls’ trip to Japan. She feels that “it’s still very high quality despite being made entirely of paper,” and especially likes that the book has a real spine rather than a stapled one. At 8 x 6 inches, it takes up minimal space and allows for the use of lower quality (i.e. phone camera) photos. 

It took us approximately 45 minutes to create a photo book, of which 20 minutes were spent choosing which photos to use. The auto-fill feature adds photos automatically. We were then able to move pictures around as desired while other customization options include cover color and title, captions, stickers, and photo filters. Overall, the process was easy, fun, and completely hassle-free. We used standard shipping which took just under two weeks. Accurate, frequent delivery updates and beautiful gift-worthy packaging made up for the longer time frame.

New York-based company Printique offers a range of options including softcover, hardcover, leather, fabric, and mini photo books. These can be portrait, landscape, or square-shaped, in a variety of sizes and paper finishes. All have deluxe lay flat binding and impressive print and paper quality whether you use phone or professional photos. T+L writer Sophie Dodd chose a 8 x 8 inch hardcover book with luster-finish pages for her test project and found the creation process “very streamlined” despite the initially overwhelming array of templates. 

While it’s possible to customize every aspect of your photo book, a comprehensive autofill feature that allows you to choose your upload order and your preferred number of photos per page makes for a quick and easy alternative. We were able to create an account and design our photo book in half an hour, while the simpler Easy Book option reduces this time to just 10 minutes. Although shipping times vary depending on the book you choose, ours arrived five days after ordering in secure and attractive packaging.

Handcrafted in the United States from top-tier materials, the photo books offered by Artifact Uprising are the ultimate luxury choice. There are multiple travel-themed templates to choose from in a range of cover types, shapes, and sizes. Some offer the option of adding a professional-style dust jacket, while paper types range from matte to luster or superfine. All books feature curated layout options designed to show your photos at their very best. Whichever you go for, expect superior print quality and a sturdy binding that should last for decades. 

We chose an 8.5 x 8.5 inch Travel Layflat Photo Album with a fabric cover and gold foil lettering to show off professional destination wedding shots. We found the website easy to navigate and had zero problems using the various editing tools and experimenting with different templates. We particularly liked that our work saved seamlessly as we tried different looks. In the end, it was so much fun that we ended up spending hours tinkering to get the best possible result. The photo book arrived flawlessly packaged within the stated delivery window.

While Mixbook photo books are middle of the range in terms of overall cost, we think that they represent excellent value because of the wide range of premium cover designs included in the base price. T+L editor Hillary Maglin tested two photo book makers for this article, and loved that she was able to choose the full-photo cover style she prefers for free with Mixbook, while the other company charged extra. She says she’s “obsessed with how beautiful the cover is” and thinks it makes this book by far the most eye-catching of the two. 

Mixbook offers square or rectangular books in three sizes with a choice of softcover, hardcover, or layflat designs. The 400-page limit is the most generous of any photo book maker we tried, while the print quality was so good that there was no discernible difference between the digital proof and the physical book. Delivery, communication, and packaging were also great. The only downside was the creation process, which we found more confusing and glitchy than others we tried. However, we were still able to make our book within two hours.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the value of a video that captures your memories in moving color and sound is incalculable. The Heirloom video book allows you to present your favorite film montage inside a physical book as a keepsake for generations to come. You get to choose a 10-minute, 20-minute, or 1-hour video with landscape or portrait orientation on a 5 or 7-inch screen. Dodd made her video book primarily on her laptop but appreciated that the company sent a link to enable uploading videos from her phone, too. 

It took around 1.5 hours to create a five-minute film—obviously, trimming clips to match your chosen audio is a lot more time consuming than auto-uploading still photos. We found the Heirloom website easy to navigate and especially liked that we could build our video first before deciding whether to place an order. Uploading videos was simple; however, we would have liked a little more guidance when it came to editing our footage. In the end, the final product was worth the effort with Dodd giving the “contrast, highlights, vibrancy, and audio a 10 out of 10.”

Pinhole Press offers a range of themed layouts especially for children (think Mommy and Me, Count With Me, a My Emotions board book and more). We chose the My First Photo Book For Kids template and used it to illustrate all the fun places our family has traveled to. All of the layouts are ideally sized for little hands at 5.25 x 5.25 inches, with a sturdy spiral binding for extra durability and easy page turning. We love that neither our baby or toddler have been able to bend or crease the ultra-thick, wipe-clean pages. 

Most elements are customizable including the page color, text size and color, photo placement, and page order. We chose to design our book from scratch because we found the auto-upload feature somewhat clunky. Because it didn’t center photos intuitively around faces, we still had to edit each one to make sure it was framed correctly. The editing tools were simple but effective, and we liked that we could save our project and come back to it as needed. The book arrived earlier than expected and the print quality is easily good enough for a children’s book.