Printique is a premium custom print and photo book print house that has a wide range of different products available. From Hardcover photo books to acrylic blocks to metal prints and even augmented-reality greeting cards, Printique has a heap of options to turn photos into keepsakes.
In this review of Printique custom prints and photo books, I’m going to explore their online book design tool as well as cover the print quality on a selection of their range. I received print credit from Printique to prepare this review. However, all opinions are my own.
I tried out a selection of their print and photo book options. Printique’s Photo Books start at $9.99 for a 20-page book, and are designed to be flat-lay. They are printed on professional archival-grade paper, and are available in a range of cover options including a range of cover options including hardcover, custom leather, fabric, softcover. Mini Softcover photo books are also a great pocket-size keepsake for family, friends or preserving social media memories. In this review of Printique I’ll be looking at the Hardcover and Softcover Photo Books.
I’ll also be reviewing some of Printique’s specialty prints. These start at $10.99 for a 4×6 print and the options are extensive: Including professional photo paper, hand-stretched canvas, sleek aluminum for metal prints, premium acrylic, rustic wood and more. Custom framed prints and Gilcee fine art prints, crafted from archival, Hahnemuhle papers, are also available.
Read on for reviews of Printique Softcover Photo Books, Hardcover Photo Books, Acrylic Prints, Wood Prints and Metal Prints. Note that Printique only deliver to US addresses at this time.
Pros
- Affordable price
- Easy-to-use design software
- Gives option to remove Printique branding on books
- Heaps of lovely template options for pre-designed books
- Text and photos print clear and crisp
- Book Wizard online design software is fully compatible with Fundy Designer workflows
- Galleries feature allows you to pre-upload photos for quicker designing and ordering
- Built-in integration with Google, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox and Lightroom makes it easy to get photos from online to printed
- Autofill for albums makes it fast to design albums
- Heaps of design options to make designing book and album spreads easy and fun
- Photo Books are excellent quality, feel study and look great
- Softcover Books are a good budget option with a decent quality feel
- Metal Prints look stunning, clear and crisp print quality
- Metal and Wood Prints come with mounting kits, including a spirit level
Cons
- Color tone and print quality can vary from product to product
- There is an intermittent glitch in the Book Wizard design software specifically for the Hardcover Photo Book to be aware of
All prices in this review were accurate at the time of writing but you should check the Printique website for up-to-date pricing.
I’m going to start with the Printique Books Wizard online design tool. Let’s dive in!
Printique Books Wizard is the online design tool you will use to create your photo album. It operates in a browser, so is compatible across platforms. It’s also fully compatible with Fundy Designer workflows with Printique templates being built into the Fundy Designer software.
When you begin designing an album in Printique Books Wizard, you start by choosing your Premium Photo Album type (leather, hardcover, metal, etc), or your Photo Book type (fabric, softcover, etc). Printique explains the difference between their albums and books here.
The software to design pages is the same once you get into it. Before opening the Book Wizard, you can choose cover color, shape (landscape, portrait or square), size, paper type and thickness. The price updates dynamically.
You can then start designing your pages. On opening, you’ll be prompted to choose a style template. Choose Build your Own if you have a Fundy exported layout to upload.
Uploading photos for album: Printique Galleries and online photos
After choosing your book’s style, you’ll be prompted to select photos. Printique offers the option to pre-upload into Printique Galleries, accessed in your user profile. I found that this is the easiest way to get photos ready for the album. From within Book Wizard, I found that occasionally photo uploads seemed to freeze, and I had to refresh and try again to get the photos uploaded. Pre-loading the photos via my Printique Galleries was easier.
You can also grab photos from Google, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox and even Lightroom. This is a great integration that saves a lot of double-handling.
Designing Printique albums and books in Books Wizard
Once your photos are loaded up, you are ready to edit. Printique can autofill photos, giving you control over the order (Old to new, Name A — Z, etc). This is a time saver and means your album can be done in minutes, with simple adjustments to position or photos swaps being all you need to do.
There are a heap of design options to make your photo book or album exactly how you want it, including:
- Adding text in different styles — text is styled uniformly to keep a professional look
- Switching designs even after styling the book — loading a complete new template with the same photos
- Switching between theme layouts (those that match the style) and spread layouts (for extra flexibility for any photo arrangement) with ease
- Color backgrounds, and 2000+ included pattern, graphic and photo backgrounds
- Image frames in 2000+ different shapes, including letters and numbers (think spelling out names with photos!)
- Shapes, with fill, opacity, shadow, and border controls
- Stickers, with 15,000+ options including patterned frames, holiday and themes
Generally, the software works well and is easy to use. Quick to switch layouts, adjust photo positions, and so on: Everything that we have come to expect from modern album design software.
Quirks in the Book Wizard software
The only quirks I found when using the Book Wizard were when duplicating a page, and adding frames. After duplicating a page, I found I have to click off onto another spread, then back onto the new one, before I could drag-and-drop photos into the duplicated layout.
When using frames (e.g. like the letter frames), I found that there has to be a photo on the page before the frame shape can be changed. E.g. when starting on a blank spread, add a layout first, then frames. In other words, there has to be a space to put a photo, before you can frame it.
Keeping in mind these two nuances it’s easy to get the photo book just right.
A glitch to be mindful of when designing a Hardcover Photo Book
I found a quirk in the Books Wizard that you need to be aware of, only when designing a Hardcover Photo Book. It sometimes (not always) deletes your finished pages when you toggle end pages off and on in the Manage All Pages view.
Generally, if you toggle the end pages off, and then back on, it will remove the end pages, and then add them back in. However, sometimes, it doesn’t add end pages back in. If you then Close & Continue, reopen Manage All Pages and then toggle End pages off, it will delete the first and last spreads of your album instead.
This quirk doesn’t always happen, and it doesn’t appear in any of the Premium Photo Albums or in the Softcover Photo Book. (This is because the end pages are compulsory in the Premium Photo Albums, so you can’t turn them off. In the Softcover Photo Book there are no end pages.) It’s something to be aware of though, and be careful if, to make sure you don’t lose finished spreads.
On the plus side, I love the option included with Hardcover Photo Books to change the end paper color. This added a great pop of unique color to my finished books.
Printique photo books — Print and binding quality
Ok, so now that we’ve looked at the design process, let’s look at the books themselves! I printed two book types: Hardcover Photo Book and the Softcover Book. (I didn’t try out any of the Premium Album options for this review — these are both in the Photo Book range.)
Review of Printique Hardcover Photo Book — Review of print and binding quality
I was very impressed with my Printique Hardcover Photo Books. For the two 8×8 inch, 34-page books I designed, with luster pages, it was $72.39 each, including $2.00 to remove the Printique branding from the end pages.
The print quality is lovely. The cover printed clear and crisp with a textured effect. I used the Book Wizard text tool to add text to the spine and back. Binding looks neat and strong.
The pages are thick and feel durable. My boys have read the books a lot so far and I’m confident they will hold up to heavy family use.
The inside print quality is excellent: Glossy, clear and accurate colors. Full-width spreads look great across the central fold.
All in all, the Hardcover Photo Book is an excellent affordable choice and the print quality is great at this price point.
Review of Printique Softcover Book — Review of print and binding quality
The Printique Softcover Book has a different feel to the Hardcover Photo Book. Still in the Photo Book range, this one is about half the price. I ordered an 8×8 inch, 22-page, printed in Fine Art Vellum book for $34.98, including $2.00 to remove the Printique branding on the end pages.
Up close the print resolution is more visible on the Softcover Book. It’s definitely acceptable and still looks great at reading distance. The binding is neat. It doesn’t lie as flat as the Hardcover version but still opens well.
The edit on these photos is more of a Bohemian style and I am happy with the color reproduction. It matches digital well.
The Softcover Book is a good budget-friendly choice for lighter use — with toddlers I’d say this one may get damaged (whereas I’d be confident giving the Hardcover variant to anyone eld enough not to chew it).
Printique custom prints — Print quality
I tried out three different Printique custom prints: Metal Print, Wood Print and Acrylic Prints. All of these were printed with different photos from the same photo session and edit to keep the color tone consistent across all. All photos are edited on my color calibrated system.
Review of Printique Metal Prints — Quality
I ordered a large Metal Print, 12×12 inches with a glossy white finish ($51.99) and I absolutely love this one. The print quality is stunning: Clear, crisp, accurate color reproduction, great tone depth and contrast. Wall float mount kit is included free with the Metal Print. It comes with instructions on how to get it perfect.
Overall the Metal Print is my favorite out of these products. It’s impressive, the float style with the print mounted off the wall is perfect and it makes my photo look fantastic. Rounded polished corners are a great touch.
It also comes in a range of interesting shapes. You can order as rectangle, square, circle, panorama, oval, shield, hexagon and heart. There’s also the option to design as a triptych or grid. I would love to do a big wall of these in hexagon — such a cool statement piece.
Review of Printique Wood Prints — Quality
The Printique Wood Print is another nice addition to the wall. The thick timber slab with the print on top looks cute and rustic. This one also comes with a mount kit and includes a level to make sure it’s hanging straight.
The print quality is a little flatter on the Wood Print. It doesn’t have the depth and contrast of the Metal Print, which is to be expected, because it’s a matte finish. The texture of the wood shows through too, as expected.
Provided by Printique
Provided by Printique
However, I did notice that there was a yellow shift to color temperature which was not evident in the Metal Print. It was most evident on faces, and when examining the print close-up.
At $28.99 for an 8×8 inch square print, the print quality is a little below the Metal Print but the Wood Print is still a nice budget-friendly option and has a rustic feel.
Review of Printique Acrylic Prints — Quality
I ordered two of these little Printique Acrylic Prints in the 2×2 inch size, 1-inch thick which Printique calls the Block thickness. Each was $11.99 for this size. They also come in a Wall thickness of 0.25 inch. Both images were from the same session as the Wood Print and the Metal Print.
I did not like the results with the Acrylic Prints as much as the Metal and Wood Prints. Firstly, the print quality looks low resolution. Print dots are clearly visible when holding in your hand. It has the look of being printed on an office-quality inkjet.
I also found that the corners of the print were not finished neatly on my blocks. You can see in the picture here how the print paper is rumpled and torn. It shows on the inside of the block, and breaks the illusion of the print being “one” with the block.
The effect of the image reflecting around the prism is cool. They look ok on the shelf. It just didn’t have the sleek, stylish look I was hoping for.
Printique premium custom prints and photo books — final thoughts
The Printique Photo Book range is a nice budget-friendly option for families wanting to print lots of photos in aesthetically pleasing, durable books. The Hardcover Photo Book looks like it will take a lot of punishment making it perfect for photos to be handled by the kids and grandkids.
As for the Printique Custom Print range I was very impressed with the Metal Print and would confidently recommend it for stunning prints in a range of sleek shapes and sizes. I would like to see closer color match on the Wood Print but it still serves well as an affordable rustic chic option. The Acrylic blocks I see as being fun for kids but I’m not convinced on the durability given the issues with the print paper on the blocks I received.
For the products I ordered, Printique generally delivers a solid result in the budget price range. These are great family-friendly products making it possible to get your photos off screens, and into hands.