The Best Photo Books of 2026

Artifact Uprising is a popular photo book service, especially for remembering events like weddings, graduations, and family vacations. While most photo books will look better with professional photos, Artifact Uprising’s materials and layouts cater to high quality images.

The full-page image options look like they will allow your photos to shine for years to come.

We found Artifact Uprising’s online customization process easy to navigate. It was easy and quick to batch upload my photos and start toying around with page layouts and the order of my images. Plus, Artifact Uprising offers some eco-friendly options like 100% recycled options and reclaimed materials like wood fibers and pine wood blocks.

There was the option to auto-populate the book, which is great if you aren’t sure where to start or want to save time. We had the online system autofill the book and then moved a few things around to our liking. There is also an option to add text boxes. However, the design tool has fewer cover and layout options than our best overall selection.

The finished product is a beautiful, minimalist-style photo book that balances white space with the photos. The page layouts look just like they did when we designed them online. For the most part, the photos are crisp and colorful, but a few are slightly darker than what we uploaded.

One thing we'd do differently next time, though, is make sure not to have photos go all the way to the center of the page because some are slightly cut off by the binding, which we didn’t notice in the online rendering.

Creating a photo book using Milk Handcrafted Photo Books was fun, straightforward, and rewarding. The online creation tool was easy to use with a quick photo upload, a single cover option, and many page layouts.

It was easy to customize the pages without being overwhelming or confusing, and though the layouts were limited we had more than enough to create a book we liked.

The fabric exterior is a nice touch, though it means there isn’t a label on the spine or front cover; but there is a title page which is unique.

The photos are printed well with accurate colors, clarity, and just enough shine. The pages and bindings are pretty durable, making this one of the best photo books we've tested.

Picaboo’s photo book process had a balance of pros and cons, but ultimately it ranks lower on our list due to its confusing online customization tool.

The beginning part of the build process went smoothly: The photos uploaded quickly, we chose a cover that rendered well on the surface, and we were pleased with the variety of layout options.

However, we found the online tool overwhelmingly complicated because it had grouped pages in “spreads” with some photos laid out across the binding of the book on one or both pages when the book was flat. We wanted to avoid parts of photos being cut off or hard to see, so we had to ungroup all the spreads in the book before we could pick the layouts we liked and arrange photos.

Despite the headaches, the photo book looked amazing once it arrived. The pages are a bit flimsy but lay flat, which is a feature we love. The cover photo is a bit dark, but the rest of the photos are bright, clear, and true to color.

From start to finish, Vistaprint offers one of the best photo book services. Our photos uploaded quickly, and we were able to use the autofill option to create the base of the book, which makes the process so much easier.

There are only a few photo layout options, but each offers plenty of room and you can select how many photos you want per page.

One gripe we have is with the cover photo. We wanted to use a horizontal image on the vertical photo book. Instead of letting us zoom out with extra white space, the cover photo is zoomed in and cuts off people in the photo.

In person, the Vistaprint photo book impresses with stunning print quality that looks true to what we created online. Even the full page photos are clear and crisp.

The cover cuts off the left and right edge of the photo, and when we run our hands across it, we can feel some small bubbles in the printing.

As long as you have a vertical cover image and don’t mind limited layout options, the Vistaprint photo book is a solid option.

Using Walmart Photos to create a photo book is a bit of a mixed bag—the process was both simple and frustrating. On one hand, we could easily upload photos, select a cover, navigate the layouts, and even use the autofill option.. But on the other hand, Walmart Photos doesn't have any options for text boxes like other online photo book services do.

We found that the size of some images in the layouts seemed small, which meant the final product had a lot of white space and the photos didn’t look as great. The borders for each page are large too, causing the book to look unbalanced.

The photo book itself is low quality: The pages are very thin, the photos are dull, and the cover image is blurry.

Creating a photo book with Snapfish is an uncomplicated process similar to others in our guide. We were able to batch upload photos, customize the cover, and place photos ourselves or use an autofill option.

Snapfish offers many different layouts, but the main thing that sets it apart from other services is that many of the layouts require five or more photos. We didn’t like how small that meant each photo needed to be, so we opted to use the layouts for four photos or fewer.

When we got the book, we were disappointed to see that the cover photos (and ones inside the book) appeared to be overexposed—too bright for our liking. Additionally, the colors of the images inside of the book were not entirely accurate and differed slightly from what we originally submitted.

The binding of the book is decently strong, but the pages are flimsy to the point that they feel as if they’d rip if you flip through it. Because the product is average, I’d opt for another service that has more layouts and a better final product.

Unfortunately, our experience with Pinhole Press was aggravating from start to finish. The batch photo upload tool didn’t work well and was slow, and once we selected a cover, we weren’t able to resize, zoom, or make it on the vertical page. The bottom line is that the design tool made filling the book with photos more difficult than other photo books we tested. Pinhole Press also lacks options for text boxes, which most other online photo book services offer.

When the book arrived, we were disappointed to see that it looked nothing like the online preview—two people were cut off in the photo and the title text was so hard to read that we barely noticed it was there. Additionally, the color of the photos in the book appeared darker than other photo books we tested.

On the plus side, the Pinhole Press photo book is durable and sturdy, with thick pages similar to that of a high school yearbook. However durable the photo book is, though, it's not the kind of quality you'll get with our best overall pick.

Amazon Photos only makes photo books in a single size with limited design options. It’s a great choice if you’re looking for a simple, barebones photo book, but if you want something truly customizable, check out Shutterfly instead.

Most other photo books come in a variety of sizes, but Amazon's is only available in an 8-inch by 8-inch size. There's also only one image per page—far more limiting than any other service we tested.

You don’t get to be creative with the images or placement, but the book becomes thick the more images you include since each image is another page.

The finished photo book was durable, with a matte cover and thick pages. Most of the photos printed well but have a dark tint that wasn’t present in the original photos and many other photo books we tested.

We disliked each step of making a photo book with Printique. For starters, the photo upload tool had one of the longest upload times, which slowed down the design process. Printique has limited layouts, it was difficult to customize each page because I had to manually adjust the images to be the same size or have symmetrical borders. Other photo books we tested automatically adjusted.

Disappointingly, the front and back cover feel like one large sticker spread across the thicker cover material, and in some places there are even bubbles. Printique is one of the more expensive options, so we were disappointed with the poor product given the price.

The interior of the book is quite nice, with incredibly durable pages and brightly printed photos. It’s worth noting that though the pages are thick and strong, the materials are vinyl-like, which we didn’t select. If you’re looking for a flat or matte option this isn’t that—it’s much shinier and almost has a dotted pattern in the light.