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Buying Guide: 5 Services for Making a Photo Calendar
My grandparents, mother, and sister love personalized photo calendars. It's come to the point that they outright demand to receive them as gifts each year. They want pictures of the new baby on the page for the month when she was born, and an inscribed note on the very date of her birthday. They want graduation photo for May, a picture from Thanksgiving on November's page, and there had better be a damn cute child dressed up as a pumpkin hanging on their kitchen walls come October.
If your family is as demanding about getting a custom photo wall calendar as mine is, you'll need to know which service for making one will work best for you.
Do you desire a Web site that's simple to use? Is price your bottom line? How quickly do you need that finished product?
Luckily, most of the services I've tried for making a photo calendar come with a good selection of templates, so the project doesn't require any serious design skills, although it helps to have a sharp eye. The sites I like best combine sufficient editing tools that don't leave me squinting, and templates that take the best of someone else's design and let me mix it with my own style. There is such a thing as a template that's too rigid, after all.
Most services also integrate with Facebook, Flickr, and other websites where you might store photos, so you can peruse for the ones you want and snag them for each month page, simultaneously.
Here are some of the best services you'll find for making a personalized photo wall calendar.
FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP
CafePress
Used by small business and aspiring rock bands for years, CafePress lets you make customized, well, anything, photo wall calendars included. You can upload your own photos or import them from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and SmugMug. Editing capabilities include filters to make black-and-white and sepia images, as well as tools for moving, rotating, and zooming in on your images. You can choose from a fair number of templates, although it's difficult to see how each page differs within the template, and impossible to change the template you've selected it. One nice feature: You can start your calendar on any month you choose. Options also include 12-month and 18-month calendars. Prices vary, but a recent 12-month calendar I made cost $19.99 plus $5.25 for standard shipping (7-9 days) for a total of $25.24. Read the full review ››
Mixbook
Mixbook has one of the nicer suites of online editing tools I've seen for making a personalized photo wall calendar, although its shipping charges run a little higher than elsewhere. Available templates let you pick a calendar design that really suits your style, whether that means sleek and modish or child-like and bubbly. As with most other services, prices vary. I bought a 12-month, 11 by 8.5-inch calendar for $19.99 plus $8.99 for standard shipping. The expected arrival date for my finished product was nearly two weeks out, but it arrived nearly five business days early. The finished product was very good. Read the full review ››
Shutterfly
Starting at $21.99 for a 12-month calendar, Shutterfly costs a buck or two more than some other services, but you get what you pay for in quality. Perhaps you'll also be willing to pay that extra dollar or two for Shutterfly's great preview window, where you can thoroughly comb through your calendar-in-the-making one final time to check for photo mishaps, typos, and whatnot. It may sound like a simple feature, but it's one that a lot of services don't offer. The template selection is adequate. It doesn't offer a lot in terms of style options, as all the designs look very Leave-It-to-Beaver, if you will, though it has a classy white template (my favorite) for minimalists like me. Dimensions are roughly 8 by 11 inches, with no larger sizes available, unfortunately. The quality can't be beat, though. Read the full review ››
Snapfish
Snapfish.com, the website that also offers photo hosting, has a whole section for making a custom calendar. Snapfish has more customization options than most other services I've seen. You can start your calendar on any month you choose, modify templates for color and number of photos per page, type in special dates, and more. Snapfish works well and ships relatively quickly, but in my experience, quality of the final prints has been an issue. The company offers a full refund and 10 percent discount on a future purchase if you're not satisfied, but caveat emptor nonetheless. Only use Snapfish for your photo calendar needs if you're not too tight on time. You'll want a few extra days for possible quality control. Prices vary but hover around the $19.99 range. Read the full review ››
Zazzle
Zazzle is a bit like CafePress. You can make virtually anything on the site, and orders see big discounts when you buy items in bulk. If you need 15 copies of a family photo wall calendar, Zazzle's a decent option. Prices start around $17.95. One neat feature here is choosing not only a unique template for the top half of the calendar where the photos are displayed, but also a unique day/week grid design, too. Quality and prices are quite good, although the editing tools for creating your calendar are mediocre. Read the full review ››