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York Photo Labs

Michael Muchmore
 & Michael Muchmore Contributor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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York Photo Labs offers prints and printed gifts at low prices, but you can find services with better print quality, interfaces, packaging, and online photo sharing. - Photo Printing
2.5 Fair

The Bottom Line

York Photo Labs offers prints and printed gifts at low prices, but you can find services with better print quality, interfaces, packaging, and online photo sharing.

Pros & Cons

    • Low prices.
    • Decent editing tools.
    • Lots of photo-printed gift options.
    • Color film processing.
    • Flimsy packaging.
    • Over-sharpened photos.
    • Slow website.
    • Online sharing options are anemic.
    • Lacks TIFF support.

York Photo Labs has been around for decades as a photo printing service, and the company still even develops color film. It has moved into the digital world, though, offering loads of object types on which you can have your digital photos printed. Despite that selection and its low prices, York Photo Labs doesn't distinguish itself from the competition in its web interface, print quality, or packaging.

Pricing and Starting Up

York's prices remain very competitive, while several other photo printers have raised theirs: 4-by-6 prints start at just 9 cents, 5-by-7s cost 79 cents, and 8-by-10s are $2.99 each. For comparison, Snapfish also charges 9 cents for 4-by-6s, but 69 cents for 5-by-7s, and matches York's 8-by-10 price at $2.99. Amazon Prints charges just 58 cents for 5-by-7s and Walmart Photos charges only $1.79 for an 8-by-10. The higher-end services, as you'd expect, cost more. Mpix charges 29 cents for 4-by-6s, $1.29 for 5-by-7s, and $2.79 for 8-by-10s. AdoramaPix charges 31 cents for 4-by-6x and $2.49 for an 8-by-10 print. You can't pay for your York order with PayPal, which is a little annoying for the online-only set, but once you add all your credit card details, you can use the same card over and over.

Uploading and Selecting Photos for Printing

York not only lets you upload photo files directly, but also add images from Facebook and Instagram. You can now drag and drop image files from a folder, no Flash required. The service automatically chooses 4-by-5.33 for photos suited to that aspect ratio, but you can choose whatever print sizes and quantities you want, all on one page. As with most of these services, you can't upload raw camera files like Nikon NEF or Canon CR2 files. Nor can you upload TIFF files, which pros prefer, offered by Nations Photo Lab and AdoramaPix. The upload page lets you choose whether to use full resolution and whether to auto-rotate images.

York Photo Labs Interface

You also get some editing and cropping options from the order page. York offers a choice of black- or white-bordered prints, borderless prints, and glossy or matte finishes. That's more than you get with Walgreens Photo.

You can shrink the crop, apply color effects like sepia and color tinting, and use autocorrections for contrast, brightness, levels, and sharpening. On some photos, the contrast and brightness fixes did nothing, but I was able to verify that they do work on a washed-out aerial photo. Still, I'd recommend editing questionable photos with installed software, such as Lightroom or even the surprisingly powerful Photos app included with Windows 10.

I should note that the York website is a bit slow between page loads, even on our very fast corporate internet connection, compared with the other sites I tested.

Shipping options on the checkout page are less obvious that in competing sites, but the rates are very low: The default ground shipping was only $2.79. It took only four days for my pictures to arrive, even with that much cheaper shipping cost.

York has one of the largest selections of products you can have your photos printed on: In addition to standard prints, you can choose books, calendars, cards, posters, tee-shirts, puzzles, playing cards, blankets, pillows, and even neckties. Only Shutterfly comes close in the range of products, going so far as to offer pet food bowls and shower curtains.

The Results

My York test photo prints arrived in the least-protective packaging of any service I tested, a standard large paper envelope. In its favor, there was a cardboard insert in the envelope, and my photos were undamaged, but I could easily envision more-careless shipping handlers altering that outcome. All the others, except for Amazon Prints, used more-protective cardboard, overnight-style envelopes or even boxes, in the cases of AdoramaPix and Mpix. The images are printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, which is better than Walgreens Photo's no-name paper, but I prefer the professional level of Mpix and Nations' Kodak Endura paper.

The image quality of my test photos is acceptable, with good color and lighting. But they tend towards an oversharpened, artificial, postcardlike look. One photo with a dark evening sky is even ruined with artifact patterns in the sky (below). Other, even lower-cost competitors such as Walmart Photo didn't produce this kind of distortion in any of my test prints.

York Photo Printing Issue The mountain scene below (click the image for a larger view) shows the over-sharpened, unnatural look: Canarie Mountains with York Photo Labs And the portrait below with the red hat shows how this sharpening can be unflattering to human subjects. Red Hat Portrait Photo Printing Services Test  

Online Sharing

Hard copy isn't the only option: You can share your York albums via email, Facebook, and Twitter. Unfortunately, when I shared via email, the recipient could only view a page of small thumbnail photos, with none of Flickr's commenting, photo info, or full-size viewing and downloading. Worse, the same happened when I shared my photos to Facebook. You can only view the shared images full-size if you have a York Photo Labs account and save the shared gallery to it.

Low Cost, but Lackluster

York Photo Labs is a member of the exclusive 9-cent-per-print club along with Snapfish, but its website and packaging don't quite match up. Print color and brightness are good, though there are some issues with over-sharpening. For the best print quality, check out our Editors' Choices, AdoramaPix and Mpix. For the best low-cost options, our Editors' Choices are Snapfish and Walmart.

Best Photo Printing Picks

Further Reading

Final Thoughts

York Photo Labs offers prints and printed gifts at low prices, but you can find services with better print quality, interfaces, packaging, and online photo sharing. - Photo Printing

York Photo Labs

2.5 Fair

York Photo Labs offers prints and printed gifts at low prices, but you can find services with better print quality, interfaces, packaging, and online photo sharing.

About Our Expert

Michael Muchmore

Michael Muchmore

Contributor

My Experience

I've been testing PC and mobile software for more than 20 years, focusing on photo and video editing, operating systems, and web browsers. Prior to my current role, I covered software and apps for ExtremeTech and headed up PCMag’s enterprise software team. I’ve attended trade shows for Microsoft, Google, and Apple and written about all of them and their products.

I still get a kick out of seeing what's new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft misstep and win, up to the latest Windows 11.

I’m an avid bird photographer and traveler—I’ve been to 40 countries, many with great birds! Because I’m also a classical music fan and former performer, I’ve reviewed streaming services that emphasize classical music.

Technology I Use

For everyday work, I use a good-old Dell tower with 16GB of RAM, a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti GPU that runs on Windows 11. I pair it with a 4K Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-10 monitor and a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. For offsite work, I use a 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Camera-wise, I moved to mirrorless from a Canon EOS 80D with a Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens. I now have a Canon EOS R7 with a 100-400mm lens, but I miss my DSLR for several reasons.

In order of usage, the software I turn to most frequently is the Edge web browser, Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, Firefox, Brave, and WhatsApp. I use the Windows Phone link app to see everything on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, which has excellent telephoto capability.

For fitness monitoring, I have a Fitbit Charge 6 and use an Anker Smart Scale P1. I’m also a streaming fan, so I subscribe to both Amazon Music Unlimited (especially for its Dolby Atmos content) and Qobuz (for its high-res sound quality and classical catalog). I recently added a Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE, which sounds surprisingly good given its low price. To holler commands instead of using a remote control, I have the Amazon Fire TV Cube in the living room, which lets me verbally tell the TV what I want to watch. It hooks up to an LG B4 OLED TV. I have a Sonos One speaker in my kitchen that also ties in with Alexa, as does the Echo Dot 2 With Clock in my bedroom. For serious listening, I have B&W 601 speakers plugged into a Conrad-Johnson Sonographe amp and preamp, with a Cambridge Audio AXN10 streamer as source. For reading, I also have a Nook GlowLight 3.

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