Free Printed Photos Are Always Nice

So I tend to avoid having my digital photographs printed, using the eternally appropriate excuse of, "I'm not done editing them yet." The other half of that excuse is that printing photographs takes money, and poor college students might as well save their dollars for good concerts and admire their photos on flickr and nowhere else.

Today, though, I got an envelope full of basically free photographs in the mail, courtesy of Shutterfly. They're a pretty nice website, but when I signed up I wasn't expecting anything more than the usual online image printing service.

Every week or so, they send you an e-mail with some sweet deal in it. Honestly nice things, like free shipping or 25% off anything if you order in the next three days. The best offers, though, are free prints. Today's mail came as a result of a 15 free print order... all I had to do was pay for shipping. Since I had photographs from the Unlimited Enthusiasm Expo already edited and ready to print, I ran a few quick crops, paid the $2.04 for shipping and taxes, and placed my order.

The photographs arrived today nicely packaged and looking pretty good. I'd forgotten the honest feel of printed photographs; all of the yellows in my shots really stood out in a way they hadn't on a computer screen. I have no complaints about the prints and hadn't expected them to arrive until next week (I ordered on July 8), so bonus points to them.

I would definitely recommend signing up for a Shutterfly account, even if you don't plan on purchasing many photo prints. Their regular prices are usually 19 cents for a 4x6 (only 15 cents for the summer), but the real draw here are the weekly offers which make it well worth your while. These guys seriously love to give away free prints... almost anything you do on their site can earn you more freebies. Right now you can get free prints just by adding one of your photos to a map. Isn't free stuff awesome?

I'm not sure if other digital photo companies do this, but I intend to find out. When I have time, I'll run a full comparison -- probably in September. Most companies have enticing sign-up gifts, so I've waited to sign up for new accounts until I have cleanly edited photographs ready and waiting. I'll keep careful records of all the offers I receive from now until then and look at prices and everything. It'll be grand.

If you have a digital image printing service to recommend, or thoughts on ones you've tried, let me know in the comments! I look forward to seeing which ones fight for their customers the most.