Printing photos at home from your digital camera can be time consuming and expensive, but with online picture printing services, the process of getting high quality printed photos is simple and fairly cheap. More people are turning to these types of services as opposed to printing photos from home, but which online photo printing company is the best buy?

In this article, we'll compare two of the leaders in the online image printing industry, Snapfish and Clark Color.

Print Quality

Print quality is obviously a critical part of the decision making process in terms of choosing an online picture printing service. Other features are worthless if your pictures arrive dull or blurry.

From our experience, Snapfish produces some of the highest quality prints across the board. Colors are accurate and vibrant while cropping, which can quickly destroy the artistic quality of your prints, is kept to a minimum.

Clark Color's photos, while still high in quality, were a bit less impressive than those from Snapfish. Colors were a little off and some details were faded. On a positive note, cropping was minimal unlike some other industry competitors.

Pricing

Price must factor in to any buying decision in order to make a decision on the value of quality. The pricing structure of both Snapfish and Clark Color are almost identical. Clark Color costs a few pennies less than Snapfish for most products, not enough to make a significant impact unless you're ordering large quantities. For those ordering in bulk, both services offer discounts on large orders.

Though Clark Color's photos are a penny or two cheaper, Snapfish offers lower shipping rates than Clark Color so the total order tends to cost less in the end. The packaging used by Snapfish and Clark Color could use some improvement. Both use packaging that is somewhat flimsy, but Clark Color's seems especially fragile.

Features and Options

One of the things people like most about using online image printing services is having the ability to emblazon their images on a variety of unique products. Both Snapfish and Clark Color will print your photo on a variety of different type of merchandise, from coffee mugs, to dog collars, to puzzles, and even cutting boards.

Choosing the right online picture printing service for you

With both online picture printing services so equally matched, your choice will likely depend on your level of comfort with the website and its interface. Price, quality, packaging, and features are so similar, that it really comes down to personal preference.