{"id":6782,"date":"2018-08-01T13:01:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T18:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tcn.tidbits.com\/?p=6348"},"modified":"2018-08-05T15:30:18","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T20:30:18","slug":"apple-is-discontinuing-its-photo-printing-services-here-are-7-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/apple-is-discontinuing-its-photo-printing-services-here-are-7-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Is Discontinuing Its Photo Printing Service – Here Are 7 Alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sad news: Apple is discontinuing its photo printing services, which enabled you to create and order physical prints, cards, calendars, and books from within Photos on the Mac. If you\u2019re building such a project right now, be sure to place your order before September 30th, 2018. After that, Apple is directing users to download a Photos Project Extension from the Mac App Store. You\u2019ll see this dialog whenever you click a project in Photos.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When you click the Open App Store button, Photos opens the App Store app and shows available Photos Project Extensions. (If you need to open this Mac App Store screen manually, search on appex:com.apple.photo-project<\/code>.) Most of these extensions are free, since they\u2019ll make their money when you order projects.<\/p>\n

These extensions aren\u2019t exact replacements for Apple\u2019s projects, so let\u2019s look briefly at what they provide.<\/p>\n

Mimeo Photos<\/h3>\n

The extension that comes closest to providing the same products and features as Apple\u2019s print projects is Mimeo Photos<\/a>, which can create cards, calendars, and books. It offers a wide array of themes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Motif<\/h3>\n

Motif<\/a> looks quite similar to Mimeo Photos, also enabling you to create cards, calendars, and books with selected photos, and it comes from RR Donnelley, the company that was previously Apple\u2019s partner for print projects. It doesn\u2019t offer as many themes or options as Mimeo Photos, but it has a better interface.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Shutterfly<\/h3>\n

Even though the popular Shutterfly<\/a> photo printing service\u2019s Web site lets you go beyond the basics to put your photos on a vast number of objects, such as pillows, candles, and trivets, the company\u2019s Photos extension is limited to photo books. Happily, it provides quite a few different sizes and bindings, and numerous themes for each.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fujifilm Prints & Gifts<\/h3>\n

The Fujifilm Prints & Gifts<\/a> extension lets you order prints, cards, wall art, mugs and drinkware, magnets, T-shirts, puzzles, iPhone cases, and much more. However, it has a non-standard interface (basically the company\u2019s Web site), and every time we switched out of the extension, it crashed and forgot which photo we\u2019d had selected.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mpix<\/h3>\n

Although Mpix<\/a> seems to focus on prints, if you scroll down in the project list, the final option is Browse Mpix, which provides more photo printing possibilities, including photo books, calendars, collages, foil art prints, posters, keychains, magnets, playing cards, and business cards. Confusingly, with some of these items, Photos acts as nothing more than a window onto Mpix\u2019s Web site, with no awareness of the photos you\u2019ve selected.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

WhiteWall<\/h3>\n

WhiteWall<\/a> focuses entirely on prints, with high-end choices for exotic papers and options for mounting and framing. Supported sizes range from 8\u2033 x 6\u2033 up to 48\u2033 x 36\u2033. Unfortunately, the WhiteWall prices seemed high (a framed photo was between $130 and $530, depending on size), and once you select a particular paper or frame choice, there is no way to try another with the same photo without starting another project.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wix<\/h3>\n

Unlike all the others, the Wix extension doesn\u2019t put photos on physical products at all. Instead, it\u2019s designed to create on-screen photo albums for Web sites designed with the Wix<\/a> service. As such, it\u2019s potentially extremely useful for Wix users, but not at all for everyone else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too bad that Apple is getting out of the Apple photo printing business since the interfaces from these extensions tend not to be as good as what we\u2019re used to from Apple. But if you like making yourself a calendar every year, you\u2019ll probably do fine with Mimeo Photos or Motif, and the rest of the extensions do extend Photos\u2019 printing capabilities in a big way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sad news: Apple is discontinuing its photo printing services, which enabled you to create and order physical prints, cards, calendars, and books from within Photos on the Mac. If you\u2019re building such a project right now, be sure to place your order before September 30th, 2018. After that, Apple is directing users to download a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,69,25,384],"tags":[126,70,386,385],"class_list":["post-6782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-apple-consultants","category-apple-consulting-ct","category-mac","category-photos","tag-apple-consulting-ct","tag-mac-consulting-ct","tag-photo-book","tag-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6790,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6782\/revisions\/6790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}