DIY photo calendars on the internets

November 17, 2008 10:47 AM

Looking to print a few calendars with my photos as holiday gifts for friends and family. I've read (some old) mixed reviews on QOOP, a printing service that integrates directly with Flickr, and I'm curious if people have recent opinions on the print quality and what other reputable services are available.

The huge, obvious advantage to QOOP is its interface with Flickr, where all of my photos are uploaded. I found this incredibly easy and useful when ordering some cards from Moo last year. (What is with all the funky names?) I would order again from Moo in a heartbeat if they did calendars.

QOOP's uploading interface seems pretty user-friendly after playing around in it for a while, but I'd like some more opinions on the print quality before I go and order several calendars. I'm only ordering ~10 calendars, so any place that requires huge quantity orders would obviously be out of the mix.

posted by sararah to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I have ordered mini print books from QOOP before, with mixed results. Some were good, some were eh. I just did a print run of calendars for the grandparents, and used VistaPrint (links to desk calendar ordering, wall calendar ordering) based on a friend's recommendation. I got the calendars back and I am very happy with the print quality, so recommended! You can get an additional discount on the price using a fatwallet code.
posted by Joh at 11:04 AM on November 17, 2008

i have not used qoop before for calendars, but i used shutterfly for this exact thing last year. i was pleased with the ease of calendar design and i was pleased with the end product. affordable as well. the selling point of using them over others last year was that shutterfly let me add more than one photo to each page if i wanted to. kind of a collage. you could have 1-4 or 6 photos per page in varying layouts and every page could be different (you didn't have to pick one template for the whole calendar).
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2008

I used Wal-Mart (where I usually refuse to shop) online for calendars a couple years ago and I was really, really happy with the price, the quality, and the ease of use. You can customize dates and styles. I like the sound of the shutterfly system, though, so I might try that this year.
posted by cooker girl at 11:19 AM on November 17, 2008

I've been using Qoop for calendars for several years and will probably do it again this year. Overall, I'm pleased with them but I will note that if you are a really serious design type person, you might not be. The paper isn't the best I've ever encountered and some of my stuff looked a bit grainy, but that was before I'd upgraded to an SLR, so that might be why. However, in general, for low key, relatively low cost holiday gifts, they rock. Note that I am not a super graphic design person (I am a really low key non anal graphic design person, thus unsuccessful) - anyway, I just know enough of them where I can see where QOOP might not be their thing. However, I'll be doing it again this year and the flickr/qoop interface makes it totally easy.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:43 PM on November 17, 2008

I know someone who got calendars and cards through RedBubble and they looked pretty good. You might find some other options on Photopreneur as well.
posted by catlet at 12:03 PM on November 18, 2008

Just wanted to say that I ended up going with the QOOP calendars, and they turned out very nice. Color is great, pictures are pretty sharp, I am very pleased. They were a little expensive but the flickr/QOOP interface was what sold me ultimately, and next year I'll be sure to keep an eye out for early sales.

The only mistake was a fault of my own -- I used one picture twice (in one of the "collage pages" where I had 4 pictures, luckily the double pic is separated by several months) So just be sure to proof your calendar ;) If anyone wants pictures of my finished product, I can try to take some, just memail me.
posted by sararah at 5:32 PM on December 11, 2008