Back when digital cameras (and thus photos) were starting to take over from 35mm and film cameras, there seemed to be relatively few options for ordering your digital prints online. I seem to remember going with Snapfish, and manually uploading each photo through form elements.

Things have moved on since then.

There seem to dozens of different websites in the UK that promise the best photo printing service, and it is hard to actually find any differentiators. There are also a few oddities - primarily in that the Tesco Photo Service has the exact same interface as Photo Box; I’m sure this is just a case of white labelling the service, but it leads to confusion.

How hard is it to upload photos?

I’m not the busiest man in the world, but I’m busy enough (or think I am) to get frustrated by dated Java applets to upload my photos. They leave Google Chrome on OS X hanging and wanting to kill the pages off. I would even relish a Flash uploader, but then that rules out the majority mobile users (which might be a bit of a faff, anyway).

It is 2011 and HTML5 is in full swing, it is easy to build an HTML5 multi-uploader. Everyone has got relatively high speed internet and will be reassured by some moving progress bars.

The best I found was Bonusprints’ uploader, but even that failed to give me an update as it was uploading (all of 2) photos.

The best digital photo printing

…If you happen to be a Mac user, has got to be iPhoto itself, assuming you keep your photos there, that is.

This is one instance where Desktop easily beats Web. All my photos are stored there already, and it is able to do any resizing it wants to do on the fly and quickly send the photos for printing.

Of course, I have only just submitted the order, so the photos may well come back looking like a small child’s drawing of stick people - if this is the case, which I highly doubt, I’ll be sure to come back and let you know.