Shutterfly print question???

[Quirky]

Hey everyone I need advice...I keep creating these pages and showing them to my mother on the computer...she told me last night she's had it she wants them printed! SOOO...me being the student i'm broke so I was trying to find the cheapest, yet decent print place and found Shutterfly. They say to do everything in 300 dpi...Most of my layouts are in 200 dpi. Should I resize the whole thing before I send it to them? Has anyone worked with Shutterfly yet, I know probably a stupid question. And all my layouts are 12x12 exactly. Do I need to duplicate the background and make them bigger??? HELP! Can you tell i'm lost and scared! I don't want to send them my stuff just to waste the money and it suck. Any help much appriciated!

[Meg]

I would suggest sizing DOWN to 8x8 at 300 dpi. I find 8x8 a great size to print (it's basically what you see on your computer screen, 12x12 seems amazingly big whenever I print that size). If you size to 8x8, you don't have to make any adjustments or anything.

Also though, I've had pages printed at 12x12 at 200 dpi (even when the site suggests 300dpi) and they look fabulous. I really can't tell any difference between the two.

Hope this helps!

[beachin]

Have you considered making them into a book? www.Pagesofalifetime.com does a wonderful job.

[Minniewannabe]

I've used Shutterfly and have had great experiences. I like them better than MyPublisher.com because Shutterfly has both 12x12 and 8x8 photo books for scrappers. They even have an easy template for scrappers so your LOs will automatically bleed to the edge.

The only downfall with all these online photo books is that a tiny bit around the edges of your LO gets cutoff. I guess it's so they can be sure and bleed all the way to the edge in the print process. At any rate, make sure your embellishments are not right at the edge of your LO.

Finally, I've been very pleased with the colors, vividness, and quality of the books. Your photos you may want to lighten just a tad more than what looks best on the computer screen. Experiment first with a small, inexpensive book if you're worried your resolution won't be good enough. I do my LOs 12 x12 in 300 dpi, but the stuff you buy on this website, I believe, is only 200 dpi. I've never had any of the kits I've bought not print right on these photo books from Shutterfly.

[beachin]

If you use PagesofaLifetime, there is no cut off of your layout.

Just make sure that you upload your lo to the edges of the cut off boarders, check in the preview, and you are good to go.