Tesco Photobook Review UK

Tesco Photobook Specifications Table

Pros

• Excellent colour balance
• Hard and soft cover options
• Personalized the front cover
• Glossy options
• Several size and orientation options
• Personalized spine text option
• Durability

Cons

• Limited cover material options
• Fewer size options with soft cover version
• Only one type of binding option (perfect binding)
• High price

Creating your own photobooks online is a fantastic way to turn treasured memories captured on digital cameras and phones into professional photo albums to keep forever or give away as personalized gifts or souvenirs to commemorate special events.

About the Company

Tesco Photobook is managed on behalf of Tesco Stores Limited by digital photo print service Max Spielmann Limited, which was founded in the 1950s. The company’s 160 Max shops became part of the Klick Photopoint chain owned by the Bowie Castlebank Group. Which operated a total of 600 shops throughout the UK until 2008.

Then the Timpson Group took over the company and invested in high-quality digital technology to offer the convenience of self-service photo printing kiosks.

Max shops are now found in more than 350 locations across the UK, including most large Tesco Extra stores, as well as in 250 more Tesco shops.

Many of the stores have terminals where you can create your own photo book. Making your photo books online lets you take as much time as you like to perfect your photobook just the way you want it.

Tesco Photobook Usability

Creating Tesco photo books online is straight forward and logical. All the themes are fully customizable but not overly complicated. Its easy to give your photo book a unique personal touch with a variety of design elements, fonts and backgrounds to play around with.

Before you can start using the Tesco photobook creator you first have to sign up to create an account by providing your name, email address and phone number; then you can save your Tesco photo books online and return to complete them in your own time.

Just be sure to log in to your account at least once every 30 days to keep your saved photobook active, otherwise, your progress will be deleted.

Adding your photos is super simple. You just drag and drop them into the pre-built layouts and adjust their position to your liking. There’s also a handy autofill function for quickly adding all your uploaded photos with a single click.

Tesco Photobook Design & Editing

Creating Tesco photo books online starts with choosing one of two options; either a soft cover or a hard cover, then choosing the size (small, medium or large). Planning ahead for this step will save you time and frustration because you can’t change the size or the cover type later. However, you can easily change layouts, page templates and background colours at any time.

Choosing a soft cover gives you only five size options, ranging from small to medium square and landscape sizes plus a medium portrait size.

Choosing a hardcover gives you seven size options and lets you add custom text to the spine for a more professional photobook look.

Size options for both hard and soft covers include square, landscape, and portrait orientation but the portrait is only available in the medium size (20x27cm).

Tesco Photobook Themes and Design

All the Tesco photo book designs give you 20 pages as standard but you can include up to 150 pages and give them a gloss finish for a professional look. The first two pages are blank, and so are the last two pages, and the book starts with the first photo printed on the right-hand page.

There are seven themes to choose from to make your Tesco collage photo book. The Monster Theme and School Theme are ideal for photo albums of kids’ pics, and there’s a unisex Baby Theme too.

If you’re putting together a wedding collage photo book, you can use Occasion Theme, which lets you add some nice romantic frames and features.

For holiday snaps you can use the Travel Theme. Or if you want to keep things simple, you can choose a blank template or select templates from three colour themes: White, Black or Grey.

Editing

If you’re in a hurry and want a quick and easy photo book option, you can instantly add all your uploaded photos to your photobook using the one-click autofill function, saving you a lot of time.

OIf you want to take your time and create a unique souvenir photobook, the Tesco photobook creator also has some advanced editing options that let you change the shape, size and orientation of the photos. Which isn’t always possible with some of the simpler editors for other photo books online.

For example, you might want to frame a photo in a circle or a heart, which is a nice extra if you’re making the photo book as a gift for someone special.

The Tesco photobook creator also lets you add your own text to the pages and on the cover for a really personal touch. Its also handy for adding names and dates to the photos. The hardcover version also lets you add text to the photobook’s spine.

Tesco Photobook Checkout & Delivery

All Tesco photobook designs give you 20 pages as standard. Extra pages cost between £1.00 and £2.00 depending on the photobook size. Add a gloss finish to all the inside pages for between £4.00 and £9.00 depending on the photobook size as well.

Delivery is free if you opt to pick up your photobook in-store, or you can pay £4.99 for home delivery, which takes about a week. I got mine in six days, which is quite quick compared to other stores, which can take up to three weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Tesco Photobook Reviews

I couldn’t find any reviews of Tesco photo books on Trustpilot or any of the other popular review sites. I did find an unbiased review of supermarket photo books online which gave Tesco the highest score out of four photobook creators. The review was based on the customizable options, delivery time, print quality and strength of the binding.

Tesco Photobook Alternatives

Other supermarkets offering photo books online and in stores include Asda, Boots, and Aldi. Like Tesco, Asda uses Max Spielmann Limited to print the photobooks, and offers the same range of sizes but actually offers more binding options than Tesco.

Most other photo book services also offer a variety of binding options such as ring wire, lay flat, and stapled. Tesco loses a few points here but having only one binding option does ensure consistently high quality.

Feedback & Conclusion

Creating Tesco photo books online is fun! You can get really creative with the customizable page layouts. One of my favorite features is being able to put several photos on a single page and make them different sizes with custom frames and overlay text too.

Price-wise, Tesco photo books are more expensive than those by Asda and Aldi but slightly cheaper than Boots’ photo books, which are 26 pages as standard.

However, the higher price for Tesco photo books is somewhat justified by the assurance of better quality than its cheaper counterparts.

Although binding options are limited to perfect binding, which doesn’t allow you to lay the book flat, the printed photobooks are strong and built to last.

Hardcovers are gloss laminated and the soft photo book covers are printed on durable 300 gsm gloss-laminated paper.

Overall, paying more for Tesco photobooks gives you peace of mind that the end result will be high quality and long lasting.

The frame edges are neat and sharp, and the colour reproduction is well-balanced. Its especially good for reproducing natural-looking skin tones without oversaturation.