A Review of Snapily

Snapily is a photo gift website with an innovative twist. They take your favorite digital photo and transform it into a greeting card, business card, notebook, invitation or scrapbook page with a feeling of depth and movement. Using a process called lenticular printing, Snapily creates distinctive products for every day photos.

Pros

• Innovative product
• A variety of themes

Cons

• Lacking in robust options for custom layouts

The Snapily website is a breeze to use. Browse through the products and themes and choose the one that best matches your occasion, or use the Snapily Gift Wizard to help you decide. Unless you have the need for a specific design, I recommend the “start from scratch” option, which allows you to use two of your pictures with fun results.

Once you’ve chosen a design, you’ll upload one or two pictures. This is straightforward and the system includes simple controls for placing photos. You can rotate, zoom and shift the photos to capture a particular area. It seems that in order to adjust the photos in some of the templates, you need to progress through the preview and then return. It’s somewhat clumsy and users may not realize the option exists so that may change as the website grows.

If the product has text, it can be customized with a limited font selection, bold text and font color. Space is limited and there is no option about how to justify text (i.e. center, left, right). Don’t plan on writing anything of real substance on the products just yet.

The items will have one of two effects. Some of the products have a static, but 3-dimensional effect. Others use two photos to create the illusion of change and movement. You can either select two distinctly different photos to show off, or you can choose two photos that are slightly different to create the sense of movement.

I created a set of business cards with the “Start from Scratch” option with the intention of using the cards as party favors for a birthday party. I selected two photos. One showed my kids smiling and laughing and the other had a nearly identical pose, but with scowling faces. The cards certainly captured the mercurial nature of two- and three-year olds. The picture printed a bit darker than I expected. I suspect this is due to the lenticular printing process, but users should know that the final product may be darker than the preview suggests. Also, I was a bit disappointed to be able to see the text through the picture while viewing the cards in normal lighting. With that said, I was excited to share the cards with others. Everyone who has seen them is impressed and they definitely have a “Wow!” factor.

Snapily definitely brings something new to the table with their lenticular printing process. They are still developing their website and it will be interesting to see how they grow with new products and customization options.