SnapBox turns smartphone photos into framed canvas prints
For less than $10 you can turn that shot you love that's on your phone into framed artwork.
- More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Sharing photos you've taken with your phone has become second nature. Turning them into framed prints, on the other hand, is probably one of those things you think about doing but never get around to.
A new service, SnapBox, aims to fix that by making it easy and affordable to make your smartphone photos into high-quality framed artwork.
Instead of creating and maintaining apps for different platforms, SnapBox decided to use e-mail instead for its ordering process. All you need to do is attach the photo you want printed to an e-mail and send it to snapbox@snapboxez.com. A few minutes later you receive a mock-up of what your print will look like at the offered sizes: 5x7, 8x10, and 10x13, as well as 5x5 and 9x9 offered with Instagram users in mind.
Click on the size you want in the e-mail and you're taken to the site to order. Prices start at $9.79 for the 5x5 or 5x7 prints and go up to $24.49. There is a charge for shipping, too, but SnapBox is promising a five-day turn around on orders; three days to manufacture and two days of shipping. However, you can get free shipping by choosing to have them sent to one of 12,000 U.S. retail locations including Bartell Drugs and, in November, CVS and Rite Aid.
The company behind all of this is Jondo-USA, which specializes in fine art reproductions for galleries and publishers. It's using the same facilities and printing technologies that it uses for fine art to produce SnapBox's photo giclee museum-quality wrapped prints.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, "smartphone photos are going to look terrible as large prints," and they might depending on the photo. But, since these are printed to canvas, it's more forgiving than a paper print. Of course, SnapBox will print other photos, too, not just those from smartphones. And really, for less than $10 including the frame, you can give it shot and not worry too much about the photo quality.