Pixum review

We were immediately impressed by Pixum’s range of options for uploading and ordering your photos. While most printing services closely restrict the formats you can upload, Pixum allows you to use TIFF, PNG, BMP and other image formats in addition to the usual JPEGs. Better yet, it has a maximum file size of 50MB, allowing you to upload truly massive resolutions for high-quality enlargements.

There are masses of upload options, too, including a Flash uploader that allows you to browse for files using Windows Explorer, a standard drag-and-drop Java uploader, an iPhoto plugin for Mac users, and even email, postal and FTP options.

By default, Digital Photo Optimisation is applied to your pictures to create the best colour, contrast and sharpness for digital photos. However, Pixum recommends disabling this if you’re printing scanned photos or images which have already been optimised using photo editing software. You should also make sure that your desired size – 6x4in in our case – is selected for each print, as Pixum defaults to smaller digital print sizes rather than cropped traditional sizes based on each photo’s resolution.

Pixum’s prices are a little lower than those of most online photo printing services’ at the moment. If you order between 26 and 201 6x4in prints, they’ll cost you 9p each, and you get 25 free snaps when you join. It’s worth noting that Pixum defaults to sending photos to billing address – if you want a separate delivery address, you’ll have to locate the rather small link on the address and payment page which allows you to add this.

This graph totals our blind test scores from all the prints in a stacked bar graph, so you can see which service did best overall and where their individual strengths lie – click to enlarge

The service didn’t do too badly in our quality tests, with good reproductions of both night-time and day-lit landscapes and fine foreground detail. However, like many online printing services, its quality suffered when it came to the all-important reproduction of subtle skin tones. Pale tones in particular became ruddy, flushed and a little blotchy. We also noticed a slight over-emphasis of blue and purple tones in our low-contrast test shot.

Here’s our natural skin tones test, scanned from the actual print, which failed to recreate the subtle, fair tones of the original – click to enlarge

Pixum is reasonably priced and the flexibility of its upload options is matchless, but poor skintone reproduction keeps it out of the top flight of photo printers. A better – and cheaper – online option is Foto.com.