How to Create an Account on Shutterfly & Upload Photos
On Shutterfly’s homepage you can create a free account by simply registering your email address. Once you've created your account, on the top green navigation bar, click “Add Pictures”—here you can create a photo album and upload photos from your portrait shoot. [figure 1]

We titled our album “Mother’s Day.” [figure 2]

After your upload is complete you can make enhancements to your photos through a variety of options on the right of the page, including Fix red eye, Cropping, Effects & Borders. You may also need to rotate your photo. [figure 3]

Selecting your Gift
First, we wanted to create a gift for Ruby’s grandmother—she lives far away and the family won’t be able to spend Mother’s Day with her, so mailing a personalized card is a perfect gift. We’ve selected the photo of the entire family—Rohan, Kaela & Ruby. [figure 4]

Click on “Shutterfly Store” to view gift options. We chose the “Cascading Bloom” card. [figure 5] With this card, you can choose to insert 1, 2 or 3 photos onto the card. Click on “Click here to add pictures.” You’ll now select the photo and click “Add this picture.” [figure 6]

Editing your Card
Your photo should now be queued in the card. [figure 7] Note that upon insertion, you may see a little warning exclamation symbol, as we did here. This appeared because the resolution of our photo was too low to be reproduced to this size. Be sure to use photos that are the appropriate size and resolution for your cards so that you don’t end up with blurry photo cards. This warning sign will also appear when your text doesn’t properly fit within the card. [figure 8]

We swapped out the low-resolution version of our photo with a high-resolution version and inserted it. Once you’re happy with your photo, you can add text. [figure 9]


When you create your card, you can select a matte or satin finish. While editing your card, if you aren’t sure if you like your card style, you can easily switch between card styles to see what works best. [figure 10]

Click "Next" to add a greeting to the inside of your card. [figure 11]

Shipping your Card
Then click "Next" to choose a mailing option. Shutterfly has two options “Send cards back to me” or “Mail cards for me.” You may want to have the order mailed to you in order to sign your name. In some cases, you may have a long list of recipients and it might be easier to just import the addresses and pay to have Shutterfly mail them for you. In this case, Ruby created a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork to include with the card, so we will have it sent to us, then mail to our grandmother.

Once you've finalized the images, layout and text, make sure to preview how your card will look. Here’s our cover: [figure 12]

Here’s the inside of our card. [figure 13]

Once you add in the shipping information you’ll be ready to check out!

We also decided to use the outtake from the photo shoot of Ruby with the tulip, which we thought would make a great card for Kaela. [figure 14]


We picked a new card style, “Best Mom Ever.” [figure 15]

Notice that Ruby's feet are just barely cut off at the bottom of the picture. To edit this, hover your mouse over the photo within the card, notice it outlines with red when you do this. [figure 16] Click the photo and you’ll be brought into a new small window. Here you'll be able to edit the photo by zooming in or out, or try out other edits, such as adjusting the color tone.

In figure 17, you can see how the tool can apply a Sepia tone.

We only needed to move the photo up a notch so that Ruby’s toes fit into the frame. [figure 18]

Here’s our final card for Ruby to give to Kaela. [figure 19]

Here’s another layout that we came up with, using multiple photos on the cover. [figure 20]

Note that you can also create calendars, mugs, collage posters and more with your photos! Have fun exploring Shutterfly to create your own unique gift for your loved ones. And don't forget! Web Photo School members can get 3 FREE months on Shutterfly Pro. Learn how to make money with your photos!