Artifact Uprising Wedding Album Review

Today I’m here with an Artifact Uprising wedding album review. In the past I’ve liked Artifact Uprising‘s products enough that I decided I would use their platform to create albums for our (pre-pandemic) anniversary party for this review. But I went into it with a few reservations. Their product design is the gold standard for minimalists, and their software is overall pretty easy to use. I’ve used them for holiday presents over the years, and I’ve always found them to be good…but not flawless. I always struggled a bit with their photo printing. In product after product, I’ve found their printing to be a little dark. And I’d finally resigned myself: these are beautiful products, without a sky high cost, and the print quality is just imperfect. Fine. Everything in life is a trade-off, and I really like gold foil stamping on my album covers, so I just got over it.

Note: This post is part of our wedding album review series. To see all of our wedding album review posts, click here. Scroll to the bottom of the post for a special APW reader discount from Artifact Uprising!

And then, I made not one, but two of their layflat wedding albums. (Y’all: we have a LOT of beautiful pictures by Kenzie Kate from our anniversary party). And you guys? The photo quality for this product was out-of-this-world good, and combined with all of Artifact Uprising’s other strengths, I just may have found you a winning wedding album company.

(Disclaimer: While this is not a sponsored post, we did receive—in this case two—free albums. Mostly because we’re not made of money and can’t afford to buy a dozen $300 wedding albums to complete this wedding album review process.)

I ordered their largest Wedding Layflat Album, which came in at 14″ x 11″. I used the Luster photo paper, which I highly recommend, if you want killer print quality. My album was 66 pages, for $575. Here is how the album and the album making process stacks up:

Artifact Uprising WEDDING ALBUM REVIEW: A

Price: Artifact Uprising books start at $149 for an 8.5″ x 8.5″ album with 20 pages, and their largest album starts at $309. The price increases based on the size of your album and number of pages, with the most expensive album topping out at $609. (Yes, I got very close to making the most expensive possible album. Two of them. I like nice things, y’all.)

Cost per page: Base price includes 20 pages. Additional pages are $4.50 or $6.00 depending on the size of the album. A rough blended average on page price is ~$7.50/page.

Overall Book Quality: A-

These wedding albums are gorgeous. They also come packaged beautifully, and the process of unwrapping them was full of gasps of delight. They’re big and heavy, without feeling Kardashian-style over-the-top. The pages truly lay flat (though there is enough of a seam that you might want to watch that you don’t lay the most important part of the photo over the binding). And did I mention that they have gold foil? I did, but I’m going to keep mentioning it. Dreamy.

Overall ease of use of software: A-

I have found the winning photo book software, and it is Artifact Uprising. In fact, it’s so good, I have very little to say about it… because that is what happens when you build intuitive software. You just… use it… and it’s easy, and there isn’t anything to notice, because you’re not tearing out your hair. And that’s how I found Artifact Uprising‘s software. It let me sort my photos into albums, had a variety of simple page layouts that were exactly what I wanted, showed me which photos were already in my design, made it easy to adjust and edit photos on the fly… and made it very easy to change and edit photos and layouts as I went. What’s not to love?

I will make one rather significant note though, and even mark it in italics so you don’t miss it. The Artifact Uprising App and the desktop site are only partially linked. That means you can use the same login on both (so you think it’s all the same account). But if you build a project on your phone, because, you know, that’s where your photos are, you cannot access it from the desktop site, and vice-versa. It’s also important to note that if for some reason you have credit on the Artifact Uprising site (which I’ve had on several occasions), you can only use that credit on the desktop site, not on the app. (Remember this, so you don’t end up doing what I did, madly trying to re-build a project at the last minute.)

Photo Upload: A+

You can upload photos from Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Dropbox. If you have read any of my previous reviews, you know that I really like it when I can upload directly from Dropbox, so I was happy. I also uploaded a ton of high res photos, and found it to be pretty seamless, and as fast as one could expect.

Quality of design: A+

These are the design options I’ve been waiting for. Artifact Uprising has every sensible minimal layout a person could hope for, and none of the over-designed scrapbook-like layouts that I don’t want to have to wade through. I was able to find photo layouts that made intuitive and design sense for every photo spread, and it was easy to figure out what I wanted—and easy to tweak and adjust what didn’t work.

Cover quality & Options: A

In every album review thus far, I have let it be known that I just want nice fabric-bound books, in a variety of colors (including, who am I kidding, a nice millennial pink), with gold foil lettering. Artifact Uprising delivers exactly that, and allows you to put that lovely gold foil wording on the spine, so you can find exactly what album you’re looking for on the shelf. So if that is what want, Artifact Uprising is for you. If you’re looking for fancy photo covers, or leather, or lucite, or really… anything else… they don’t offer that. This is artful minimalism at it’s best. The options are curated, not maximal.

Quality of Photos Printed In Album: A-

As I mentioned, in the past, I’d been a little underwhelmed by Artifact Uprising‘s print quality. My best guess is this was because most of their products are printed on their Eggshell Paper, which is a lightly textured matte paper. It’s beautiful stuff, but not what photos are traditionally printed on, and absorbs ink differently. With the Luster Photo Paper offered in the layflat albums, the photos came to life exactly the way I wanted them to.

I will offer you this caveat. Artifact Uprising does not offer you the best photo quality on the market. Thus far, of the commercially available albums that I’ve tested, that honor goes to Shutterfly (though Shutterfly has many, many other issues, and also is much more expensive). That said, if you’re not a professional photographer, photo quality is a game of diminishing returns. You want it to be good enough, but beyond good enough, you’re likely not going to really notice the difference in quality unless you’re doing a one to one comparison. For me (and I look at photos all day for a living), Artifact Uprising’s layflat wedding album hit exactly the right quality point for photos. It was good enough that when I opened it I gasped, and as far as I’m concerned, anything beyond that is more than I need, and probably comes with a price tag I don’t want.

In short, if you want the best photo quality in the business, you’re likely in the market for an album that costs well over a grand. But if you’re looking for an album around the $500 range, this is better photo quality than you dared to dream of.

Overall color accuracy: A

I thought our anniversary party photos would be an interesting test of color accuracy, because we wore some bright and bold colors that day. And lo and behold, they printed just beautifully in the Artifact Uprising Wedding Album. Review: stellar.

Overall ALBUM SCORE: A

The Artifact Uprising wedding albums are beautiful. They would be my pick for creating a wedding album (and in fact, were my pick for creating anniversary party albums, and I’m really happy with my choice).

Final notes: make sure you use the Luster Photo Paper, don’t start building your album on the app, and you’ll have a wonderful experience.

This post is part of our wedding album review series. To see more of our wedding album review posts, click here. Artifact Uprising has a special APW reader discount, 15% off the Artifact Uprising site (1 discount code per person and does not apply to shipping, bundle deals, or Wedding Design Services), enter ‘APW15’ AT CHECKOUT.

This post is not sponsored, however we did receive a free album (two, actually) as part of our Artifact Uprising wedding album review, mostly because we’re not made of money and can’t afford to buy a dozen wedding albums. As always, we monetize some of the links on our site, so if you choose to make a purchase from any of our album reviews, APW may receive a commission. APW only links to products and services that will add value to our audience. All opinions are our own. If you enjoyed the Artifact Uprising wedding album review, take a look to see the rest of our album reviews here or search Wedding Album Reviews.