Artifact Uprising Square Prints Review

I wanted to share some quick thoughts on these prints. I’ve been taking photographs for over a decade now and I am just now starting to have an obsession with prints, especially square prints. I see my photographs all the time on screen. It’s such a different feeling to touch and hold your photographs in your hands. It evokes a personal and tangible sentiment of a memory.

Anyway, these square prints from Artifact Uprising come in three sizes at the time of writing this: 3.25″ x3.25″, 4″x4″ and 5″x5″. The photos of the prints below are 4″x4″. They’re also available with or without borders and I prefer prints with borders. I also find both their online upload tool as well as their mobile app super easy to order prints.

As far as the quality goes, these prints feel premium in the hand. The color is almost exactly how I uploaded them (they recommend sRGB files) and are very rich in tone and depth. Blacks obviously aren’t as rich as gloss prints but I still find them deep enough. The texture from the print makes for a pretty unique print.

The packaging of these prints also add to the overall vibe of the product. When companies take time to present their work to you, you can almost always be assured that the product itself is of great craftsmanship. This is where I believe Artifact Uprising sets itself apart from other companies. From their web UI, mobile app, IG to their packaging, you know they’re a business that understands quality.

As far as sharpness goes, it’s quite good though not the best but you have to take into consideration that sharpness overall, when dealing with anything “matte” will always suffer a bit so there is a trade off. The print seems to bleed into the paper, vs. sit on top of it like glossy prints. If you are a glossy print fan, this might not be for you.

From upload, to preparing, printing and shipping… it’s actually pretty fast. I’d say you can expect a shipment notification in 1-2 business days.

However, the worst part of these prints is the shipping price which is why I’ve given value a score of 3. For $18 for a set of 25 “4×4” prints, I consider that price really good, especially when you take into consideration the price of Instax film. But then the shipping rate for this order is $6.99. That is pretty much 40% the cost of the prints. Now it does come in that fancy little cardboard box which I’m not sure is why shipping is so much, but if that is the case, I would rather them include that in the price of the actual prints, vs shipping.

We have Amazon to thank for being such snobs when it comes to expensive shipping.

Shipping rant aside, all in all, I’m super impressed with this company. So much so that I’ll continue printing with Artifact Uprising and plan to create and order a photo book with them soon. I’ll make sure to give my thoughts on that process once it happens.

Lastly, if anyone has any cool ideas on what to do with square prints, I’d love to hear them. As it stands now, they’re currently just stacked on my coffee table for guests to browse.

Now for photos of photos!