Having thousands of pictures on your hard drive or you smartphone and wanted to do a "no thrills but good looking" photo book? I was looking for a respective program - and failed to find one. I therefore programmed a little web app, where you can upload images and have a photo book produced in a couple of minutes. You can then send it off for printing (currently Blurb) or download and display it online. It is not perfect but produces quite nice results. Give it a try. And it would be great to receive feedback.
Over the past couple of years, I have tried out a number of photo printing services, including ifolor (standard quality), Aldi (ordered calendars as we are late with ordering before Xmas and Aldi was speedy in delivering), Whitewall (great - and horribly expensive, especially when you live outside the European Union). The most convincing service used in the recent past was Saal Digital, which delivers great quality, probably because this service prints on professional papers only (standard prints as well as fine art - if you live in the European Union, order from their German site as there is a substantial "uplift" for Swiss customers). An alternative is Albelli, which produces inexpensive prints but - in my opinion - does not come close to Saal as Albelli does not use high-end papers (but Fuji Archive, which last long but the colors are not that bright). Note: If you order from Albelli, use their German site, they deliver to all of Europe including Switzerland.
When I started portrait photography, I did a lot of shots agains one of my living room walls, which is not really a great background. I have tried a number of background removal tools, including online ones such as remove.bg. None of them provided for the quality I as looking for. Searching the open source world, I came across Transparent Background. Contrary to many other tools, this piece of software has been trained with large(er) images that other products, which makes it superior when removing the background from a porttrait image, where the main challenge is hair.
Alernatively, try https://github.com/nadermx/backgroundremover:
backgroundremover -i input.jpg -m u2net_human_seg -a -ae 15 -o outout.jpg
If you need to enlarge images, give ESGRAN or Upscayl. a try. It is free and available of Mac, Unix and PC.
If you really want large prints, Whitewall and partially Saal Digital offer large prints. They look just great - and come with a respective price tag. Lately, I went down another route and went with a specialist for marketing material, Wir machen Druck. They do all sorts of advertising a lowest prices. So, if you want a large print, which will only be on display for a limited period of time, try printing on DISPA. I also tried black and white prints on aluminum and they look really great. Note that Wir machen Druck is a Swiss company, which delivers to Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein, typically within 7 days.
Lensbaby manufacturers great DSLR and mirrorless camera lenses that enable creative effects for inventive photographers. I got two selective focus lenses and the results are just amazing. You can find examples when looking at my portfolio, e.g., the Road Days shooting.
Loreo develops 3D lenses and optical systems for consumers. Their products are designed to be practical. I have bought two 3D lenses to go onto my Canon DSLRs, originally acquired to take picture of my ageing grandparents.