We’re kinda into products that take digital photos into the physical realm — call us analog oldsters, but sometimes, it’s nice to have a memento you can hold in your hands or give as a gift.

That’s why our interest is piqued by Printzel. It’s a just-launched iPad app that lets you create really good-looking books — hardcover or soft — from your photos.

Check it out:

You can choose from three book sizes, four cover finishes, and five cover colors. The company also has a developer program for devs who want to build printing features into their own apps.

Similar services are seeing a sort of renaissance lately as web-saturated consumers turn from the novelty of all-online experiences and look for something more familiar and physically real. Kicksend, Instacanvas, and Socialmatic are some of the more recent offerings on the market.

Printzel was founded in New York City in 2011. Its three co-founders are Steven Baughman, Jason Horwitz, and Jason Powers, a collective of digital design nerds.

Kicksend, the photo-sharing web and mobile app for families and friends, has just unveiled the latest version of its app. Just in time for holiday cards and end-of-year reminiscences, the startup is letting its users send their photos to stores to be printed — either a drugstore near you or a store near the ones you love.

“What we have done is essentially made it dead simple to take an album of photos, share it with your family and also made it possible to you and them both to print those photos in the easiest way possible,” said Kicksend founder Pradeep Elankumaran in an email to VentureBeat.

The app’s retail integration will start with CVS, Walgreens (already a Kicksend partner), and Target stores, and Elankumaran said more deals and other partners will be announced soon.

“For the retailers, it extends the investments they have made in their photo infrastructure,” he said. “For us, it is a business model that is not dependent on advertising.”

With the new print-to-family feature, Kicksend users pick the pics they want to send to their family or friends. The intended recipient will get a text message or an email — no crazy apps to download for Grandpa Hector! — and can order the prints they want in the sizes they want at the store they want.

The print-to-store/print-to-family feature is just one aspect of the new Kicksend app, which appears today in its third iteration. Other new touches include smart albums (photos are grouped based on date/time and location), the ability to share albums, and some privacy tweaks to make the product better for small groups to use.

And the mobile interfaces has gotten some love, too. “We massively overhauled all of Kicksend’s apps to make it have visual and UX design that’s on par with the best consumer apps on the iOS and Android platforms,” said Elankumaran. (The company’s corresponding web app got an overhaul back in May, as well.)

Here’s a sneak peek:

Kicksend was founded in 2011 and graduated from Y Combinator that year. The startup is based in Mountain View, California.

Top image courtesy of wavebreakmedia, Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Business is booming for Instacanvas, an Instagram printshop that today is announcing $1.7 million in funding and is putting additional insta-keepsakes up for sale.

The young, Los Angeles-based company, a recent graduate of the MuckerLab incubator, piggybacks on Instagram’s artsy appeal (and success) and gives photographers online galleries where they can display and sell their filtered photos as printed canvases.

Instacanvas’ new products

Launched to the public in May, the Instacanvas marketplace appears to be doing A-okay, and investors haven’t been scared off by the fact that Facebook has since gobbled up Instagram. Instacanvas has an annualized revenue run rate of $1 million and powers more than 60,000 photographer galleries, CEO Matt Munson told VentureBeat.

The company, which currently sells prints as square canvases, has today introduced additional products for purchase: framed prints and desktop art pieces.

Instacanvas has experienced challenging scaling issues because of its viral growth, said Munson. The fresh funding will help the seven-person company scale to meet demand, augment its product lineup, and hire aggressively, he said.

The startup, which competes with an assortment of Instagram-driven keepsake companies, also aims to diversify and eventually allow its photographers to hawk shots hosted on other social platforms.

The round announced today is the first formal raise for Instacanvas. It was led by Founders Fund, First Round Capital, Bullpen Capital, and Scott Banister, and included participation from 15 additional angel investors.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

RPI, a company that prints custom photo products, today announced it secured a $5 million round of funding from Huntington Capital. The funding will be used to introduce new services like merchandising programs and brand owner opportunities according to the company’s announcement.

RPI prints photo books as well as greeting cards, invitations, calendars, notebooks, posters, and pretty much anything else you can think up. All products can be customized and mass-manufactured based on a 14 step process and patent-pending software. The company provides an online portal so that customers can log in and see where their print job is in the process.

While there are numerous companies that will print a customized photo or album, including West Sky Promotions or Promopeddler.com, RPI appears to target brands looking to place a larger order. The company prices are about 40 percent of the photo printing products industry, according to its website. Working with partners like Walgreens, Snapfish or TinyPrints, RPI develops, manufacturers and delivers customer orders, including posters, cards or books (pictured above) to customers, according to Xconomy.

Huntington Capital’s Tim Bubnack will join RPI’s board of directors.