While in Wal-Mart recently, I noticed advertisments for 4-by-6 prints made from digital photos. The price seemed right, twenty-nine cents each, so I thought it might be worth trying. Tonite I loaded up a Zip disk with a few photos to try printing. Once in the photo lab, I was informed that the prints were made at the self-serve scanning station. Yup, they save money by turning you into cheap labor. Not wanting to screw around on that thing in the middle of the store, I went home to see what was available online. First place I went was the Wal-Mart webpage. Checking on their webpage, you can upload photos and have prints made for... *drumroll* twenty-six cents each. Yup, it's cheaper to have someone else do them than do them yourself. It was around a dollar to have the prints shipped right to you, or you could pick them up at your local Wal-Mart photo lab with no shipping charge. After this, I check out the webpage of my local camera store, Castle Photo in Sylvania, Ohio. They advertise on their webpage 4-by-6 prints made from digital images for a dollar and some change each. Yeouch! After a little more searching, I found that Adorama does prints from digital files in their New York lab. They say for twenty-nine cents they'll print a 4-by-6 image. As an added bouns, they offered the most online guidance, telling what resolution digital images should be for each size print; this was something none of the other places mentioned. Long story short, I just ordered ten prints from Adorama. Using a promotion code for first time customers, I got the prints for free, but had to pay two bucks shipping. Oh well. They'll be here in a week, and I'll surely let you all know how they came out!
I used to use www.shutterfly.com, but are now using Target, 27 cents a print, and you just give them a cd (or any other media) with the pictures you want. Easy and relatively cheap.
Far, far cheaper than I had done around 2.5 years ago. The lab didn't even have a CF card reader (went and bought one specially) and charged like a wounded bull for what was a glorified thermal wax print! I have to say they said the photos were the best they had seen from a digital camera (Coolpix 950) at that time. I would have liked to see what cameras were being used by others to elicit that remark! Good to see it's getting more sensible out there in the marketplace.
Most of the small sized printing I do myself now, up to about 8 x 10. I don't have the need for anything larger most of the time. However, I know from experience that Ofoto, which is owned by Kodak, does excellent work. For any of the pictures I have uploaded to that site, I can check to see the maximum size would be for a top quality print. To test them out a while ago I orderded a 25 x 20 print, the maximum shown for that image. The results are beautiful and I only paid $16.00 for the service. I now have it framed and on the wall at home.
Finally got the pictures back yesterday; there was a glitch with my credit card which slowed down the process a bit. And the verdict? Awsome, to say the least. The prints came out exactly as they looked on the screen. I'm working on another order for more small prints and some larger ones to test the limits of this....
