Before I order prints of the many photos we have of the lil' one from our local favorite developing spot (Pro Photo Supply) at $0.20 a print I want to make sure they are worth the extra money. So, I'm sending the same group of photos to Snapfish ($0.09) and Shutterfly ($0.12) to do a quality comparison. I wanted to send them to Kodak as well but those guys only offer the matte finish for photos larger than 8x10. If anyone else has a favorite spot, let me know and I'll add them to the experiment. More on this later...
Update: Shutterfly allows you to pick up your photos at Target and Snapfish allows you to grab photos from Walgreens. (In researching this I found that Longs is also connected to Snapfish.) I'm making the assumption that the quality remains the same whether or not you order the prints to be picked up at the store or have them delivered. I have developed photos from Rite-Aid before. The quality was spotty enough to be excluded from this experiment. One obvious place I missed, though, was Costco so I'm heading to their web site posthaste to order the same set from them. (The great thing is they are all of Henry so when I'm done I can send pics of the grandkid to the various grandparents, two of whom currently dwell outside the U.S. - downtown Canada and Peru.) And I will order another set from Creative Memories as well.
Costco charges $0.17 per photo and offers a lustre finish. This is apparently less glossy than the glossy option so I forged ahead.
Creative Memories charges $0.19.
Two companies (Creative Memories and I can't remember the other one) offer a non-standard size photo - slightly smaller than 4x6 - to give you the best picture given the aspect ratio without cropping the photo to fit the traditional 4x6 size. We'll see how that works. Several companies use processes that are supposed to brighten whites and make colors more vivid, yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm hoping it doesn't destroy the shadows I've tried to capture on some of the photos.
Update: I have purchased yet another set of photos from scrapbookpictures.com. They are local - like Pro Photo Supply. Their current price is $0.12 per print.
7 comments:
Sometimes I use snapfish and have it sent to our Walgreens to pick up in an hour. Usually I use Creative Memories http://www.cmphotocenter.com/home.php
And no, this is not a plug for my business, because I make no money off of people using their photo developing.
I don't know how much it costs, because I always prepay for a big package and pay 12cents a print.
Anyway - I like them because the pictures look great AND they print vital information on the back of each picture. The date the picture was taken and the file name. Snapfish prints the date the photos were developed. I've had some bad experiences with york photos. Never tried kodak. And my friend loves shutterfly. The quality of snapfish is iffy, sometimes they come out really bright, but since I send them to Walgreens through snapfish I just take them in and ask them to fix it.
Please let me know how your research pans out!
yay! I can't wait for the results. I use Snapfish. I did use Kinko's for poster size and I liked the quality of paper they provided. You can do it online just like the others. My usual haunt is Snapfish though. Good luck with your experiment, I can't wait to see how it turns out.
Walgreens. Quality varies, but that has to do more with the pictures being taken, not with their processing.
It can be done online or in-store.
I'm guessing those prices were for 4x6 prints? Since there's a Longs on the way to work, I just upload what I want and pick up the prints about an hour later (they drop you an email when finished).
Prints are exposed onto Fuji paper and run through the 1 hour photo finishing machine at the store. Current price is 17¢ each.
I think Andrew already passed along this info to Darren but we use scrapbookpictures.com and love them. They let you have free unlimited storage and have a great cropping tool, a multitude of border and finish choices, as well as every size you could possibly imagine. They are here locally so you can pick the prints up on Hawthorne or have them mailed to you for $2. When I place an order, it always arrives within 2 business days. An added bonus is that you can create a guest account so distant relatives can log on and see all your pics... and even order their own. 4x6 prints are normally 18 cents, but they have fairly regular sales (like this month) for 12 cents. Who knew ordering pictures could be so complicated???? Good luck! ~Amber
Cathy,
It took me awhile to navigate through the site to order my pictures but I assume once you're registered and stuff that process gets easier, yes?
I did notice your Christmas postcards came from C.M. and that was a great looking card so I'm anxious/excited to see what they do with matte prints. Oh, and plug away with the business. I was thinking I should peruse the site to see if they have anything I might want to use in my scrapbooks.
Hi Amber!
Yes, I do recall Darr saying something about scrapbookpictures.com before but I completely forgot about it at the time I was thinking of what places I could go to for this little experiment. Thanks for the reminder.
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