However, there were few standouts on price. For the most part, the prices are roughly the same as well (most also offer 3" x 5" prints at the 4" x 6" price.) Some offer wallet and larger sizes as well, but for price comparisons, I stuck to the three basic sizes. I quickly learned.Ĭost – All of these services offer the same basic print sizes, 4" x 6", 5" x 7", and 8" x 10". I knew better, but my optimism about the possibilities of digital imaging blinded me at first. Second, I know that traditional photo labs aren’t identical (a roll of film that comes out poorly is not necessarily your fault). First, working in information technology (including supporting ad agencies) drilled into me a long time ago that color correction is a huge issue. I naively assumed that quality would not be an issue, thinking at the time that their output would be highly similar. After a quick run through their sites, I developed some criteria for comparing the services: cost, ease of uploading, quality of the Web site, and range of products offered. I added Walmart to the list, since it has such a huge retail presence, and I also added Apple’s iPhoto-based service, which uses Kodak’s Ofoto for prints. So I decided to try some of the photo labs listed in Yahoo, the most popular of which were Shutterfly, Club Photo, ImageStation, Ofoto (owned by Kodak), dotPhoto, Snapfish (owned by District Photo), PhotoAccess, eFrames, and. But one of the major benefits of digital photography, in my mind, is that you print only a small percentage of your pictures, which leads to overall savings. I understood a few of their major issues and that their services cost a lot more than normal film developing. But since we already own a black-and-white laser printer, we didn’t see a compelling reason to add a photo printer.ĭigital Photography Labs - In the past, I’ve read about different digital photo labs, but I never paid full attention. This doesn’t mean you can’t get good results, especially if you plan to print relatively few pictures. I didn’t see any monetary savings, and I am still distrustful of the quality. I also know that while inkjet printers are relatively cheap, ink cartridges are expensive and printing photos uses an enormous amount of ink per page (text covers about 5 percent of a piece of paper, but photos typically cover 90 to 100 percent of the page).Įxpensive ink cartridges, plus the cost of photo paper, made me rule out buying a photo printer. Unfortunately, this paper is expensive: around $0.30 for a 4" x 6" piece, and $0.50 for an 8.5" x 11" piece. I’ve also never used real photo paper, which is specially coated to make such high resolution printing possible. However, I’ve never owned a "photo printer," a printer whose quality is supposed to be good enough to approximate a photographic print. I’ve used inkjet printers for years, and have never been truly happy with the quality of their photo output. Should we buy a photo printer, or should we send them out to be printed by a photo service? If the latter, which one? Since these aren’t just everyday snapshots, I decided to investigate both options.īuying a Printer - Although I had no doubts about the quality of prints coming from digital photo labs, I wasn’t so sure about the photo quality of any printer we could afford. While we might want to print only 50 to 100 pictures now, eventually we’ll have many more. This situation prompted the question of the best way to print digital photos. I was right: we took more than 1,000 pictures over nine days.Īlthough I’m most interested in putting together a CD showing off most of our pictures (hundreds, I tell you) for our guests and friends, my wife prefers old-fashioned photo albums and wants to print some of the pictures. We were about to get married and I thought we’d enjoy taking lots of pictures of the wedding weekend and the honeymoon week. I recently bought a new Nikon Coolpix 775 digital camera for my wife. 1647: Focus-caused notification issues, site-specific browser examples, virtualizing Windows on M-series Macs.#1648: iPhone passcode thefts, Center Cam improves webcam eye contact, APFS Uncertainty Principle.#1649: More LastPass breach details and 1Password switch, macOS screen saver problem, tvOS 16.3.3 fixes Siri Remote bug.#1650: Cloud storage changes for Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive quirky printing problem.#1651: Dealing with leading zeroes in spreadsheet data, removing ad tracking from ckbk.
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