Price War Rages Over Photo Prints

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20041126/tc_usatoday/pricewarragesoverphotoprints&cid=711&ncid=1730&sid=96479363' target='_blank'>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20041126/tc_usatoday/pricewarragesoverphotoprints&cid=711&ncid=1730&sid=96479363</a><br /><br /></div><i>"With the holiday shopping season now in swing, it's prime time for photo-processing services to handle cards, calendars and end-of-the-year prints that people stick in envelopes with holiday cards. Which is why online photofinishers and retail developing firms are now trumpeting huge savings. The price of a 4-by-6 print, around 49 cents two years ago, is down to 19 cents at many top online sites, including Yahoo Photos, Snapfish and Sony ImageStation. Shoppers can find even lower prices at such online discounters as Winkflash and Clark Color Labs. Prices at national photofinishers are somewhat higher: from 29 cents a print at Walgreens, Target and Ritz Camera Centers to 34 cents at CVS stores."</i><br /><br />Honestly I can't print my photos at home anymore with these prices. A CVS just opened down the street offering 19 cent prints. 8) At that price, I might just as well turn my photo printer in for a B&amp;W laser. <br /><br />Where are Digital Media Thoughts readers sending their prints out, or do you still prefer to print at home?

[Chris Gohlke]

I have a Walgreens 1 minute from my house. For I use them for almost all my photo printing needs. It is just not cost effective to print pictures at home anymore.

[Philip Colmer]

4x6 photo paper for my Canon printer works out at 20p per sheet. I don't know how much the ink per photo would cost. It is £8 per cartridge, six cartridges to load the printer, but I think I could print quite a few 4x6 photos out before I had to replace any cartridges.

Boots will do 4x6 prints for 30p per print plus £1.50 for postage and packing.

Jessops charge 20p per print plus £1.50 for P&amp;P.

There are an increasing number of stores that have Kodak or own-brand printing systems in-house, so the P&amp;P charge can be avoided.

For myself, though, I think that convenience places a premium. For example, we went out for a meal on Friday night with some friends &amp; we took some photos while we were out. On Saturday, I printed the photos out and posted them to the friend. To have achieved the same with one of the print services would have involved driving to one of the stores (with an implicit cost there) or using an online service (and thus incurring P&amp;P).

Where these print services do win over home printing is in the stability of the prints. I don't know how long my Canon prints are supposed to last but it won't be as long as a "proper" photo print.

So, in the end, it is still a judgement decision on a per-case basis for me.

--Philip

[msprague]

I just have a B&amp;W laser printer at home. For photos I have tried several online and brick &amp; mortars, but have stuck with ofoto.com.

I know that individual experience vary, but here are my rankings:

online
ofoto 9.0
imagestation 8.5
walmart.com 6.0
shutterfly 5.0

local
target 0.5 (the store personnel did not know what they were doing)
walmart 8.5

[Kevin & Beth Remhof]

We just tried out WalMart a couple of weeks ago. They have 19 cents per print (4 x 6). Plus you can upload from home and pick up your prints in an hour.

We ordered Christmas cards (the photo kind) and they were ready 31 minutes after we submitted an order. The store called us to tell us they were ready. So we picked them up and they looked great! Not bad for 40 cents (very good price for photo cards). What's funny though is that the 40 cents per card was cheaper than Sam's Club. You'd think WalMart would make Sam's cheaper. Sam's also was 2-3 days since ours does not have a photo lab.

[PJE]

I've been using www.Shutterfly.com for two years. Since when my little HP Photo printer has produced less than a handfull of prints compared with the hundreds from Shutterfly... (It conisided with the birth of my son).

Shutterfly prints are very good - basically photo print quality - and better than the HP ones with their special photo paper.

The only issue is shipping costs, especially for larger sizes, so we wait for their regular free shipping offers and then hit them with an order. They currently go for 20c per copy if you buy one of their plans.

PJE

[Kevin & Beth Remhof]

I just have a B&amp;W laser printer at home. For photos I have tried several online and brick &amp; mortars, but have stuck with ofoto.com.


I don't doubt your experience with Ofoto. I'm just offering another opinion. We tried Ofoto but were underwhelmed. The prints had a green cast to them. Shutterfly and Snapfish were great though. Check out our review (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5667&highlight=) (shameless plug).

We're getting won over by WalMart though. The one hour developing is a real turn-on for us. We've had great luck with Shutterfly too. We've gotten a few 8x10s and an 11x14 and they turned out excellent. The 11x14 is even hanging on our wall.

[msprague]

We tried Ofoto but were underwhelmed. The prints had a green cast to them. Shutterfly and Snapfish were great though.

I wonder if you got a bad batch from ofoto and I got a bad batch from shutterfly. Underwhelmed does not describe the dissapointment I had with the shutterfly order I received. My wife won't let me use shutterfly, she threw out the prints from them.

It is amazing the variety of experiences we have, but with one bad experience it makes it hard to try a second time. I still have not tried snapfish and they are offering 15 free prints to new sign ups, so I will have to give them a shot. I noticed snapfish also supports emailing pictures for upload. That could be handy.

[Philip Colmer]

We just tried out WalMart a couple of weeks ago. They have 19 cents per print (4 x 6). Plus you can upload from home and pick up your prints in an hour.

We ordered Christmas cards (the photo kind) and they were ready 31 minutes after we submitted an order. The store called us to tell us they were ready. So we picked them up and they looked great! Not bad for 40 cents (very good price for photo cards). What's funny though is that the 40 cents per card was cheaper than Sam's Club. You'd think WalMart would make Sam's cheaper. Sam's also was 2-3 days since ours does not have a photo lab.
I can only hope that Asda in the UK (now owned by WalMart) start to offer similar products and pricing. We are clearly suffering on pricing here. 19 cents is about 10p!

We've done Christmas cards ourselves now for about the third year running. I've managed to find a good stock of A5-folding-to-A6 cards that come out really nicely. Not too expensive and a nice touch to make them different from commercial cards.

--Philip

[Neil Enns]

I use Costco for all my printing needs. How can you beat $2.99 for a 12"x18" print? I've got five there right now, just waiting for me to pick them up tonight. And there's a Costco opening in the spring less than 5 minutes from my house, which makes it even more convenient.

The only downside to Costco is the colour gamut of their printers is severly lacking in reds. I did some macro shots of red pointsettias and didn't even bother to print them after proofing the colours in Photoshop. This matches with my experiences from other prints as well.

For greeting cards I use shutterfly (the cards are fulfilled by cardstore.com). It's the only place I've found that actually prints the photos on the front of the greeting card instead of giving you silly frame inserts to stick a 4x6 picture in. The cards are goregous!

Neil

[Jason Dunn]

Although I'm a big fan of home printing, I tried out Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and was impressed with their service. Easy drag and drop upload (their stupid Windows XP printing plugin doesn't work), 25 cents CAN a print, and the quality was quite impressive. The only down-side is that they don't have the one hour printing yet in Calgary - they have to come down from Edmonton, which takes about five business days. So for me, that's a bit too long, but it's cheap enough that if I needed to make several copies of a batch of prints, I'd use this service.

[Jason Dunn]

Although I'm a big fan of home printing, I tried out Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and was impressed with their service. Easy drag and drop upload (their stupid Windows XP printing plugin doesn't work though), 25 cents CND a print, and the quality was quite impressive. The only down-side is that they don't have the one hour printing yet in Calgary - they have to come down from Edmonton, which takes about five business days. So for me, that's a bit too long, but it's cheap enough that if I needed to make several copies of a batch of prints, I'd use this service.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

No money for an Epson 4000 Pro, so I have no photo printer (yet). In the event I do, I'll print the serious jobs at home, the snapshots at a lab, and the really serious (ie paid) through the pro lab.

Neil, I'm not sure how friendly Costco is, but what I do is I'll ask for the colour profile of their machines to proof your prints with Photoshop. Also due to contrast differences of screen vs print, you'll need to make the necessary adjustments accordingly.. I find I have to boost saturation quite a bit.

[cmchavez]

Our local Costco charges $0.14 per 4 x 6 print. At that price, I can't beat it by printing at home, especially with larger prints priced to please everyone.

Now if the line for uploading digital prints was shorter, then I'd really be happy... :?

[Neil Enns]

Neil, I'm not sure how friendly Costco is, but what I do is I'll ask for the colour profile of their machines to proof your prints with Photoshop.

Costco has a deal with www.drycreekphoto.com to profile every one of their printers every six months. The profiles are available for download from the drycreekphoto website.

When your photo is an all-red pointsettia and it's the subtle variations in the red that you want to see in print it's a big pain in the butt to adjust :) This time I decided to shoot white/yellows instead. I actually wound up with more interesting photos this year than last!

Neil

[Jason Kravitz]

I use Costco as well - Neil - do you know what kind of printer they are using? My Costco seem to do reds ok - I downloaded their color profile from www.drycreekphoto.com

[James Fee]

I prefer Costco's prints over CVS or Walgreens, but it is so easy to get to either of them from my house. There is a new SuperTarget opening up a couple miles away so I'll have to try that. I do think Costco does a much better job than CVS/Walgreens, but convenience is worth something.

[Neil Enns]

I use Costco as well - Neil - do you know what kind of printer they are using?

They're generally Noritsu printers, although the specific model depends on the Costco you're at. Don't get me wrong, it does print reds, it's just that when you have an image that's composed almost entirely of shades of red a *lot* gets lost in the translation. I'll post a sample when I get home so you can see the type of image I'm talking about.

For everyday photos with red in them it's not really something you'd notice.

Neil

[Neil Enns]

Dry Creek has a great image that shows the gamut differences between Adobe RGB and a typical Noritsu and Fuji Frontier machine. Go to http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/additional_profile_questions.htm#Frontier_Models and scroll down a bit until you see the gamut image. Notice how much of the red range is missing.

If you want an even crazier example they have a full VRML demo at http://www.drycreekphoto.com/tools/printer_gamuts/ for all the different printers.

Neil

[Citezein]

I have not had luck with my local Costco, even with the profile. I think their machine is just set up wrong. I have also tried my local CVS drugstore and the photos were horrible. There is no Target or Walmart anywhere within walking distance unfortunately.

If I'm lucky, I'll be getting an Epson R800 for Christmas this year. The benefits of printing at home include more control and a far larger color gamut (Adobe RGB) than the store printers usually offer. Addionally, the Epson prints have an archiving life of 100 years, which is going to be far more than the Costco prints.

Online, I've had good luck with Ofoto and EZ Prints. The best I've found is MPix, although they tend to be a little more expensive, especially with shipping factored in. A while back I printed a 16x20 through MPix though and it turned out spectactular.

For large batches of 4x6 photos, I will probably continue to use MPix, but for high quality 8x10 and 5x7 or for when I want a photo instantly, I'm going to print them at home.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

http://www.drycreekphoto.com is plenty interesting!

The R800 is a fantastic printer, and one I'd get if I can't have the 4000 Pro. =P Still, I think for some jobs it's better to go to the labs. One thing to note though is that the printer will still need to be profiled, and it will probably not match the gamut of Adobe RGB.. meaning you'll still need to take care when proofing your photos.

[Neil Enns]

I have not had luck with my local Costco, even with the profile. I think their machine is just set up wrong.

1) Properly calibrate your monitor
2) Proof your photos using the instructions at www.drycreekphoto.com
3) Specify "no color or contrast corrections" on the order

then the images should turn out as you expect. You can verify that no corrections were done by flipping your prints over and looking for "N N N N" on the back, indicating no shifts were applied to any of the four colours used during printing. If you specified "no corrections" and see anything but four Ns, Costco will absolutely re-print for you at no cost.

Neil

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

3) Specify "no color or contrast corrections" on the order


Oh yes, this is absolutely critical. Once I forgot to tell the lab that and what came back wasn't pretty at all.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I can only hope that Asda in the UK (now owned by WalMart) start to offer similar products and pricing. We are clearly suffering on pricing here. 19 cents is about 10p

Rip-off Britain again. :x

I would dearly like to see cheap printing available from stores like Asda, but somehow doubt it will happen anytime soon. :?