Digital Picture Printing???

[hillslider]

Hey everyone,

Just wondering who everyone uses to print digital pictures. I have been using Shutterfly.com and they have been doing a good job. I pay .25 per 4x6 print. The quality is great and usually ship out the same day. The website is also pretty slick. Just curious......always looking for better....cheaper.

Rob

 

[bebster]

I use Costco in-store service. It's something like 15 cents for a 4x6 maybe even less. Cheapest I've seen if you have one nearby.

 

[Golfgar4]

I print my pics at home on a HP printer. I'm sure the cost per picture is probably more than if I had it done somewhere else, but you can't beat the convenience! I've been very pleased with the quality. People I've shown the pictures to can't tell the difference - or so they say anyway!

My wife had used one of those disposable Kodak digital cameras on a job she was doing. She took it to Walgreens and had the pictures put on a CD, then brought it home to use on the computer. To have the pictures printed out regularly would've been .29 per picture. But by putting it on CD, they ended up costing something like .09 per picture. She thought that was pretty good, until I reminded her that our cost for printing them out at home needed to be considered also. I told her that the cost per picture probably jumped to something like .40 per picture! /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

 

[DAP]

Gary, not so sure about the cost analysis. Retailers around here want about 4$ a print (8x11). It's close cost wise but much more convenient as you said.

 

[RobertN]

We print at home. We have an Epson Photo-1280 that is capable of pictures up to a 13" width.

Prices vary per print, depending on ink and paper used; there are different grades, up to archive type papers($$$).

Plus, we can criop, color balance, ect instead of getting a basic print.

 

[GaryM]

Depends on what you want to end up with. The Costco at about $0.19 for a 4x6 is hard to beat. Particularly if you count your time at all. If you use Costco or Shutterfly, you'd best have cropped the image to 4x6 or whatever size you were wanting because the normal output from digital cameras is not in that proportion. If you don't crop it, they will do it for you, and you might not like the way they do it.

If you want to be able to tweak the output and beable to fully be in control, then printing at home on an Epson PHOTO Stylus or one of the new HP's is hard to beat.

I use a program called QImage that lets you pick a print size and it arranges multiple prints on a larger sheet of photo paper in order to fit the maximum output on the minimum amout of paper.

 

[PineRidge]

I started with my first digital camera in 1997. Since then I have taken literally thousands more digital pictures than I have saved but I have never ever printed a single one. I use the pictures exclusively at our web site so there is never a need for a hard copy. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[PBMAX]

The wife uses OFOTO (spelling) and they let you keep them on thier site for free and allow u to set up a page and she gives a password to family to look and make prints. They also if i remember correctly allow you to crop pic that have been uploaded... about 25/26 cents each.

 

[MossRoad]

I just tried the little kiosk at Walgreens two days ago. I took in my digital media, plugged it into the little slot and followed the directions on the touch screen. I made a total of 23 4x6 prints from about 5 or 6 photos in about 10 minutes. They were 29 cents each. If I would have gone with 50 prints or more the price goes down to 20 cents each. Much cheaper than printing at home, better qualtiy and much faster.

I just cropped and adjusted them at home before I put them onto my digital media. Also, if you want it to go faster, only put the pictures that you want to print on the digital media, as the first thing it does is search the media for all photo files that are printable. I had about 120 images on the media and the ones that I wanted to use, even though in a seperate folder from the other photos, ended up last in the list, so I had to scroll through all the pictures to get to the ones that I wanted.

On a scale of one to five, I give this service at Walgreens a 5. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Try it out. For only 29 cents a test, you can't go wrong.

 

[KubotaSteve]

I used Ofoto.com which is actually Kodak. I like using them because I can upload a bunch of pictures then send an e-mail to friends and they can go out and look at the pictures. They don't charge for this service as the people you e-mail can order the pictures for themselves. One thing to remember is that printing pictures from home is not as good as these other places as they use a print machine as opposed to a printer. I found out it is cheaper and easier to do this than print them on my own printer. The prices seem a little higher than most but the quality is unbelievable. I don't print out many pictures as that is one reason I like digital. Just look at them on the computer. I compared a picture printed by Cosco and one done by Ofoto and the Cosco picture lost.