I’ve got a lot of pictures from the wedding that I want to get real prints of. I’ve tried a few of the different online printing services in the past but I’ve never compared them side-by-side, and I couldn’t find a review that covered the services I was interested in. I picked a handful of different images and sent them off a few days ago. I wanted to test to following services:
- Apple – The default out of iPhoto
- Shutterfly – Direct printing from Gallery
- Ofoto – The rumored quality leader, and a fellow E-ville company (I’ve got a few acquaintances there)
For this test I selected a number of pictures from the shots that our friends took with their digital cameras, a mix of outdoor and indoor pictures, and sent a similar combination to each service.
A note on Costco digital printing: I loaded a set of images on to a CF card and took them in to print at Costco since they could very well be the dark horse of the race with the lowest prices overall. However, even after I asked the people behind the counter if there was anything else to do I apparently missed an undocumented last step of filling out a photo envelope and pre-paying for your prints. Since the people behind the counter when I tried to pick them up were real assholes when I suggested they might want to PUT UP SIGNS OR SOMETHING. Costco gets disqualified on two counts.
Ease of Use
Apple’s option is of course the easiest service to use since you can print directly from iPhoto. The web-based services Ofoto and Shutterfly had comparably easy web sites to navigate. For the rare cases when you need to do a bulk upload, the Ofoto client is quite useful.
Print Quality
The final results were surprisingly varied. Hands down, Ofoto had the best quality; I’ve always been a fan of Kodak film now I’m a fan of Kodak paper. Apple had close quality, but the exposure was a little off. It appears that they are using the same Kodak equipment as Ofoto, but maybe not calibrated as well. Shutterfly had some noticable color problems. Fields of lawn looked a little bit like green slime. They were also not quite as sharp as the Ofoto prints.
Price/Performance
| Service | 4×6 Price | Shipping | Quality | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ofoto | 0.29 | 1.49 | Best | 10 free photos for sign-up, numerous specials |
| Apple | 0.39 | 2.99 | Better | |
| Shutterfly | 0.25 | 1.49 | OK | 15 free photos for sign-up, cheap prices require purchasing in bulk |
Clearly, Ofoto is the winner in this round-up, the best quality with pretty much the lowest price. They also run a number of specials (10 free prints here, 20% off there, etc), so it’s worth clicking around on their site.
After spending three hours at Aaron Brothers yesterday getting frames and albums, it’s time to get a pile of prints made and start laying out some memories!
Rand Wacker 
If you use a custom ICC color profile to pre-process your photos before taking them to Costco, you’ll find that the results are the best you’ll get for non-pro lab processing. Go to http://www.drycreekphoto.com/, use Photoshop or Qimage to convert your photos from sRGB to the custom ICC profile for the Costco where you live. Reprint your best 5 photographs at the Costco by you with the best equipment(latest model numbers on Noritsu or Fuji Frontier equipment) using the process detailed at the drycreek website. For the $1.00 you spend on 5 4×6 prints, your jaw will drop at how accurate the colors are especially when you compare them to the amateur ofoto prints. I’ve used ofoto and shutterfly, along with imagestation and several other online services, but they don’t compare since none of them provide ICC color profiles for their machines.
I’ve found the trick to Costco prints – but don’t tell too many people. Pick your prints ahead of time, and copy them onto a CD, Flash memory, whatever you want. Skip the line and go right up the counter and say you want white borders. Since the computer they give to people can’t handle it, they’ll take care of everything.
Pros get digital prints at Costco
I had photos from our PowerShot S300 printed at Costco this morning as a gift to Sonja for Mother’s Day. I’m happy to report that the results were quite pleasing. I dropped a CD off at around 11 and picked…