Walgreens or CVS?

murphyec

Where have you had the best luck with printing photos? I prefer costco, but won't have time to go over there and I need to get these gifts in the mail tomorrow.

allinduetime

honestly, i go with wal-mart over any drugstore.  seems like wal-mart does more volume and may calibrate their equipment more frequently.  but, if i had to choose, i'd pick walgreens, just because my local walgreens has one hour lab where my CVS only has a kiosk and printer.

murphyec

allinduetime:

honestly, i go with wal-mart over any drugstore.  seems like wal-mart does more volume and may calibrate their equipment more frequently.  but, if i had to choose, i'd pick walgreens, just because my local walgreens has one hour lab where my CVS only has a kiosk and printer.

Really?  Walmart?  I would have thought they were worse.  I will give them a shot!

yogisunam

CVS, but it depends on the machine. I like the ones that offer matte and white borders, which seems to produce better color.

staycee

I've never tried CVS

but when Walgreens has that occasional free 8x10, I get that - and they always crop the shhit out of my pics.

(remember the old bunny sig?  had that printed, and they cropped off the top of her bunny ears, and the bottom part with her outfit - WTH?)

Stacy092306

I go to Walmart too.  Our Walgreens must have a bad printer because the pics always come out so dark.  So, I don't go there.  We don't have CVS around here. 

allinduetime

walgreens always prints with a green cast on all the pics.  i think any place that does high volume should be okay, because they would have to change their inks and toners regularly.  slow places probably have them sit for a while.

staycee - just FYI, when you print an 8x10, always check the crop before sending it out, if you are doing it online.  because of the print ratio, 8x10's will always have an inch taken off the top and bottom of a print automatically.  the camera's sensor has a 2:3 ratio - that's why 4x6's come out exactly the way they look in camera.  5x7's will have 1/2 inch taken off top and bottom, and 8x10's will have 1 inch taken off. 

if you order online, you can move the crop box up and down to make sure stuff doesn't get chopped off.

murphyec

I should have known that my walmart would screw up.  There were thin lines down the pictures, their machine needs to be calibrated or something.  They reprinted them for me, but the lines were still there.  So I ordered from CVS.  They should be done in about 30 minutes.  Hopefully they will look good.  If not I will refuse them and send the prints to Costco and drive out there after work.  This sucks!

staycee

allinduetime:

walgreens always prints with a green cast on all the pics.  i think any place that does high volume should be okay, because they would have to change their inks and toners regularly.  slow places probably have them sit for a while.

staycee - just FYI, when you print an 8x10, always check the crop before sending it out, if you are doing it online.  because of the print ratio, 8x10's will always have an inch taken off the top and bottom of a print automatically.  the camera's sensor has a 2:3 ratio - that's why 4x6's come out exactly the way they look in camera.  5x7's will have 1/2 inch taken off top and bottom, and 8x10's will have 1 inch taken off. 

if you order online, you can move the crop box up and down to make sure stuff doesn't get chopped off.

I never knew that.   Interesting.   Why don't I have this issue when I order from places like snapfish and shutterfly.   Do they automatically fix this for me?

allinduetime

they may - some labs might actually look at individual pics to ensure that nothing gets chopped.  i've had some pics that looked funky no matter how they were cropped, so i ended up ordering them as 8x12's from mpix, just so i wouldn't lose anything in the image.