Photo Printing Kiosks

In-store digital photo printing kiosks vary in quality

You've probably seen photo printing kiosks popping up everywhere. Feed your camera's memory card into the machine and then use a touch screen to select prints you would like to order. Some machines spit out your photos on the spot. Others take about an hour, and you must pick up prints in the store's photo center.

As with online digital photo printing services, the kiosks use either Kodak or Fuji processing and paper. Most kiosks allow you to do some rudimentary cropping and red-eye correction before ordering prints. In our research, we found some reviews for these do-it-yourself kiosks.

As you might expect, photo output from these in-store kiosks varies widely from store to store. PCMag.com's Jim Louderback reports that many machines he tried were broken. At a local Long's drugstore, he experiences both "hardware and employee failure." Reviews say employees often aren't much help if you have trouble with a machine. Louderback isn't impressed by the image quality of any of the kiosks he tested, although he says CVS is the best of the group, which also includes Duane Reade, Target and Wal-Mart kiosks.

In general, experts find better results from machines that make you wait a bit. You order your prints at a standalone machine, but the photos are actually printed by the store's lab. Photos that are printed instantly by the small kiosk itself are inconsistent in quality and often cost more. For example, many Wal-Mart stores have both a Kodak instant-print kiosk and a Fuji kiosk that prints on the store's lab. In reviews, experts got better results from the Fuji kiosk and in-store lab combination. It can also be less time consuming for amateur photographers to use a kiosk and in-store lab combination. Kiosks can create prints by simply inserting a camera's memory card and selecting which images to print. If you frequently order prints of your photos, it may be worthwhile to invest in a snapshot photo printer for your home; we cover photo printers in a separate report.