Photo-Printing Kiosks

In-store digital photo-printing kiosks vary in quality

You've probably seen photo-printing kiosks popping up everywhere from hospitals to airports to drugstores. 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; you can pick up prints in the store's photo center.

In our research, we found some reviews for these do-it-yourself in-store kiosks. 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.

As you might expect, photo output from these in-store kiosks varies widely from store to store. PC Magazine's Jim Louderback reports that many machines he tried were broken. At a local Long's drugstore, he reports both "hardware and employee failure." Reviews say that employees often aren't much help if you have trouble with a machine.

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 mini-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 mini-lab. In reviews, experts got better results from the Fuji kiosk and mini-lab combination.