Photo Printing Kiosks

In-store digital photo printing kiosks vary in quality

Photo printing kiosks are available in a multitude of stores. You just have to feed your camera's memory card into the machine and then use a touch screen to select the digital photo 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 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 Tony Hoffman reports that many machines he tried were broken. Hoffman 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 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 Walmart stores have 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.