Digital Photo Printing

Best digital photo printing services

We find the most consistently good reviews for Kodak EasyShare Gallery (*est. 15¢ per 4 x 6 photo). Among the best, most recent reviews, Kodak EasyShare Gallery continues to score at or near the top. Kodak's digital photo printing service used to be called Ofoto until Kodak bought the company in 2004. Subsequently, you get pictures on Kodak paper. The process is the same as with many other online printing services; Kodak EasyShare Gallery provides you with free photo editing tools. Membership, uploading and editing are free; you only pay for photo printing and other merchandise, including cards, photo coasters and other personalized photo gifts.

Tony Mainelli, in his review at PC World, reports that Kodak aces print-quality tests with the best color accuracy and especially nice skin tones. In tests at Business Week, Kodak finishes second in a tight race with the cheaper Snapfish. This review itself has not been updated; however, user feedback associated with the article aggressively review Snapfish quality as having dropped since the article was first published.

Unlike some services, Kodak EasyShare Gallery asks guests to sign up before viewing your online photo albums. This requirement can be turned off, but Kodak isn't very up-front about telling consumers this is even an option. Kodak EasyShare Gallery recently partnered with Target for an in-store pick-up option, also offering the 15¢ per print price. Kodak's upload process is simple, say reviews, and at Macworld, editors say Kodak EasyShare Gallery works well for Mac users as well.

At 15¢ per print, however, Kodak EasyShare Gallery is one of the higher priced digital photo printing services. The least expensive services charge 12¢ per print. While 3¢ might not seem to be a big deal, it can make an impact if you order many photos.

As for less expensive services, Snapfish (*est. 12¢) most often pops up in reviews. However, many of the recommendations we find for Snapfish are two years old, and in some more recently written user reviews, some say photo quality has dropped. Overall, we found mixed reviews for Snapfish photo quality. However, Snapfish does have a "110% guarantee." If you're not happy with your photos, Snapfish lets you re-order for free and give you a 10% credit on a future order. In several reviews, Snapfish receives great score for fast turnaround.

In older tests at Good Housekeeping, editors liked the 9 x 11-inch printed photo album produced by Snapfish (*est. $20); editors say print quality "wowed our experts." In PC Magazine's roundup in late 2006, Snapfish is best overall; its print quality is on par with Kodak EasyShare Gallery, according to Jim Louderback. In addition to some very good reviews, however, we also found some lackluster comments for Snapfish's digital photo printing. At Wired magazine, Snapfish's photos "lacked contrast and sharpness." Snapfish also has a wide range of customized photo gifts; if you're interested in getting your photo printed on boxer shorts (*est. $20) or a diaper bag (*est. $60), Snapfish can accommodate you. More mundane photo mugs, photo magnets and calendars are also available.

Reviews for Shutterfly (*est. 19¢) are very middle of the road and most reviews do not rate Shutterfly more highly than Kodak EasyShare Gallery or Snapfish. Additionally, Shutterfly's per-print prices are among the highest in the industry. A pre-paid plan drops per-print prices as low as 12¢ each. Shutterfly also allows users to pick up photos at Target, but Kodak's pickup service is less expensive.

Editors at Business Week like dotPhoto.com. Burt Helm says that if your top priority is sharing photos with family and friends, dotPhoto has the best photo-sharing features. Its photo quality is also very good, a very close second to Snapfish's impressive prints. In CNet.com's article about the best photo printers for advanced photographers, dotPhoto Pro is a top choice, with advanced color and printing features for professionals. Prices for standard 4 x 6 prints are regularly 15¢ per print, but periodic sales bring the price to 12¢ per photo.

Digital photos don't have quite the same aspect ratio as film photographs. Digital photographs are not quite as wide as a film-based photo. That means that photo services will slightly crop the top of your image to fit standard 4 x 6-inch paper. DotPhoto offers 4xD prints (D stands for digital). These prints measure 4 x 5.33-inches, so there's no cropping or stretching digital photos to fit standard paper sizes. Snapfish and Kodak used to offer this print size, but have dropped the format, so it may simply not have proved popular with users.

The top digital photo printing service in PC Magazine's most recent review is AdoramaPix.com (*est. 15¢). This service scores points because it offers a larger variety of papers than others, including regular, matte or glossy Kodak paper, along with two Kodak Professional Endura papers and ILFORD black and white paper. The professional papers cost more (*est. 19¢ to 29¢ per 4 x 6 photo). One downside is that AdoramaPix charges a flat-rate $4.95 shipping charge for orders. That's great if you're ordering lots of photos, but not economical for small orders.

Winkflash (*est. 12¢ per print) is also gaining good press for its post-acquisition handling of the ClubPhoto digital photo printing business. ClubPhoto.com shut down in March 2007 without notifying customers, leaving angry users wondering where and how to retrieve stored photos. Winkflash stepped in to salvage users' photos from ClubPhoto for free. Another notable aspect of Winkflash is that it has the lowest shipping rates (99¢ cents per order). We saw very few reviews that compare Winkflash to other services, however.

PhotoWorks.com is a name you may recognize. This Seattle-based photofinisher started as a film processor. PC Magazine's Jonathan Roubini notes in his review that while PhotoWorks.com (*est. 19¢ per print) is very easy to use, "its print quality, along with Wal-Mart's was the worst" of the services reviewed. PhotoWorks isn't a favorite at Good Housekeeping either; editors say uploading photos took too long and the resulting photos were "unimpressive." In PC Magazine's most recent review of digital photo printing, Tony Hoffman says PhotoWorks delivered mainly good photos, but quality was somewhat inconsistent from photo to photo.

If you're a Costco member, Costco offers digital photo printing. Cost for a 4 x 6 print is 17¢ for either in-store pickup or by mail. Although that's pricey compared to others, basic USPS shipping is free. We didn't see reviews that compare Costco's service to others, however.

Digital photo printing kiosks

You've probably seen in-store printing kiosks popping up everywhere from hospitals to airports to drugstores. Feed your camera's memory card into the machine and then use a touchscreen 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 find 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 mini-lab.

Important Features: Digital photo printing

Reviews say most digital photo-printing services offer similar features, including drag-and-drop uploads, limited editing tools and sharing features. Variables include the following:

• Some services offer only limited online photo storage. Snapfish and Kodak EasyShare Gallery offer free unlimited photo storage. PhotoWorks allows you to store your photos but also expects you to buy prints regularly. If you don't buy any prints in a year, the site will start deleting your photos.

• Nearly all digital photo printing services have similar features, including simple editing tools for cropping, fixing red-eye and tweaking color. All of the major services let you share photos with friends and family who can, of course, choose to order photos.

• If you want to make customized photo mugs or calendars, check for those features. Most sites offer a plethora of photo gifts (mugs, albums, coasters, magnets, T-shirts, calendars, mouse pads and more) and some offer only limited additional merchandise. These extras aren't important to all users, but if you are going to need more than just prints, make sure you check out what each site has to offer.

• Consider your computer's resources. Your Internet connection is ultimately a determining factor in how satisfying your photo uploads will be. Dial-up connections will take considerably more time for transfers. Broadband connections will greatly decrease wait time.

Also bear in mind that you share responsibility for the quality of your images. One reviewer uploaded deliberately bad photos (red-eye, etc.) and none of the online digital picture printing services corrected the problems, so you shouldn't expect to receive anything better than what you submit. Many people are surprised when prints turn out with a different color than they expected. Of course, you might have a bad batch of prints, but the problem may actually be on your end.

That's one reason why experts emphasize monitor calibration. Monitor calibration means adjusting your CRT or LCD display to match the color output of your printer -- or in this case, of a printing service. For professionals, monitor calibration also includes controlling the lighting near your computer and even adjusting the wall color behind the monitor. Most people don't need to go quite this far.

To calibrate your monitor, it is helpful to take your first set of photos from an online service and then hold up a sample photo to your monitor. Then, adjust the monitor to closely match the printed output. This way, when you preview your images on your monitor, you can freely play with color and contrast, confident that the printed output will closely match what you see on the screen.

Burt Helm of Business Week doesn't like any of the editing tools offered by digital photo printing services. He feels your computer is the best place to edit your photos. "Even the basic photo-editing software that comes with most digital cameras will do a better job than the editing tools on these sites," he writes. So if you need to do some cropping or color correction, you'll generally get better results if you tweak before uploading pictures to a photo service.

Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
All The Reviews Reviewed chart.

# of Picks	Model	Price for 4x6-inch photo
6	Kodak EasyShare Gallery	(*est. 15¢)
6	Snapfish	(est. 12¢)
3	Shutterfly	(est. 19¢)
2	Wal-Mart	(*est. 12¢ by mail, 15¢ in-store pickup)
2	Sony ImageStation (shutting down)
1 each	Winkflash, Fujifilm.net, Yahoo! Photos, Target, PhotoWorks, dotPhoto, ClubPhoto, Mpix, York Photo, Clark Color, AdoramaPix, ezprints

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