Ok guys, I am sooo fed up...

[Lisa Marie]

with our local processing! I live in a rather small town and our only option here for getting photos printed is Wal-Mart and they suck!!! I think half of the problem is they don?t clean their equipment as I am forever getting pictures reprinted due to specks all over the prints. I have also tried WalMart.com where they print them who-knows-where and then just send them to our local store but they always look very flat and dull. Short of driving an hour away to get pictures printed, I am not sure what else to do. Where do professionals get their photographs printed? Help. I am sick of crappy prints!!!!!!!! (Sorry for the venting - I am just looking for quality)

Thanks in advance~
Lisa

[Lionheart]

Is there a Costco nearby? If they suck too, then your best bet is to mail it somewhere. Adorama and B&H Photo offer film processing and printing services through pre-paid mailers. I don't know if it's cheap or not, I haven't had any film processed lately, so I have nothing to compare to.
The other option is to go digital Then you can print from home or if you really want specific ones printed on real photo paper, you can always order from places like mpix.com.

[drg]

There are a couple of questions about your W-M experience (not unusual let me say). Are you printing from film or a digital camera? If from film, and you keep having problems, don't use one hour,send them out where they will go to some contract lab and the local store won't touch them of the film. The walmart.com stuff is unfortunatly probably printed by the local store! Same problem again. I think you can pop a CD-R in an envelope and send them to the contract lab.

You can talk to the store personnel and let them know how disatisfied you are and ask what can be done.

Another alternative, have some prints made from a good digital file by almost anybody else via the internet, and haul them into the store, get the manager and say here's the same file. Print it please.

Then compare and show them to the store manager, not the department manager. Chances are that you'll see a change in staff or better work.

mpix is a good online choice. There are some 'click-throughs ads' on this site to places that offer a number of 4x6 prints for free just to try their service.

Perhaps one of our Florida PR'ers can point you to a close pro-lab that would give you a baseline for what you want.

Good luck and let us know how it works out. Post an image or two to see what else some one might see to help tie down the problem.

[mjs1973]

Hi Lisa,

Welcome to the Forum. Have you talked to other photogs in your area to see where they take their stuff? Perhaps there is a drug store in your area that offers this service.

I too live in a small town. Only about 2500 people. There is a guy in my area that makes decent prints, but he doesn't do E-6 film. He has a lab that he sends them out to tho. That lab is about 3 hours away from here, and they do daily pickups at his store, and at the local Farm & Fleet store. I had no idea our Farm & Fleet store offered any type of photography services. So if you do some checking in your area, you might be able to find something like this in your neck of the woods.

If your printing digital photos, I would go to an online printer like mpix. They also offer fill processing if your using film. I have never used their film services so I don't know what the quality is like for that.

[Lisa Marie]

Thanks so much for all of the information. As many of you have asked, yes, I am digital. I will definitely look into the online processing companies. We do not have any drug stores locally that do processing but I will surely keep an eye out (i.e. mjs and the Farm and Fleet processing). I have expressed my concerns to the local Wal-Mart photo lab manager and she had a less than professional response.

Thanks again for all the information!

Lisa

[another view]

If you're giving them digital files and they're having problems making the prints look like the file, then it's on their end. I use both mpix.com and a local grocery store that has a similar machine to the one Walmart probably has (Fuji Frontier) and I've never had a problem.

There are a lot of places that can make prints for you. Mpix is great because you can upload and the prints are mailed to you next day (reasonable shipping too). They've got a lot of options for different papers and custom services - check their website. It can take a long time to upload if you've got a lot of different files you're sending them though. You could even get prints made in an hour or two at Walgreens.

I don't have any experience with Walmart but they're apparently not maintaing their equipment properly. It may be just that one store, especially judging by what you said of the mgr.

[Lisa Marie]

I have heard allot of positive feedback about Walgreens processing but unfortunately the nearest Walgreens is nearly an hour away which is not very convenient. Maybe one day this little town will develop into having more than one place to get pictures. ha, ha. I wont hold my breath! Thanks for the info. I think I will definitely be trying Mpix.

[SmartWombat]

It all depends on the staff, and how well you can get on with them to produce the results you want.
I'm in the UK and have our local CostCo staff trained now

They know that after a race weekend I'm going to come in with a few (about 60) photos to print.
They know that I'm picky, and will disable the automatic compensatinon for me, so that night photos look like night !
They actually take a pride in producing good prints, and thay have an interst in what I'm going to produce each time.
I really pushed them with the night race photos and they did very well.

They even said they'd do a calibration run the day I bring a lot of photos in if I want to use the print profile and they would turn off all the exposure compensation, sharpening, and auto-cropping that the machine usually has on for the mundanes.
Of course, they get all my business up to 12 x 8"

You really need to find someone who cares.

I use Pixaco for large prints, they have an insanely cheap print deal on 18x12 as only £2.19 for even one print. It's worth waiting for shipment from Germany to UK for the price, and quality is excellent.

[Liz]

And the turnaround time is very fast. Here is a link to the website - I believe they are 12 cents a print. The prints were excellent.

http://www.winkflash.com/content/start.asp

Liz

I have heard allot of positive feedback about Walgreens processing but unfortunately the nearest Walgreens is nearly an hour away which is not very convenient. Maybe one day this little town will develop into having more than one place to get pictures. ha, ha. I wont hold my breath! Thanks for the info. I think I will definitely be trying Mpix.