Costco Printing?
 

Hey guys,

I was on the costco website, and I am trying to upload a picture so that I can get it printed on one of their canvas frames. When I upload a photo (edited raw photo uploaded as a jpeg) onto the costco website the colours look completely out of whack?

Has anyone had anything printed through costco? Should I not be converting it to a jpeg, but rather another type of file?

As long as your monitor is calibrated, you should get a print that is close to what you see on your screen. You should also tell them to not make any adjustments.

I've had proofs done at Costco, and they're decent for what you pay. I think they only accept JPEGs.

Thanks Senna. I think i'm going to get a standard print done first, and see how it turns out. If successful I'll do the canvas.

Costco prints have slightly dull colours - they use the cheapest Fuji paper IIRC - so I personally would not use them for printing final prints. Proofs are fine though. London Drugs uses the more expensive Fuji Crystal Archive paper so the colours are much better, but you're paying about 8 times more per print.

Costco does canvas?

Yes they do, although i've read it's actually sent out somewhere else to get done (explains the 2-3 week waiting period).

i do all my prints in costco now. Tell them to not adjust color. $4 14x17 prints come out the same as a $25 one from a print shop lol.

No they don't. There is a visible difference in quality due to the papers being used - the colours from a Costco print are slightly dull - unless they've had some sort of dramatic improvement since I've last been there. Besides, Costco only does prints in sRGB, you can't do CMYK (not that it matters to most people) there.

Interesting. Time to try out LD. Any other places worth checking out?

I've heard good things about Walmart prints too, but they're probably about the same as Costco. Other places would be the pro labs like ABC Custom Color or The Lab, but they are much more expensive.

Is there any link on how to calibrate your monitor? (without purchasing anything external to do it...)

THUMBS UP!

There is software that will allow you to do a very basic calibration, but if you want to calibrate your monitor well, you will need to buy a Spyder3 Express (about $90) external calibrator.

Oh, and one more thing about Costco is that they will not accept overly large files. I tried to get a full sized jpeg (8176 × 6132 pixels) from a 50 megapixel Hasselblad printed and they told me the file dimensions were too large. :lol

Just an update:


I had a bunch of prints done, and I was impressed with the work (Although I don't have much experience with this). To top it off, print up to 12x18 were 50% off. Which means I got five of those for 11 bucks, and I did one 16x20 for $11. Not too shabby.

THIS

Make sure they don't do colour correction, it's the default and it screws up all DSLR pics pretty much, overall I've been pretty happy with superstore price/quality

I do all my prints at costco. Love them.

I've compared prints from Costco, LD and Technicare (pro print lab) and I found that prints from Costco and Technicare are consistent and accurate compared with my calibrated monitor.

LD prints have too much contrast. Although it may look better for certain images, it's not accurate and the extra contrast does not work well for portraits.

To get accurate prints from Costco:

1) Ensure your monitor is calibrated.
2) Grab a printer profile for the Costco location you plan to print at and save your images with that profile. Dry Creek Photo
3) Print without color correction.

If you follow those steps you'll get prints that rival pro labs.