Anyone using walgreens.com for printing photo's ?

BTW, I got the pictures back from MPIX. I'll be using them from now on, unless I want pictures now!. Superior quality! No color correcting is also the best option for me, I compared the photos with the Walgreens pix, and I can see color casts in the Walgreens prints. (I've had several photos that seemed to come out in unintended ways from Walgreens, now I have it confirmed, but on a much more subtle level)

The metallic prints I'm still not 100% sure about, though. They're interesting to look at, but seem a bit odd. They also tend to exhibit a bit of bronzing. I think I'll stick with the standard matte endura paper.

Just thought I would chime in since I'm a lab manager at Walgreen's, lol..

When you send an image to the store via internet or kiosk, it goes to whats called our photo image controller before it gets to the printer. inside this controller there is some stupid option called "image intelligence" and it makes most prints come out worse or just not the same way they were taken. I leave this turned off at my store, and 3/4 of my techs don't even know about the feature. That would probably explain a lot of the issues a lot of you are having with the colors etc. With this setup on my machine at work, the prints come out great. Another thing you have to take into consideration, and this happens A LOT.. is if the paper has been setup correctly in the machine. Each time the tech loads a new roll of paper, they should test it and get the density back to normal. If this is not done, black and white prints will have either a red or a green hue to them, which makes the image look like junk. This, in combination with the image intelligence feature earlier mentioned can really ruin a great photo.

A friend of mine had some wallet sizes printed there. they were all the same picture (for christmas cards) but they were all cropped a little differently for some reason. Some of them were pretty bad. I go to walmart a lot and use their print lab. they're not perfect, but the people there are cool and they'll reprint without a problem. Plus it usually doesn't take and hour and there are no other printing places within 45 minutes of my home.

MRaiford wrote in post #2384048
BTW, I got the pictures back from MPIX. I'll be using them from now on, unless I want pictures now!. Superior quality! No color correcting is also the best option for me, I compared the photos with the Walgreens pix, and I can see color casts in the Walgreens prints. (I've had several photos that seemed to come out in unintended ways from Walgreens, now I have it confirmed, but on a much more subtle level)

The metallic prints I'm still not 100% sure about, though. They're interesting to look at, but seem a bit odd. They also tend to exhibit a bit of bronzing. I think I'll stick with the standard matte endura paper.

Did you like the normal paper used ? I noticed it was not glossy.

Thanks for that info, Chris. It sounds as if a tiny bit more training would make a big difference, but I suspect that the managers doing the training are more interested in quick output vs quality that most people won't appreciate.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #2481110
Thanks for that info, Chris. It sounds as if a tiny bit more training would make a big difference, but I suspect that the managers doing the training are more interested in quick output vs quality that most people won't appreciate.

You got that right pretty much. From my experence in my lab, the managers that are in charge of the store really could care less about the quality as long as they don't get customer complaints, they are happy. Gross Profit is the key phrase for them

But yeah, like you said a little more training would go such a long way. I have my staff behind me 100% in my lab, and it shows with the ammount of processing and compliments we do and get. Im also a disctrict trainer for the new managers and photo techs so hopfully others in san antonio atleast will start catching on sooner or later

.. Another thing thats pretty sad, is that most managers don't train at all. They let the other photo techs train the new ones.. that is just a bad situation if the training tech doesn't care and is just there for the paycheck.

90blackcrx wrote in post #2465505
Did you like the normal paper used ? I noticed it was not glossy.

Yes, but I prefer matte over glossy.

Tonight I tried the kiosk at our Walgreens for the first time. I got some 4x6 prints to give to some relatives and I have to say that I was really impressed with both the IQ and the color. Are the kiosks dye sub?

kdw75 wrote in post #12087838
Tonight I tried the kiosk at our Walgreens for the first time. I got some 4x6 prints to give to some relatives and I have to say that I was really impressed with both the IQ and the color. Are the kiosks dye sub?

Go back & reprint one of them. Then compare it to the same one from last night. Maybe you found a good one.

My only gripe with Walgreen's, was they stopped printing my pictures saying I was stealing them off of the internet or I was stealing someone-else's copyrighted work.