Costco Printing

Yeah, I love this online service. You can upload them at any time of day and then get them pretty quickly, usually faster than the estimated time.

And if you don't use the Dry Creek profiles, make sure you convert to the sRGB color profile. If you work in Adobe RGB and leave it, the prints don't look that great...but that's true with about any place you get prints from.

Thanks for the DryCreek hint - I get my prints done at Costco, and have found them to be pretty good, but now they'll look even better!

Some Costco stores use kodak printers. All Sams and Wal-Mart stores have Fuji printers.

Agree the Black's guy was trying to blow smoke up yer wazoo .... looks like he was trying to justify higher print cost by dissing the competition.
A word about Black's and processing ... a couple of years ago when we were still shooting film, I dropped off 50 rolls of film to Black's for processing. This was from a once-in-a-lifetime shoot in Russia. Every roll came back scratched from their processor. They tried to tell me that my neg scanner had scratched the film ... until I brought in about 40 rolls that hadn't been put through my scanner. Scratches were evident throughout. They offered my a $50 gift certificate. I refused it ... said adios to film ... and to Black's.

cheers,
jim

Most have upgraded to Noritsu which is comparable to Fuji. The BIG difference is the quality of the personnel that are running the printer. I've never been able to stump the costco people with a question, & they've turned off all corrections to their printer by default.

Sad that you had to learn a new lesson the hard way. I'd come back with 300 rolls of slides after a one week shoot.
After the shoot:
NEVER ship (mail, UPS, etc) more than 20% of the film out in one batch.
NEVER process more than 20% of the film in one batch.
NEVER process more than ½ the rolls of a variation in one batch.
The last one refers to bracketing slide film to CYA. More on it is here:
https://photography-on-the.net …4269&highlight=​bracketing

I gave Costco another try and want to update my findings. I converted my profiles to match my Costco printer (and each location has there own profiles). I ordered them online and it turns out, there is not checkbox to say use a particular printer or what not (My Kirkland Costco said you need to request a certain printer so they knew which to print on.) I went ahead and ordered them unchecking the "color correction" option. Later I talked to the photo tech at Costco and she said that is the way they know if you want to use a particular profile is by unchecking this options.

So my glossy's looked pretty much the same, not a noticeable difference I thought. The luster prints though seemed to be much brighter (I was never going to get them again after last time), but this time they seemed noticeably improved. My wife noticed though a greenish tint on some of the darker images (I say my wife saw it not because I didn't notice it, but she notice it without me telling her which means it's not me being my anal self). I send the exact same ones as sRGB to MPIX.com for comparison and the mpix ones had no greenish cast. For the price difference Costco is still pretty good, but I wouldn't use them for anything I was selling. The other thing about Coscto prints is that they roll up where the MPix use better paper and lay perfectly flat.

One thing I tried on my last order is the postcards. Those get sent to another lab and are mailed to you. I don't recommend them. The quality of the stuff printed on the back is very good, but my photo on the front looked like a very reduced color depth (like 256 color monitor). I'll send them through the mail sometime and see how well they hold up but they don't seem to be worth the price.

How does Costco compare to an eight-color Canon, especially if you have to convert to sRGB? I have been planning to get one specifically because I figured it would do much closer to the aRGB's extended gamut in the blue-greens.

I don't know where you got the "checkbox to say use a particular printer". Checkbox? Mine only has 2 printers & one of them is ONLY for film. The other is ONLY for digital.

When you follow the link I posted, you'll find that there is a SEPARATE PROFILE for each type of paper. Seems that you're using the same one for both, which is probably why the results differ.

I noticed the last time I checked Drycreek for new profiles, that some of the stores do have more than one printer and you do need to specify which printer. The Kirkland store is one of those.

I'm using luster for luster and glossy for glossy profiles. I've had pretty good results with just sRGB and glossy at Costco. Bodog, yes, Kirkland was one of those with multiple printers. There isn't a checkbox online for a particular printer. It's only a check box stating if you want your images to be color corrected. If you uncheck this, they said that this will "flag" the images and then they will see what profile it has and use the right printer. You select glossy or luster as well online, when I did my last batch I did two orders one of each for comparison.

I just picked up my first order from the Kennewick store and am pretty impressed. I thought I was getting an 8X12, but must have checked the 12X18 by mistake. Very nice though. And I'm sure the profile for that store is out of date too.The 4X6's are better than I ever got from film (at least on a consistent basis). I'll use them again. Cheaper than printing at home... BTW they were installing a new Noritsu when I picked up my order.

That's seems unusual considering what they cost. I suspect that the new Noritsu will replace the two digital ones.

I've had to double check before finalizing the order. Once got 2 12X18" of the same print in a 5 print order & have no idea how that happened except that maybe it was added when I went back to another order. No problem, as they didn't charge me for it. Also once had a tiny dust spot on a car hood. Same thing.

That's the key thing for me. At times I've made a few 4X6" prints of a 100% crop just to check the colors at the available resolution before printing a 12"X18" print. The colors of the small print have been consistent with the final large print.
Then I'll make a 12X18" proof to check the final details. $3 for the first one to check for things that need slight changes, & $3 for the "finished" print. So I can get a "final" print within 24 hours of the time that I upload the first file, which beats the local pro labs which charge $25 and deliver in 3 days.

I'm very impressed with Costco but I too am a little confused by which paper they choose to print on -- I will say that if you ask they will trim to your specifications.

In my case, I order 8 x 10s and they come exactly as ordered in the top, left and right borders or lack thereof, and with the specified bottom border + 2 inches. Explanation: That's the size paper they use. If you look very closely you can see the line where the print should have ended and as I say they will willingly cut on that line. I leave happily, having paid for only what I ordered -- never a suggestion it should be more because of the larger paper.

I think their quality and service is the buy of the century if you don't wish to print your own.

Jim

I use Costco all of the time . Quick and easy. Consistant colors.

I do have a question. What program do I open the icmfile(default) with? Thanks