Les Jones

Holidays > First Time Using an Internet Photo Printing Service

For Mother's Day (hi, moms!) I wanted to make my wife and our moms a print of a picture from the day Natalie was born. I knew you could send pictures over the Internet to a photo lab, but I had never tried it. With Mother's Day approaching I gave it a shot.

In Picasa I chose "Order Prints and Products" from the Create menu. Up came lots of options, from local print centers to remote printing companies that required shipping. The local options were CVS, Walgreen's and Wal-Mart. I chose Walgreen's for the quick in-and-out factor. (After sending in the order I realized I should have sent the prints to Wal-Mart so I could have bought a frame at the same time. D'oh!)

I had to install a Firefox plug-in to upload the pictures, but that was easy. The Walgreen's interface was slightly confusing. I uploaded one picture and wanted to upload others, but couldn't figure out how - the "Add More Pictures" link was for adding additional prints of the same picture, not actually adding more photos. I eventually erased the album, created a new one, and uploaded all of the pictures I wanted in one pass.

Walgreen's promises printing within an hour, and the prints were ready when I arrived. When I got home I discovered Walgreen's had sent me an email when printing was complete. The actual print time was less than 30 minutes.

The prints look great, and the price was reasonable. 4x6 prints are $0.19, 5x7 prints are $1.59 or $1.00 each for two or more, and 8x10 prints are $2.99 or $2.50 for two or more. At prices like that I don't think we'll ever get around to using our HP photo printer.