OFF TOPIC - Digital Photos, how do you get good prints??

[Loveridden]

Hi everyone, I know it's off topic but maybe some of you have some advice!!! Yesterday morning I had a coupon for Walmart to get 25 free digital prints printed out at Walmart's One Hour Photo - I did 30 so paid a little bit but it was mostly free. But I was appalled to see how they turned out. Pixelated, unclear, in some instances cut off, just horrible clarity mostly. They even have some lines through them too. Like light pinkish lines. If Walmart was giving away this coupon to draw people in to get good digital prints there, it was a fail!!!! But I am wondering, what I can do on MY end to make my digital prints come out better. They looked great on my comp. I cropped them how I wanted on the site. And SOME of them were even resized previously to be smaller....

I do think the light pink lines throughout every pic was their machine, and was surprised they didn't refill their ink or something and redo them, the pics came from different places, some from my camera, some from other people's cameras, and all had the pink lines.

But I am thinking that the pixelation and stuff, maybe that is something I can correct on my end if I resized them all to a certain size?

Does anyone hear prepare their digital pics in some way first before uploading them to be printed out somewhere? A certain size in paint shop pro? Other ways? I want my prints to come out like they would for a normal camera!! Wahhhh!!

 

[volume control]

I know its not as cheap but ive seen stuff from shutterfly and they use good printers. Comes out pretty nice

 

[Loveridden]

I have heard good things about shutterfly and snapfish......

I will have to research this more, and maybe just try a place or 2 and see what the difference is!

 

[spacekitty]

Make them re-do them!!! Everything is automated nowadays and there is no excuse for that kind of on your prints!!! (I used to work in a photo lab back in the good ol' days... LOL!!)

The only ones you might be at fault for are the ones you cropped, if those are the ones that were pixelated... just be sure of the size when you do that. And you might try setting your camera to a higher resolution, if possible, too.

I have sent prints to WalGREEN'S and had great results...
(and if you get on their mailing list, they have all kinds of Free offers, too!)

 

[Loveridden]

Thanks SK!!! I ALSO used to work at photo lab years and years ago, so was pretty appalled myself!!! lol. I used to work at Walgreens. I decided not to bother because I got most of them free because of a special coupon offer. Still, it was disappointing, and if that offer was made so that people would be introduced to using them for digital prints, it failed!!! I will never get prints there again because of the poor quality!!

As for the ones that were cropped different sizes and stuff, I am wondering if there is a certain "ideal" size to make pics online, so they come out unpixelated and such when printed out. Too busy to research that today but someday I'm gonna spend some time looking it up and trying some different things out!!