Review: Costco Photo Center

Digital photography is great, but if there is any drawback it is the lack of physical prints. I have become dissatisfied with the prints that I'm able to do at home, so I decided to try Costco's photo printing service.

As luck would have it I decided this just as they took down their web site for several days to upgrade the service. I have problems with being patient, but I keep getting little lessons like this.

When their web site returned I couldn't wait any more. I knew that the site would probably be running slowly due to high traffic since it had been offline for three or four days, and I was right. Everything was extremely sluggish, or completely unresponsive. I didn't let this dissuade me, knowing that the web experience would be better on future orders.

The web site is very well set up. It is easy for novices to just upload files and order prints. Costco will run some basic auto corrections and have your prints ready. They allow more advanced users to disable the auto correction on files that have been manually tweaked. They even make available, to expert users, custom printer profiles for the specific printer at each location.

We eventually got our order placed and headed to Costco about an hour and a half later. Our prints were ready when we got there, and were absolutely beautiful. Definitely better than anything I've ever done at home, and they should last much longer as well.

We got 24 4"x6" prints for $4.27 including tax, if I remember correctly. I will be going through my collection and getting many more photos ready to be printed.

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