Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I'm curious if anyone's done a wide ranging survey of local (and mail order/online) print houses.

I've recently seen some ad (can't for the life of me remember where) that had an online advertising for 10 cent 4x6 prints.

I've only tried Shoppers Drug Mart for cheapie reprints and found their paper sub standard (for 29 cents a print a number of years ago).

I was curious if anyone's done a recent survey or if there are any suggestions as to where to go for reasonably priced 4x6 prints.

Curious as always,
Dave

Costco is pretty decent, don't know about the survey part

When ever I drop ship to the states I use myPhotopipe so far the quality/price has always been good. I don't know if they would be cost effective with brokerage to ship to Canada?

I haven't really ventured down this road - the closest thing is Vistaprint - but only for post cards, etc. There was a place I wanted to try that did canvas printing, but never did anything.

I second Costco. Surprising the quality of their prints are very good. They have also ventured into doing larger prints (12x18), canvas prints, inkjet posters, mugs, greeting cards, calenders, photo books, etc.

Dave, the paper varies by shoppers. Everything from see through no-name paper to fuji professional crystal archive, all for 10c. I'd recommend the shoppers on the danforth at pape, but they haven't had it for what seems like ages as I am low on my business cards myself.

I used to use future shop before which was also pretty good for 4x6's for 10-15c

anything for non membership based companies?

Has anyone tried kwikpix.ca ?
Thanks for all the info so far -
I'll give Shoppers another try.

Cheers,
Dave

A friend of mine uses kodakgallery.ca often, and I've seen the results. They're fine for personal prints IMHO. They deliver it to your nearest futureshop/bestbuy for pickup I think. I'm going to do an order for them this week.

For me, Costco is good enough for personal prints because their fast and cheap. Thankfully, they have a printer profile that you can download from their website and load into LR or PS which is updated every (week?) so often.

I used the Kodak Gallery once for a poster sized print and was quite impressed at the quality of the print. The only downside was that delivery time for this particular print was rather slow (about a week).

I've used Loblaws. It was cheaper than SDM and good enough for my purposes.

+1 for Costco. Download their printer profile and you're good to go. Send the prints to them online, go to Costco, have some of their awesome fries, and your prints are ready for pickup.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Wal-mart.

Depending on the location (Scarboro Town Center is where I tried), the quality is okay, but the service is terrible. The counter is under-staffed, and we often had to wait 10min's or more just to pickup.

Not to hijack, but ppl mentioning about Canvas prints.. I used a guy I found on CL since he was in my area and his quality was just as good, if not better than Blacks, or anywhere I've walked into.

Damn cheap too.. prices starting at $35

i think its been mentioned before, art2canvas.net I believe

As for 4x6 and other prints, I also say Costco is hard to beat. I miss that the most after not renewing my membership... that and the samples

I'm another one for Costco, however I always include a Red Green Blue Cyan Yellow Magenta Grey scale print with my order. The first time I used them I was trying to familiarize myself with colour profiling and kept getting prints back with a heavy green cast. This went on for a week, thinking I was doing something wrong. In the end it was a problem with their printer, but I could never get them to admit that there was ever a problem. So now I enter two orders, one with a test print only 4x6 and a second order with all my prints a test print. I go in and pickup the single test print order and then take it out side in good light to check if it is OK, then I go in and get the second order. If they were to complain (they haven't yet) I would explain why I don't trust them. After checking the test print I go in and get the second order, and closely compare he single test print from the first order with the test print in the second full run order. If OK ( and things have been for the last 2 years ) I pay for the second order.

Can you post a link? I can't find it. I am currently using Wal-Mart, but if Costco publishes its printer profiles, I might change.

Thanks.

Yc

Just google
costco printer profiles canada
or
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/Profil ... ofiles.htm

You should note that some locations have multiple printers and not all are profiled and the last time I ordered online there is no way of selecting which machine to use. Unless you know that all online orders go to the profiled machine you would have to go to costco in person to select the profiled machine in those cases where there are more than one machine. In Barrie it is not a problem because there is only one machine.

Thanks. I was trying to find the profiles within costco's website. Even tried their search function.

Yc

+1 for Costco. With the profile loaded into PS I've never been disappointed with the results (Brampton location, Steeles & Rutherford).

Walmart, on the other hand, was a complete disaster the only time I used them. Muted yellows became vivid oranges, reds were heavily oversaturated. Never again!