Sunday, April 18, 2010

Costco's photo printer service

I had heard a while ago that costco would now print 16x20 and 20x30 in house in their stores instead of at a lab. I never thought much about it assuming that the quality would be low until I noticed at my local lab that they are using Epson 7880 printers. These are really high quality printers using fantastic inks. Even better, costco subcontracts with dry creek photo who regularly profile the printers and provide instructions on how to use the ICC profiles. These profiles also work great in Lightroom. I sent a few very large files to my local costco and had them print and the prints are gorgeous. Basically perfect color reproduction using the supplied profiles, fantastic toning and very vibrant colors. I was floored that they can offer these prints for the ridiculously low prices they charge ($8.99 for a 20x30). There is no way you can print this large yourself for anywhere near this price. The paper is not extremely good, but pretty reasonable and this gives you a closed loop color management. Pretty amazing.

1 comment:

  1. Ooh, this is good to know! I'll have to check out the Costco near me and see if it's the same. Thanks for the heads up!

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