Buckstop39 Loc: Collin County Texas

This is a short story about my experiences with a process of digital preparations and uploading to CVS for printing. To start with, my better half wanted to make a pair of photo albums for each of our two granddaughters. The prints for the albums we had from film were mainly 4 X 6 or so. That timeline was the time before I transitioned to total digital photography in 1998. I have an extensive set of film years so that was a chore in itself to sort and assemble the prints in chronological order.

The remainder of the snapshots were in folders labeled by year and date and topic so that made for easier selection of kids related photographs. This digital period is from 1998 through 2013. There were 28 thousand of so pictures to search through. But after a few hours, we had enough to finish off the album for the better half. There was a total of 77 digital keepers for me to process and resize.

I placed the 77 pictures selected in a new desktop folder as jpeg digitals for the most part since the photos were from about 7 or so Digital cameras that I used over the past 16 years.

The process to get them ready for printing was to open them in Lightroom 5.X and then final edit and resize them to 4 X 6 in PS CS-4. Settings to resize them was set to that size with the crop tool and then resized to 600 DPI. These made file sizes from early digitals of 3 megapixel to upwards of 10 megapixels each. As I finished each file, I saved it as a finished ready to send to CVS file in a separate folder. In the process of working on them, I discovered a neat trick in LR. I could save the finished photo in the final folder by renaming the file and using save as: in CS-4. When finished with each file, I would close the working file in CS-4 and then I would switch back to LR and was able to remove the two processed LR prints from the working folder. LR saves a psd file as well too. But to send for printing I used Jpegs. Eventually I ended up with an empty working folder. Saved a lot of time and confusion.

Once all 77 were completed, I uploaded the 475 megs of the 77-4X6 digitals to CVS Photo. This took maybe 15 minutes of upload time as I have a Fast FIOS connection. Since they have a local store in my town close by, these were ready in one hour or so. Total cost with tax was 10 dollars on the nose, using their special offer this week. Wow!

Well upon examination, I was totally overwhelmed at the quality of the prints and the satin/glossy paper used. Detail in them was more than what I ever obtained with film prints unless I enlarged the negatives myself. Color of each print mirrored my somewhat calibrated LED monitor. Only problem was some skin tones in a few were a little off but I attribute that to my monitor and the process that I did to them. My better half was totally satisfied with the prints.

I have used CVS in the past to make some photos of old photo scans etc. They were OK but I have since learned to use LR and Photoshop techniques better and wanted to share this story with those that might be interested in prints from a commercial source. No way could I have done this with a personal printer to this quality level, and especially as cheap. I am including one here as an example of size and color. Thanks for looking.

Hope it was not a boring story for the readership here. I was just so impressed with what came from CVS that I had to share it with you.

Mike T.

Test Photo

(Download)

xxredbeardxx Loc: San Clemente CA.

Wow. That photo looks great Mike.
I usually use Costco because of cost and value
for the money, but I'm going to rethink that.
Thanks for sharing this.
:thumbup:

ebbote Loc: Hockley, Texas

Very nice shot Mike.

Selkii Loc: Oakland, CA & Vancouver Island

Thank you for the info! Always like learning from others' experiences. I, too, have used Costco with great success, but your CVS photo (and, no doubt, your pp :) ) is impressive.

Buckstop39 Loc: Collin County Texas

Thanks folks...that particular snap was taken using an Olympus C2020Z digital cam which I think was a 2.1 megapixel sensor. The tonal range in that camera was superb I think. The print of it from CVS was amazing to me...And just think...today we can get 40 megapixel sensors for photography in a cell phone...sigh..

Beagleman Loc: Indiana

I'm sorry but the CVS machines closest to me are pretty crappy. Lots of shut downs and problems. Walgreen's printing is far ahead of CVS around here.

--Beagleman

DON PRYTHERCH Loc: Stroudsburg PA

I've had excellent results with the Kodak moisture-resistant print paper in our 24-hour CVS store in East Stroudsburg.

Buckstop39 Loc: Collin County Texas

Thanks, may try the Wallgreen's across the street from our CVS next time...