Cold Spaghetti

Curious about all the different digital photo printing options, I performed my own head-to-head comparison of four services: Kodak Gallery (formally ofoto), Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Winkflash. I chose these four because they are among the options available to Picasa users and allow me to send photos in bulk with one click from Picasa. (I highly recommend Picasa, it’s free, easy to use, and allows emailing, blogging, and ordering photos with one easy click — love it!) My Wal-Mart photo experiences have been awful.

All the pictures are in and here are the findings:

All pictures were ordered last Thursday evening (August 3rd). Delivery/Shipment Info:
Snapfish: ready at local Walgreen’s on Friday, August 4th (next day). No fee.
Kodak Gallery: picked up at local CVS on Sunday, August 6th. $1.49 processing fee.
Shutterfly: arrived by mail Monday, August 7th. Most expensive shipping determined by number of photos.
Winkflash: arrived by mail Wednesday, August 9th. .99 cent shipping on all orders.

Some perks: Shutterfly and Winkflash offer white borders on photos. Shutterfly allows you to put comments on the backs. All of these are free.

I compared about 15 different photographs… outside bright light, action shots, inside shots, shots that had been doctored, shots that were cropped, etc. The ones taken outside in bright light had the least color variation between companies. Inside shots varied the most, some had huge variation in color! Our least favorite photos were Snapfish. They were the most drab, dark, and irregular in color. Our favorite were Shutterfly. These were the most consistently color-true, warm, and attractive. Winkflash got second billing, although their photos were usually darker than the others, making whites not so “white.” Kodak, who we’ve used for years now, was okay but inconsistent and got a third place ranking. Some photos were great, but others were washed out and dull. A few favorites were so washed out that it knocked them down in our outlook.

In terms of cost, with online coupons, specials, and money back from fatwallet, I didn’t see much difference. In other words, I didn’t consider it a big factor for comparison; quality and ease of ordering were more important.

I also like Photoworks, who were not included in this comparison. I used them to print photos for Kate’s birth announcements because they were the only company I could find that would do 3 1/2 x 5 inch prints. They are out of Seattle, so shipping takes a little while longer to get East and the shipping costs are similar to Shutterfly, based on number of pictures. I really like the quality of the photos I got from them and would use them again — however, because they aren’t available through the Picasa program, I won’t go out of my way to use them. It’s too time consuming to load photos one-by-one and I am not interested in installing their photo program to speed up the process.

Does anyone have other recommended photo services??