Costco is my friend

See my reply post above. Make sure your costco uses the newer noritsu laser 3xxx series printer and interpolate to 320ppi and resize to the exact output with lanzcos interpolation (free from irfanview) and download the ICC printer profile from http://www.drycreekphoto.com convert to their colorspace before printing (set to intent saturation or perceptual). Adjust as required and apply USM. I set up an action for usm in ps cs layer/duplicate layer set to darken; layer/duplicate layer set to lighten and select filter/sharpen usm 500% amount/.4 pixels/0 threshold, select each layer alterately and adjust the opacity between 15-30% lighten and 30-50% darken (depending on the necessity for sharpening) then flatten the image and save as jpeg quality 12. Burn to cd and stand in the kiosk. You may select Tiff as a better option but costco restricts the file size so jpeg might be a safer alternative. Lastly, make sure to demand no color correction/no adjustments when you print. Good luck!

Tom K. wrote:
I haven't been to Costco in a few years [we live in rural Colorado
now]

Do you stand at a Kiosk and insert media?

Did you have any calibration data before you took your file in?

How exactly did you process for Costco - TIF? JPEG? USM? etc

3fros wrote:

I just got back from costco with (3) 12 x 18 prints that are so
sharp and crisp that the photo guy working at the store (the guy
that sees a lot of pictures) had to comment on them. He said he
wished his 35mm film camera could do that. Price only $2.99 per
print. The were printed while I shopped and done before I left the
store.

In addition to that I bought another Sandisk 256MB CF card for $42.