How to Prepare Photos for Costco Printing

[Fulcanelli]

I am working on a photo project and I need a lot of 4 x 6" prints, and want them CHEAP. Costco has great prices and I'd like to buy them through the store. However, I have a problem...

Costco is set up for printing 3:2 format and I shoot mostly 4:3. I don't want their machine chopping off any of my images, and having extra white border is fine by me. Some of my photos are edited and do not perfectly fit the exact ratio of 4:3.

I have no idea what I'm really doing and never quite got the hang of this aspect of photography. I'm thinking I could create a frame in Photo Shop and paste them onto that frame. I have hundreds of photos to print and the labor to do it that way will be more time than I can afford. I guess what I need is some method of doing this as a batch operation.

Does such a program exists that will do this? I have Photo Shop (CS4) and Paint Shop Pro.

I'd really like to understand this process. The workers at Costco sure don't know what they're talking about. I don't think the corporation allows them to admit their ignorance on the topic.

Any help on this will be greatly appreciated. I'm quite frustrated with this whole situation.

Thank you.

 

[Kokopelli_Rocks]

The Costco website is very easy to use and will show you the aspect ratio. You can choose not to have it crop the images.

Sorry to hear about your Costco employees, the ones working our local Costco photo center are very knowledgeable. They have all worked at other photo labs and have been very helpful with any questions.

Ed

 

[puttin]

If you use Snapfish at the end when you place your order it will say something about a 4:3 vs 3:2 and you just click on what they call digital prints and they make them 4x5.3. No missing parts that way.

 

[glasswave]

So, the aspect of photography that you don't understand is aspect ratios. That's funny actually.

I would solve it this way in CS4.

Always work on a back up of the originals. Separate to portrait from your landscape images and put them in separate folders.

Take one 4:3 aspect practice image, choose Image/image size & turn off the resample button, turn on "constrain proportion". Set the height to 4", this will leave you with an image that is 5.333 x 4" at some very high dpi. Next go image/canvas size (make sure your bg color is wht) and add 0.667 inches of whit canvas to the right side. Save this image as an sRGB HQ(12) jpg.

When you understand the process, repeat it while recording an action. Record a separate action for the 3:4 images. Run the appropriate action on each folder. Have costco image your prints, Cut of the borders with a paper cutter.

good luck

I am working on a photo project and I need a lot of 4 x 6" prints, and want them CHEAP. Costco has great prices and I'd like to buy them through the store. However, I have a problem...

Costco is set up for printing 3:2 format and I shoot mostly 4:3. I don't want their machine chopping off any of my images, and having extra white border is fine by me. Some of my photos are edited and do not perfectly fit the exact ratio of 4:3.

I have no idea what I'm really doing and never quite got the hang of this aspect of photography. I'm thinking I could create a frame in Photo Shop and paste them onto that frame. I have hundreds of photos to print and the labor to do it that way will be more time than I can afford. I guess what I need is some method of doing this as a batch operation.

Does such a program exists that will do this? I have Photo Shop (CS4) and Paint Shop Pro.

I'd really like to understand this process. The workers at Costco sure don't know what they're talking about. I don't think the corporation allows them to admit their ignorance on the topic.

Any help on this will be greatly appreciated. I'm quite frustrated with this whole situation.

Thank you.

--

There is simply too much beauty in the world to photograph it all, but I'm trying.

 

[Skipper494]

Download free FastStone and crop.

 

[Charles2]

Walgreen's photo service has the same option. I got only one such digital print, in matte finish. I was impressed by the quality, much much higher than I expected for $0.19.

However, I don't know the longevity of digital print, which I assume is a fancy name for inkjet.

If you use Snapfish at the end when you place your order it will say something about a 4:3 vs 3:2 and you just click on what they call digital prints and they make them 4x5.3. No missing parts that way.

 

[ojohn]

The program to do this is BetterJPEG. It will take your 4:3 images and add borders, left/right or top/bottom, to make a 2:3 file. That is, it will when you set it to do that, then it will run through all the images at one time and produce new files with the borders. Its special feature is it does not re-compress the JPG data, it adds borders without changing any original JPG data (within a few limits explained on its website - the image has to be a size that is an exact multiple of 8 pixels - files from your camera will be, but photos you have cropped may not be so it may need to recompress from 1 to 7 pixels on one side in that case).

Another option is this different, mail-order, inexpensive processor:

http://www.clarkcolor.com

You upload your files, they make prints, and send them to you by mail. They have an option to make 4" x 5 1/4" prints without cropping anything. (at the same price as 4x6). I have used them for mass quantities of inexpensive but OK prints and I recommend them at their price and sometimes very good specials. Don't use their sorting/uploader program, just upload your images to the website and choose 4x6 prints at checkout, it then will ask you if you want uncropped 4x5 1/4s or cropped 4x6s.

It may not be clear on their website now but you can ZIP up to 100 images in one file and upload the ZIP file, and the website automatically unZIPs that into the 100 images just as if you uploaded 100 as individuals.

edit: As I re-read your message, you have cropped some of your photos.

BetterJPEG will handle, in a batch, anything you feed into it, any size, any various crops in the same batch, and add borders as needed to make the 2:3 format aspect ratio image files.

Clarkcolor will "look" through everything you have chosen and ordered to print but it only "understands" 2:3 and 3:4 format image files (no matter the actual size in pixels) to give you the 4x5 1/4 choice when it would apply. If you have cropped something into a "thin" or "square" format, I believe it will still give you the choice but it will still crop and cut off parts of those severely cropped images with either the 4x6 or 4x5 1/4 choice.

What I did in my most similar situation with Clarkcolor was use BetterJPEG to make 4x6 files, and Clarkcolor just made 4x6 prints with the borders BetterJPEG made. Which is just what I wanted.

 

[ojohn]

Seeing earlier message - Clarkcolor actually makes the normal sized prints for Snapfish. Look at both websites and see, they are different front ends over the same website. With the same 4x6 vs 4x5 1/4 or 4x5.3 choice when it applies.

The services offered and presentation is nearly exactly the same - except Clarkcolor prices are usually lower.

Snapfish has a few other services (gift items) that Clark doesn't offer, those are routed to other processors.

Clark Color is actually District Photo of Beltsville, Maryland. They also handle normal photo prints for a few other website printing services.

Prints from Clarkcolor/Snapfish are made on Kodak or Fuji paper and are like photo-type prints (dye-sub), not ink-jet type.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Thanks for all this helpful information. I didn't realize that I could chose the format size on the Costco site. If that doesn't work so well, I'll explore some of the other options here. I have hundreds of prints I need to make for this project, so price is a key factor, and Costco's 13-cent a print is hard to beat.

In one suggestion, the responder indicated that I should make an exact size file. Then, if I want a different size print, I have to redo all the photos? I was hoping that the printing machine would do that for me, so one file could be used for any size print that conformed to that exact ratio.

Thanks.

 

[puttin]

Walgreen's photo service has the same option. I got only one such digital print, in matte finish. I was impressed by the quality, much much higher than I expected for $0.19.

However, I don't know the longevity of digital print, which I assume is a fancy name for inkjet.

If you use Snapfish at the end when you place your order it will say something about a 4:3 vs 3:2 and you just click on what they call digital prints and they make them 4x5.3. No missing parts that way.

It's my guess that they use a Laser printer so that should last ok

 

[ojohn]

I've never used Costco online print service, but I had a few 4x6s made in the store once which were OK. From what I just saw, using Costco's online service help function, you'd have to crop or not crop every single image, one at a time.

Clarkcolor's current price is 8 cents per 4x6 or 4x5.3 print, first 20 are free for a new account, and free shipping, and right now a 20% discount coupon code right on their front page.

(Just saying) (And I don't work for them)

 

[gordo47]

Costco does a great job of printing but this cropping "rule" is baloney! For us to have to manipulate the file to get what we want is ridiculous.

If they simply based the image placement on the longest side instead if the shortest, and let the short side fall where it may--all would be fine.

I'm doing a project w 325 images and would have to resize each to make their system work. I found a lab (WHCC) that does this with the click if a button...a but more expensive but saves me a lot of labor.

Like I said--they do consistent, pro-quality printing but I guess they mostly cater to printing snapshots from amateur "smartphone" cameras. What do you expect?

Spider

 

[gordo47]

Costco DOES give the option of NOT cropping--yes--but if you don't, you get whatever their machine determines that you want. If your file isn't exactly 8x10, 5x7, etc it'll still crop off part if the image. So their's really no option at all!

Spider