I just picked up the photos ... all 440 of them! I kept Walgreens busy today. This was my first experience doing online photo developing for in-store pickup, so I learned a few things:
1) All of my pics are in the raw original hi res format. You will want to manually crop the ones you select - you can move them side by side or up and down (the vertical ones need you to manually center them the way you want from right to left and the horizontal ones need to be moved up or down slightly because of the variations in 4x6 photos vs. their current digital resolution). Cropping is real easy. You can zoom in and re-center whatever in the pictures you want to keep.
2) The cropping is not exact. I cropped mine very tightly and it turned out to be too much on a few where the tips of trees or edges of signs I zoomed in closely on got cut off. It's not awful by any means, but you should always leave some leeway on the sides because when the pictures print, they will be slightly smaller than the cropped image you work with online. I selected the entire album to print and then choose the option to review my pictures in the order, which let me crop them one by one. I learned to save my work every 20 pictures or so, because if Walgreens website has a problem, you lose all of your unsaved cropping work. You can select as few or as many pics to print as you like.
3) Walgreens only prints on glossy paper for in store pickup - matte finish is also available if you want home shipped delivery. I chose mine with no borders on the edge. You may want to use borders if you are used to pictures having them. Glossy paper looks fine, although it's slightly thinner paper stock than traditional film paper.
4) The images print slightly darker than the on screen version, but only slightly so.
5) I spent oodles of time carefully attaching captions to every picture. Some photo places print your captions on the back of the photo, which is what I was hoping for here. No go with Walgreens - argh... lots of time spent working on that, too.
6) The images are organized by date order, and in most cases, are chronological. They are numbered. All of these pictures were posted in the Alberta Pilgrimage mini-forum, so if you want to use another processor to print copies, you can download each picture from there in a high resolution format.
7) The estimates Walgreens provides for completion of your order was very conservative. I wasn't anticipating having all of my orders finished before Tuesday, but they were all done early this afternoon, within 12 hours of placing the order.
8) Don't forget to use the coupon code JOY in the box towards the bottom of the online order form and then hit the box to retotal your order. You should receive the discount immediately for all orders of 30 prints or more. The coupon is good for up to five uses per account and expires 1/12/08. It's one of the lowest prices (10c per 4x6) of the year for Walgreens and a lot of people are taking advantage of it.
If you have any questions, just let me know.
