Costco quality stinks imho…For me, it’s fine for stuff I don’t care about like holiday cards, or for pictures I give away…But for slightly more important stuff, it’s hard to get consistency at Costco, mostly probably because they don’t keep those machines well calibrated all the time.
I have had good luck with the Target near Balboa & Genesse. I am not certain of the Target in Mira Mesa. The Target near Balboa & Genesse has new machines, so they still work correctly. Their printing is oriented towards digital. I don’t know if they can even do film. The 8×10 is on to paper, the smaller sizes are thermal dye transfer. Another place for large prints would be Calumet in North County. One part that worries me about places like ‘Nelson’s is their ‘retouching’ of the image to ‘make it better’.
On top of this, our technicians will make sure that every photo print turns out just the way you want it by adjusting the color, the brightness and even cropping them if necessary.
I have had problems with some photoshops not leaving the image alone when I tell them to. Much of the retouching is geared to pocket cameras with poor contrast and cheap DSLRs with the plastic ‘kit lenses’. Putting a good quality image through those ‘auto retouch’ algorithms blows out the contrast.
Alternatively, go to Chrome in Mira Mesa (more expensive, but also pretty consistent).
Didn’t know of them.. though looking at their ‘scanning’ costs, I should go into business. My Nikon film scanner can do 35 negative film and slides as well as 120 base film slides, negatives and medical negatives(4×4 to 4×6). They are doing it at 300dpi and I scan at 4000dpi(optical). Their flatbed is a higher resolution, but I get nervous using a flatbed on film..
