Target not the best place to get prints
I suppose this won’t come as a surprise to the more serious photographers out there, but I thought I’d let you know anyway. You can order prints via Flickr, that’s common knowledge. And when you do that, you can choose to pick them up at your local Target store instead of waiting to get them by mail.
Having purchased prints from Flickr before, I was happy with the quality, and I thought that if I chose to pick them up at Target instead of waiting for them to get shipped to me, I’d get the same quality. Wrong.
Not only is paper different and thinner, but there are significant color changes in most photos. The colors are shot to pieces on many of the prints; deep blues, reds, golds and greens were blown out or not printed uniformly. I could have done a better job with my 5-year old multi-function inkjet…
I ordered a mix of 4×6 and 8×10 prints, and on the larger prints, there are scuff marks from the printer rollers on the photos. Basically, they’re a mess. I’m pretty disappointed and will definitely not order prints from Target again.
One more thing. When you order more than 100 prints via Flickr, it apparently takes 24 hours, not 1 hour, to pick them up at Target. That’s understandable. The reason given by Flickr is that Target will need enough time to make the prints. I ordered mine yesterday around noon, and this morning, around 10 am, the digital files still hadn’t been turned over from Flickr to Target for the prints, according to the store. The Target techs had to call Flickr to sort things out.
It took a few minutes for them to get the files, and then it took about an hour for them to finish the 125 prints I ordered. That means they didn’t need 24 hours in the first place, and it also means that there are hiccups in the communication between Flickr and Target.
So, for future reference, Flickr’s mail-order prints = good, Target’s store prints = bad.
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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The seller was going to send it by priority mail but I requested...
[...] Raoul just posted some observations regarding the quality of prints that he received when ordering v…. It appears that Flickr allows you to order directly from them and have your photos delivered, or send your order to a local Target for pick-up. And it comes as little surprise that Target prints are of a lower quality than those generated by Flickr’s print shop. [...]
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