Not only do I want to make sure I’m sending the best quality prints to customers, I also wanted customers to know where to take their images from portrait sessions for the best results.

As of January 16, 2012, I’ve compared five spots in the city of London to print photos, and while I plan to widen the scope to include more labs, and ones outside the city, I wanted to share the findings so far.

The contenders:

Henry’s (Moments Photofinishing)
Black’s Photography
Forest City Image Centre (CameraCanada.com)
Costco (Photo Centre)
Wal-Mart (Photo Centre)

For the test, I used the automatic web uploaders, since it meant I didn’t have to run around the city just to get them to the lab. I also chose to pick up all of the orders, rather than pay for shipping. I always chose “matte” and no border, which was always available as an option.

I set up four 8x10s with a wide range of images covering as many colours and tones as possible. I chose not to have the colour corrected – where available – as I wanted to see my images as I created them, not what their algorithms thought they should look like.

The winner, by a large margin for me, was Forest City Image Centre. Read on below for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Forest City Image Centre

The Process

I’ve never been a big fan of their website; like Henry’s, the user experience could be cleaned up.
Option to pay in store or online
Option to ship photos or pick up in 3 locations in London
The pick-up options are not the best customer experience. The downtown location requires city parking, and sometimes there’s a wait for service. The Cherry Hill location has ample parking, but there’s rarely more one person working and both times in the last month I had a significant wait time. The UWO location is super convenient for me… when it’s open.
Last year, I did not receive notifications that my order was ready. For this test, I received an email confirmation on January 14… two days after I’d picked up the order.
Pricing info online is out of date from 2007

The Prints

Price: reasonably priced at $2.49 per 8×10
Paper: Kodak Endura
Colour: the colours were spot on, everything was crisp and clear

The Bottom Line

good price
great colour fidelity
fairly convenient
lengthy wait, 5-7 days
BUT the clear winner for me

Henry’s

The Process

Auto setting is for “fast upload” for smaller prints and “colour correction* – I chose the regular setting and no colour correction
The uploader feels clumsy and settings seem to revert when you move between the cart and albums. I had to uncheck colour correction several times.
I had previously had an issue where I was forced to crop an image which was to print at 5×7. Every other lab I went to was able to print it correctly EXCEPT Henry’s.
Online pay only
Photos can be shipped or picked up. Stores are located primarily in Ontario.

The Prints

Price: expensive, at $4.69 per 8×10
Paper: Kodak Endura
Colours: not true to the submitted files; all had a faint yellow cast that I didn’t like.
I was really surprised how poor this image looked; in fact, most of the detail from the petals was lost.

The Bottom Line

expensive
must pay online, and the PayPal option was glitchy for me
lengthy wait; it takes 5-7 days to get prints
colour was off
not worth it

Black’s

The Process

I found the uploader a little odd, and for some reason, my images required rotation as it assumed they were landscape and not portrait
In the past, I’ve had issues with both their website uploader and the program you can install on your computer to upload images. The site has been down more than any of the others noted here.
Pay online only
Prints can be shipped or picked up in stores Canada-wide

The Prints

Price: expensive, at $4.69 per 8×10
Paper: FujiFilm Quality Dry Photo Paper
The paper felt odd – almost sticky, definitely not matte
Colour: There was no option to check (or uncheck) “Colour Correction” as with Henry’s above, yet the images were very different than what I submitted. Colours were more saturated, contrast was boosted, all were sharpened.

The Bottom Line

ready same day
expensive
terrible option if you’re printing photos taken by a professional photographer
good option if you’re printing family snapshots and you want someone to punch up the colour and detail

Costco

The Process

I absolutely hate their uploader and more specifically, how you edit photos if you need to adjust their aspect ratio, rotate or crop.
Can only pick up and pay by debit in store

The Prints

Price: inexpensive at $1.89 per 8×10
Paper: FujiFilm FujiColor Crystal Archive
Colour: heavy yellow cast to all images, which was not completely unusable for colour portraits, but ruined all black and white images and most of the fine art work.

The Bottom Line

inexpensive
ready quickly
very yellow tone to most images

Walmart

The Process

The uploader interface was the same as Costco’s, but the shopping cart was far better
Slow upload speed
Option to pay in store or online
Photos can be shipped to your home or picked up in stores Canada-wide

The Prints