Costco Picture Center has the best discounts on Costco Photo Album, cards, and calendars, but the quality of the printing and software leaves a lot to be desired.
When it comes to picture albums, cards, and calendars, Costco has the best deals. Consider checking for Critique or Midbook discounts instead, which provide significantly more versatile and creative tools as well as far higher print quality.
Pros
- Reasonable costs
- Appealing book clipart
Cons
- Card and calendar program with severe limitations.
- Book printing at a low cost
Print Quality Ranges From Fair To Poor.
Costco Picture Center is the members-only large box store’s online print service, however, ordering photo items online is free. Costco Photo Album, calendar, and picture card have the lowest costs among the finest photo book services we examined, notably the book, which contains 30 pages compared to the 20-page books from other firms are also available on Costco Photo Promo Code.
What you pay for, however, is what you get. Little wowed us throughout our examinations. Check out Costco Photo Album if you’re on a tight budget (as we all are) and all you care about is having a picture book with appealing photographs, even if the book isn’t. However, continue reading to discover how Costco Photo Center stacks up against Critique and Midbook, two of our favorite services.
- Top picture albums
- Photo cards of the highest quality
- Calendars with the most photos
Price Comparisons At Costco Photo Center
Our $19.99 hardback book with 30 pages is 11.5 x 8.75 inches. Costco Photo Album only sells an 8 x 8-inch softcover (in a 2-pack for $19.99) and a 12 x 12-inch lay flat hardback book for $39.99.
Calendars With Pictures From Costco
Our calendar is $9.99 and is 8.5 x 11 inches. $19.99 for a calendar measuring 11.5 x 14 inches.
Photo Cards At Costco
A return address is placed on the envelope and each 5 x 7-inch card costs 66 cents. Volume discounts aren’t available. Only one-sided picture prints on fragile conventional photo paper are available for the first 50 cards, and they cost 28 cents apiece. After that, in packs of 25, the price drops to 21 cents apiece.
Costco Photo Album has eliminated all of its in-store photo facilities, so you’ll have to have whatever you want to be deliver to your house.
Software Review At Costco Photo Center
Costco’s book-making software is simply adequate at most, but its calendar and card interfaces are extremely limited. The book interface is versatile in general, allowing for personal expression. The layouts and templates may be completely customize. Some of the most gorgeous clip art we’ve seen is found in Costco Photo Album modest collection. Costco, on the other hand, lacks the variety and quality of Critique or mix book, despite some of the backdrops being appealing. While the decorative frames are appealing, the straight picture borders are restrict to a small number of colors, with just a handful having several width options.
Other than those linked with certain beautiful frames, the Costco book interface features no drop shadows. Furthermore, picture editing software only has two filters (sepia and black & white), and a shot cannot be stretched across two pages. But the most aggravating thing was that I couldn’t match the backdrop and title font of my book’s spine to the cover I produced, resulting in an unattractive overall look.
The calendar interface at Costco Photo Album is quite restrictive, with little room for modification or creativity. There are no drop shadows or clip art, and the font, text color, and background options are limited. Because the calendar interface contains auto-correct and red-eye in addition to the two filters, the picture tools are only marginally better than those for the photo book.
How To Make Date Box Event
We enjoyed how simple it was to make a visual date box event using the calendar software. Simply double-click a date to bring up a large window where you can drag and drop a photo, move (but not magnify) the image inside the box to center on your topic, and add text in a variety of colors and fonts.
The templates, which are restrict to predefined uneditable designs, render the picture card interface even more limiting than the calendar software. If your event doesn’t fall into one of a few categories (wedding and a few other kinds of invites, birth announcements, thank you notes, and save-the-date), you could have trouble finding a card that fits your requirements.
Decorative components and typography cannot be change or remove. As a consequence, the design graphic concealed the children’s faces in the picture on the back of our card. You can only add photographs or writing in preset placeholders, pick from a few color schemes, and choose square or round corners. The same four picture editing tools are available for calendars.
The Print Quality at Costco Photo Center
Photo Albums At Costco
The book from Costco Photo Album seems to be low-cost. The internal pages are plain black paper with visible binding threads on the front and back. The semi-gloss paper is of reasonable thickness.
Overall, the picture reproduction was decent and engaging, but nothing outstanding. The cover has warmer skin tones than ours (albeit not as warm as Shutterfly’s book). Interior page skin tones are more accurate than the originals. The interior photographs exhibited a fair (but not great) dynamic range, with clarity in the shadows, mid tones, and highlights.
On the other hand, the photographs on the cover experienced minor shadow detail loss. On the cover and for most of the photographs on the inside pages, the focus was excellent, however, a closer study revealed that some of the internal shots were a little blurry.
Calendar Of Costco Photos
Our Costco Photo Album has a mixed picture quality. Some of the photographs were well-color, while others were very orange. However, the most visible flaws were inaccuracies in exposure, which caused certain colors to seem muddy due to over-emphasized shadows.
However, the highlights and mid tones were brighter and more evenly distributed. If you don’t stare too carefully at the minute details, the images were acceptable sharpness. Likewise, the font was OK but not sharp. The paper is a standard smooth card stock with a reasonable weight.
The Verdict On Costco Photo Center
Costco Photo Album print goods offer one distinct edge over the competition: affordability, which for individuals on a limited budget may be the deciding factor in selecting a printing service. Costco’s book software is minimal, and the card and calendar interfaces are among the most restricted in our roundup. And the printed objects themselves aren’t really noteworthy. Although the images are beautiful, the book is crudely manufactured. Our calendar and card are of ordinary to the below-average picture and print quality.
Consider Critique or Midbook if you want to design your book, calendar, or cards according to your creative vision and want high-quality results, but Costco Photo Album is an excellent alternative if you’re on a budget. However, Midbook often provides discounts, bringing its pricing closer to that of Costco.
