My Photo Printer.net - Review of the Future Photo Online Photo Development Service

Future Shop has relaunced their online photo developer, FuturePhoto (futurephoto.ca). I have decided to give it a trial, and I my first digital photo prints have arrived!

Introduction

Online photo developers are springing up everywhere! They've got traditional film developers looking over their shoulders, and for good reason. How can they compete? With online services, there is no film, CD or flash memory to bring to the lab. You don't need to make two stops to get photo prints, one to drop off your digital photo files, and a second to pick them up. And you get to preview your files in their final cropped (read on) format before finalizing your order.

Enough banter. This is the first in our series (hopefully) of online photo developers. The first victim is Future Photo (futurephoto.com). Why are they first? Well, they had a nice advertisement in a recent Future Shop flyer, and it's convenient. Prints ordered from Future Photo can be snail mailed, or picked up at your Future Shop location of choice - no shipping charges for in store pickup.

The Future Photo Online Photo Developing Process

The first step of the process is a simple, standard, run-of-the-mill registration form.
Next, you need to create a new album or use the default name, and upload your images. The online html form allows uploading a maximum of 20 images at once. You can add additional images with subsequent upload batches.
Once you have uploaded your images, you select the images of which you wish to purchase prints. There is a "Select All" feature if you want a print of everything that you have just uploaded.
Next you have to approve of the cropping of your images, if it is required. Here is a picture of a roast coming out of a dug in oven. A little bit of cropping was mandatory to get the image ratio to match that of the print. I decided to do a little bit more cropping to better frame and zoom the photo - that's one of the reasons to keep the highest resolution photos that your camera can produce. The original is from a 3 megapixel camera, there should be more than enough information to crop your images a little before making 4x6 prints. You can jump from photo to photo using the bar at the bottom - I've purposely blurred the thumbnails.

Note that you also have image rotation and flipping tools available.
That's it! Once cropping is finished, there is a confirmation screen or two. A payment screen. And an order confirmation screen. Just wait for your results!

Photo Prints Pricing

Digital prints are still more expensive than film development in Canada. Although, it's not too expensive, especially if you only print the photo's that you like! This will change in time, for the photo developer there is less work and materials involved in producing digital prints. As soon as compeition increases, I'm confident that prices will be the same, if not lower, for online prints from digital sources. In fact, the price difference between film and digital prints has already disappeared in the USA. The big box outlets in the US such as Costco and Walmart have digital print pricing competitive to regular film.

That said, at the time of writing, Future Photo had the following pricing, in Canadian Dollars:

4" x 6" print

$0.50

5" x 7" print

$1.50

Sheet of 8 wallets

$4.95

8" x 10" print

$4.95

11" x 14" print

$8.95

There was also a "First 10 Prints Free" promotion for new accounts. Free pick up in stores or else reasonable shipping prices apply for snail mail.

Processing Time and Pick-Up

Future Photo's web site claims that orders will be ready at your Future Shop location of choice in 0-3 business days. Our test prints arrived in two business days. A simple email will be sent to the account that you registered under when your order has arrived at the store.

Pickup locations vary by Future Shop store. In our test case, our photos were available at the Computer Servicing desk. It was as simple as handing the person at the desk the online shipping confirmation email. Since the photos are paid for through the online system, you don't need to check-out. You can walk right past that the cash registers and security - as long as all you are doing is picking up prints!

Photo Print Quality Impressions

Future Photo prints are made on Kodak paper, and presumably with Kodak equipment. They look and feel just like regular film prints. Color reproduction was excellent, as was the detail - at least to my eyes. No hints of pixelation or jpeg artifacts from my set of prints. Keep in mind that your mileage may vary.

Miscellaneous Notes

A few notes that don't really fit elsewhere in this article

Futurephoto.ca's speed was variable during our testing, and the site was completely down on one night. We suspect that their online photo developing service is growing dramatically after their remake and marketing campaign. So, hopefully these issues will not persist.
I edited every photo on my PC before uploading them. It is very tempting to improve the color or other attributes of digital images before getting them printed. Afterall, that's one of the biggest benefits of digital over film! You can edit the photos on regular PC's. No darkrooms required! The vast majority of edits involved using the "color curves" feature of Gimp to fix the colors a bit. A couple photos had some minor touch ups. The only downside is that it takes time. I didn't bother cropping on my PC, since I would have to crop again online anyway.
All photos require cropping on Future Photo. In fact, most, but not all, online photo developers will only produce prints in the traditional film sizes. E.g. 3x5, 4x6, 5x7. Most digital cameras on the other hand, produce images that match the ratio of computer monitors. Monitors are more "square" than film prints. So cropping is required. For me at least, it's usually good for image composition, rather similar to how letterbox format movies feel like they show more "image" than movies reformatted for TV.
The total time to manually process the images, then upload them, then crop them was a lot longer than simply taking a roll of film to the photo lab. But that is a personal choice, it takes more time to take perfect each digital image, but the end result is that each and every print was excellent in composition, color, and focus. You could simply upload your images, directly off your flash card, and accept the default cropping of your images. You'll end up with prints comparable to what you get from a "regular" photo developer. It's up to you.
Broadband is your friend. My images averaged 1 MB each. It took a few minutes to upload 30MB of images over my cable internet connection. It would take a couple hours to upload that amount of data on a modem.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Well, if you've read this far, I hope you've enjoyed this article. Overall, I am very happy with Future Photo. In fact, I have ordered more prints from them, and I eagerly await those prints. If you live in Canada, and have a digital camera and need some digital prints, there's no reason not to try Future Photo. There is no minimum order, no shipping costs, and if you are lucky, there will still be a sign up incentive when you give it a shot.

Please visit our forums and post your experiences with Future Photo or other online photo developers.

Leonard Chan

Published on: 2003-08-27 (10298 reads)

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