Although Costco Photo Center is a no-frills, no-fuss digital photo printing service, it gets the job done and gets it done right, providing some of the best photo prints online. Simple to use, this photo printing service allows you to create canvas-size prints, collage photo mugs, calendars, photo books and more that help you preserve those captured memories. In order to use the Costco Photo Center you must have a Costco membership, so keep that in mind.
Costco Photo Center review: Printing options
Costco is known for its wholesale goodies, not photo printing. This fact is made obvious by the photo gifts section. Many digital photo printing services such as Shutterfly have a mile-long list of photo gifts you can create with your favorite images. However, Costco has a good selection of calendars and wall prints.
One place you can see Costco's buy-bigger mentality is in its photo sizes. You can print canvas prints, for example, up to 40 x 60 inches, which is huge! Canvas prints and handbags are two of our favorite photo gifts that this digital photo printing center offers because they are true statement pieces. For basic prints, you are able to print your images from wallet sizes up to 20 x 30 inches, which is a fantastic range.
Costco Photo Center review: How it works
We were impressed with the in-depth editing tools Costco provides. The majority of the other digital printing services offer a crop tool, and that's it. The Costco Photo Center, however, has a gamut of tools that allow you to adjust the contrast and brightness of a photo, flip or rotate the image and remove red eye. You can also add borders to your images and change the tint. That puts it right up there with Walgreens Photo in photo editing options.
Uploading new photos is a simple process. With the Costco Photo Center, you are able send photos from your mobile phone – transferring them from your phone to your personal Costco photo printing account, which will save space on your phone. You can also email photos to your digital photo printing account as attachments or upload images straight from your computer or media source. When you upload photos, you can choose to filter them into a new album or use one of your existing albums.
There is a variety of upload choices, but we wish Costco gave you the added bonus of being able to upload photos from your Facebook account like sites such as Snapfish, and that it allowed people other than Costco card carriers to use its services.
Costco Photo Center review: Customer support
The Costco Photo Center offers generic customer service options, such as a FAQs section, technical support telephone number and a customer support form. If you have a general question about a general procedure, the FAQs section may be perfect to meet your needs. We were disappointed that there are no video tutorials or live chat support available.
Should you buy from Costco Photo Center?
The Costco Photo Center could have been a super generic digital photo printing service, as the company's focus is with its other offerings. We are surprised and pleased, however, with the editing tools available, a decent list of photo gifts and the variety of print sizes. The quality of the prints could have been better, but we were still pleased with the vibrant colors in our sunset picture. The excessive cropping at the bottom of our aerial picture was not ideal, however, so we suggest that you specify your cropped areas.
