Why are Walmart Prints so Fugly?

So once again this time of year I've been forced to get some quick prints done at Walmart. Why? Well, because I don't have a RIP and the family "xmas gift order" gets placed (the various pics that need to be printed at various sizes and sent off to people as gifts) too near the deadline for me to order from Smugmug.

Once again this year I'm extremely disappointed in the print quality.

When I want a single print I typically just run it on my Canon i9900 - a dye ink printer that produces outstanding color prints (but ugly black & whites since it's forced to create gray tones through blending colored inks). This is relatively old technology. You would expect high tech lab equipment costing many $10k's - even if it's installed in a Walmart - to be able to produce a print that's at least on par with a $400 home photo printer.

Here are the results.

Original File

1/80@f/2.8 24-70mm on 5DmkII. The exact same source file was used to create both of the following prints...

Canon i9900 Print on Ilford Gallerie Classic Pearl (scanned)

Ignoring the bluish & washed out look that the scanner adds - there is a lot of fine detail in the print from the highlights all the way down into the shadows. The green of the grass comes out a bit warm but the colors are otherwise pretty faithful to the original.

Walmart Lab Print via a giant Fuji machine on Fuji Crystal Archive (scanned)

The same blue cast remains from the scanner. The green of the grass is closer to the original but that's about the only thing good you can say about the print. The shadows are a complete horror show and quite frankly, anything below a midtone appears to quickly crash into black. Note how little detail is preserved in the shoes and grasses. The scanner seems to make this look even worse than it actually is, but it's still NOT good.

Of course the moral of the story is to make your plans ahead of time so that you can either print everything yourself or outsource to a decent lab. But in a pinch you'd like to think that a photo center could get it a tad closer to "right".

Now, I will say that if you look at the Walmart prints on their own without any knowledge of the original photo you may be generally happy with them. This is especially the case if you happen to be a grandparent who could care less about print quality and just want more pictures of your granddaughter.  So off they go... there's always next year!


Disclaimer: I can't complain too much about the timing of "the order". If it were left up to me no one would ever get anything!

Oh - and to answer the obvious question of "why not find a good local lab?" - While I agree it would be a good idea to find a local lab who I can trust, this is a problem I run into approximately once per year. Any other time I need prints I can either just do them myself or order via Smugmug... The xmas prints are just too much to deal with at home since I need a combination of several prints or various pics at various shapes & sizes.