Scrap Your Trip Adds 256 Items + 256 S*A*L*E Items
Entry Filed under: New Items Added
Happy Tax Day! I don’t mind paying taxes…it means I made money! However, I much prefer getting a refund than having to write a check to the IRS. Did you file yet? There are some people who file as soon as they get their information and then there are some people who file on the last day. Guess which one I am? I’ll give you a hint…I put my Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve last year. At least the mailman will come pick it up and I won’t be one of those people standing in line at the post office! 
A while ago, I wrote an e-mail about how we need to think of getting our digital pictures printed like the new negative (remember, those funny little strips!) Did you know that only 40% of digital photographs are ever printed? We tested 22 different photo labs are the results are in! We did this evaluation several years ago and I have to say, there have been a lot of changes. Actually, the results really surprised me.
Our ranking is based on the quality of the printed picture. After all, it may have been cheap and a great website to use, but if the picture is horrible, who really cares? We sent the same 10 images to each place and ranked them in order of quality. We chose a variety of images (indoor, outdoor, people, scenery) so that we had a good sampling. Each photo was given a point value from 1 to 22, with 22 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. So, the maximum number of points in our evaluation was 220. I can tell you that the difference between the winners and losers was astounding. Also, the winners were consistently good and the losers…well, I’ll let you finish that sentence.
Here are the results, along with the score. More details are available at http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/photoeval.html
1. Costco (189 out of 220)
2. Walgreens (165 out of 220)
3. Creative Memories (151 out of 220)
4. Wal-Mart (145 out of 220)
5. Snapfish (142 out of 220)
6. York Photo (138 out of 220)
7. Winkflash (138 out of 220)
8. CVS (129 out of 220)
9. Kodak Gallery (125 out of 220)
10. Artscow (114 out of 220)
11. Sam’s Club (102 out of 220)
12. RitzPix (102 out of 220)
13. Cord Camera (99 out of 220)
14. Scrapbook Pictures (85 out of 220)
15. Photoworks (79 out of 220)
16. ABC Photo Lab (78 out of 220)
17. Shutterfly (77 out of 220)
18. Photobucket (70 out of 220)
19. Adoramapix (58 out of 220)
20. Mpix (49 out of 220)
21. Seehere (42 out of 220)
22. Scan My Photos (36 out of 220)
I can tell you based on these results, I’m going to switch labs for printing my pictures. The one I have been using came in near the bottom and the quality of the top 3-4 labs far surpassed the others. I knew I loved Costco!
Lots of great new collections are here this week! We have added a new supplier: American Crafts. They have really cute and colorful papers with some really funky names. My favorite is the owl paper named "Lucy Hootski"! We have the Destination and Rock Diva collections from Moxxie, South Seas and Piece of Cake from Creative Imaginations, Easter and Prom from Karen Foster, Alaska papers, page headers and kits from Alaskan Journey and lots of great new vibrant designs from Painted Pages by Jennan. There are lots of new layouts for these collections in the Shop By Layout section.
The SYT designers were working on the following themes this week: Spring, Travel, Egypt, Mexico, Pennsylvania, Volleyball, Racing, Baseball, Pets, Indianan, National Parks, Florida, Disney, Party Time, Baby and more. We even have a Tax Day paper!
We have a four custom paper options: Film Cells, School Border and Stripe and Flourish. We also have custom die cuts for birth announcements and volleyball jerseys.
However, the product that I’m the most excited about is the Sounds Easy Voice Recorder. Remember those little buttons you could record on and put in your scrapbook? Well, this takes that concept to a whole new level. You can record up to 30 different messages that are up to 30 seconds. I have a certain way I say goodnight to each of the kids (and them back to me). I can’t wait to get it recorded!
Click here to see all the new items: http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/4152009.html.
We also have 256 items on sale this week. Click here to see all the bargains: http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/clearance.html.
Celebrate putting another Tax Day behind you with our Tax Day sale! All SYT brand products are 15% off. Just enter Coupon Code "TAXDAY" at checkout. (Offer is only valid for SYT skus beginning with SYT-. Offer ends Friday, April 17, 2009, at Midnight EST. Cannot be used on previous orders. Cannot be used towards future orders after April 17, 2009. Only one coupon per order. Coupons cannot be combined. )
And remember, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, we can always make it custom just for you! Click here to see all our custom options: http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/custom.html.
As always, thanks for your business.
15 Comments
1. Lynda&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I used Costco on the recommendation of a professional photographer, but discovered they don’t compensate for the different aspect ratio of digital pics, so I would end up with unintentional crops. Snapfish however does automatically compensate so I’ve been much happier with the results. But just like with computers: Garbage in, garbage out.
2. Carol&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Thanks for all your helpful info…..last month on your digital camera suggestion and this month on printing photos. I tend to print my own (costly, I know) because when I am creating a scrapbook page, I like to have a variety of sizes and never know what I might want until I am actually working on the page. Any other suggestions you might have for me regarding the sizing of photos would be really helpful!
Thanks Carol
3. Carol&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Thank you so much for rating the digital photo labs! I used to go to CVS and was not happy at all, and it was at that time I realized there are drastic differences in prints. I switched to Walgreens and have been very pleased, but I am now anxious to try Costco, since I am already a member. Thank you for simplifying my life once again!
4. Karen&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 9:33 am
My neices are big Raquetball players. How about some paper or diecuts about this sport. Any ideas? Haven’t found anything but am still looking.
5. Lorrie&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am
love the survey on the picture processing…I have always used Walgreens and have great results with them…Love your website and they way the whole thing is set up….
6. Eden&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Excellent information! I’ve never tried Costco but now I will. Thanks!
7. Judy aka scrapylady&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I am confused by your “extra editing options” and what that means. At Costco, which I have used for years I am able to do a lot of editing – red eye, rotating or flipping photo, filling in flash, auto correct, tinting plus the cropping and borders but you put no for extra editing….so what am I missing in editing options? Wondering if I need to check out somewhere else to see what extra is…BUT Costco does have minimum editing…I use it all the time.
8. Sarah&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Costco is the only place I’ve had my pictures printed and I’ve always been very happy with them. The price is very reasonable, they’re always printed very quickly and the quality is great. Thanks for doing the analysis!
9. Amy&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I’m still holding out hope for the custom hockey jerseys…love what you’ve done for the other sports.
Thanks for the info on the photo labs. I ordered our xmas cards through Costco and they did a good job with them.
10. Paula&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I used to use Snapfish until my pictures started coming out streaked. I tried Winkflashand thought they were terrible! I only use Shutterfly (very pretty colors) and scrapbookpictures.com. Their web site might be unimpressive but you can crop to any size you want and mix up matte and glossy. I’ve never had problems uploading but I don’t time it. I just go do something else! On Shutterfly I upload a whole directory of photos at once. You just have to download their upload tool, or whatever it is called.
11. Paula&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Lynda,
I set my camera to 3:2 so that my pictures are not cropped (in my old camera–my new one is a DSLR). I had to lower the MPs some but the pics still turn out fine and nothing is cropped).
12. Kim&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
This photo evaluation could not have come at a better time. I just had a horrible experience with Shutterfly. I ordered 245 prints that were so dark I could hardly tell who was in my pictures. Customer Service kept trying to tell me it was my original images. I had 50 prints re-done at Winkflash and they were 100% better. Now I know I have a lot more options. Thanks!
13. Rena Ball&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Being from Indiana, I have to say that the Indiana things are neat. But “There’s more than corn in Indiana…”
14. kerrie Barnes&hellip | April 15th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Hi I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone at Scrap your trip. I received one of my orders today and I am over the moon. I love everything and can’t wait to begin my new projects. SYT is an amazing company with friendly, caring people. I live in Australia and its nice to know there are people out there who genuinely care for their customers, no matter what country we come from and how far away we are. Thanks again to the SYT team.
15. Linda&hellip | April 17th, 2009 at 7:14 am
I have used almost everyone of these for developing pictures plus some. Interestingly enough only 1 of your top 3 would I use based on CONSISTENCY of quality. Quality is so very important to me. THe biggest problem I have had with any of these is the consistency of quality. Also my next factor is cost. And due to the rising cost of fuel I have to give Creative Memories and Clark Photo Labs/Snapfish my votes. Those 2 have consistent quality as well as pricing that after all is said and done far surpasses the others. If I do not have to drive to pick up my photos then that is a big plus. A busy lifestyle makes having the photos delivered to my door a very big plus. I have done all the research and these 2 hit the top for me every time.
I appreciate the work that you have done on this and know that you did a lot of homework. How fun that must have been. Keep up the good work. I know that we all appreciate it.