Know an inexpensive way to print poster-size images?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I made photo collages in powerpoint for my kids and wanted to have them printed as 3X4ft posters. Kinkos charges an amazing $12 per square foot ($144 per poster). Online sites are cheaper but require big runs (greater than 100). Is there a way to pay between $20-$40 per poster for single prints?

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. It isn’t GQ’y enough to post there.

2

Bite the bullet and lease a plotter ($75 a month), plus buy paper and cartridges. Open your own garage shop and make a killing. Seriously. Got your first two months paid instead of one $144 print.

expenses and penalties, taxes and service not included, some restrictions may apply, check your local dealer for participation and dealer stock

3

Using Apple’s iPhoto printing service, you can order 20 x 30 prints of your digital pictures for $19.99 each.

4

www.cafepress.com does this business for around that price. I can’t remember if they do 3x4 feet though.

Worth a look.

5

I don’t think CafePress does posters that large. But, decently large.

Mojo: How do I use iPhoto’s printing service? I don’t use iPhoto that much, and I never could figure out how to order any prints. (I’m actually more interested in the books full of photos.) Maybe I’m not looking hard enough…

6

iPhoto doesn’t do 3’ x 4’ – their biggest is 20" x 30". I don’t think CafePress handles massive prints either.

As for iPhoto, you can order prints by simply selecting the photos you want (or put them in an album and choose that), then click the “Order Prints” button at the bottom of the main window. Trivially easy.

And the photo books are as cool as they say; they make perfect sentimental gifts for the holidays. :slight_smile:

7

FYI, My local kinkos does this for between $5 and $7 per square foot depending on the paper. That’s getting closer to your price range at least. I’ve used them too, and was very happy with the quality. They have a number of options, matte, glossy, vinyl, canvas. In my case, I even wanted special paper, so I went and bought a roll (expensive: $200 for 3 feet across by 100 feet long), and they printed on that for me.

So, you might want to check back with them, or call different ones in your area.

Other vendors I’ve looked at that make big posters, but not as big as what you want: ofoto.com, cafepress.com, photoaccess.com

8

hmmmm. I just went to check out this iPhoto thing. It looks like you have to pay $50 for some custom software that naturally only runs on a platform I don’t own, for the priviledge of printing through them (and paying for the printing of course). Joy.

However, their video advertisement has the word “Kodak” prominently displayed, so I’d wager it’s really ofoto.com at the backend.

9

Oh, sorry, I meant to include shutterfly.com in the list above.

10

Actually, iPhoto itself is free – the $50 is for the iLife suite, and most of that cost is for the DVD-editing program. iPhoto itself is more useful as an image organizer tool than as a printing facility anyway.

Yeah, and I believe Apple contracts with another firm for the “photo books” service.

11

rjung wrote

Thanks. And is iPhoto a web service like ofoto.com (i.e. platform-agnostic)? Or is it a Mac-only application?

12

Find someone at work who has a big plotter and grovel.

13
      • I asked a question very similar to this once, but I can’t find it now. What you can do in a regular photo editor is rasterize the image (if it isn’t already), enlarge the whole image, and then chop it up into pieces that will each print on a seaprate page and tape them together afterwards. I once looked into large-format printers for an employer; there are no cheap, good solutions available at all.
        ~
14

It’s Mac-only. It’s an all-purpose digital photo organizer that lets you sort your pictures, make slideshows, email them to folks, create web pages, yadda yadda yadda. Ordering prints is just one of the tricks it can do.