Print Photos from iPhoto at your local drugstore

Thursday, November 13 2008

By: chrisb

No need to wait to receive your pictures in the mail

Burn to CD
Click to see a larger image

The built-in photo printing in iPhoto works very well and the prices are quite reasonable. The only drawback is that your prints are delivered by mail so it could be a week or more from the time you place your order and the time you receive your prints.

This tip explains how you can copy your pictures from iPhoto to CD. Most drugstores and discount stores have kiosks where you can print photos directly from a CD.

As a side note, you always want to deal with photos in your iPhoto Library from within iPhoto itself. Don't go messing around inside the iPhoto Library from the Finder. Trust me on this one. It is so important that starting with iPhoto '08, Apple made the iPhoto Library a lot harder to get into.

Before you are ready to burn to CD, you need to decide which photos you want to print.

Create a new album called "To Print".
Drag the pictures you want to print to the To Print album.
Make sure the To Print album is selected and choose Share / Burn from the menu.
Insert a blank CD. You may get a dialog box that pops up that says "You inserted a blank CD..." If so, click the Ignore button.
A panel will appear above the bottom tool bar. You will see how much space will be used on the CD and how many items will be burned to the CD. You can also change the default name of the CD to whatever you like. NOTE: If the number of items says "1" and you have more than one photo in the To Print album, that means that you have selected one of the photos above (selected photos have an orange border around them.) Just click on the grey space around the photos to deselect.
Click on the Burn button. The disk will burn and then be ejected from the drive.

Here is some information about printing at a drugstore or discount store

In my testing, the staff at the photo centers are generally helpful if you have questions.
"One Hour" prints doesn't necessarily mean one hour. At Walgreens at 8pm on a Wednesday, I got my prints in five minutes. During busy times you might wait longer than an hour.
Some photo centers offer specialty items such as Magazine Covers or Baseball Cards that Apple does not offer through iPhoto printing.
According to the photo center tech at Walgreens, a 24-hour Walgreens offers 24 hour photo developing as well. Handy if you ever find yourself needing prints at 2am.
You can also upload your pictures directly to Walgreens or Walmart through their website and pick up the pictures later at the store. See this tip for the details.

Please note: I am not endorsing Walgreens as a location to have prints made. I did however get good service and good quality prints from the store I visited. Your experience may vary.

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