Online Photo Printing

• Expert Rating

  1.50 / 5

• User Rating

  0.00 / 5 (of 1 Review)

• Price

  $ 0.31 (AUD)

Andrew Kliem Good Gear Guide 16/03/06 Follow @pcworldau

Pros

• Quick interface, Jigsaw puzzles!

Cons

• Expensive, Does not deliver

Bottom Line

Ultimately we can’t find any reason to recommend Big W’s service, unless you particularly want a jigsaw puzzle. There are better services for less money that will deliver right to your door.

Would you buy it?

• Yes 0
• No 0

Own this? Write a review

The point of online photo printing is to save people the trouble of going out at all, which Big W fails to do. Having said that, many people have no problems dropping off photographs, going shopping, and then coming back an hour or two later once they have been developed.

The Big W service also falls firmly on the pricey side. Whilst their standard 4x6 prints are about average at $0.31 each, the next size up jumps to $2.94 (as opposed to the $0.99 or $1.00 offered by most competitors) and the 8x10 inch cost a whopping $7.94. We could feel comfortable paying a bit extra to have shots delivered, but when they require an in person transaction we simply can't justify the extra cost. One nice perk of this system however is that you don't have to pay for the photographs until you actually arrive, so for security conscious people who dislike giving out their details online this may be a viable alternative.

Big W offer a variety of printing options; nothing that rivals Fujifilm, but a reasonable selection that extends up to 8x12 inch prints. There are mousepads, mugs, calendars and our personal favourite, jigsaw puzzles! That's right, now you can own a jigsaw puzzle of your favourite friend/relative/patch of blue sky. Whilst this is not enough to save the flailing service, it is a nifty feature nonetheless.

The Big W service operates through a fairly simple, downloadable interface, which comes with a few image cropping and rotating solutions, but nothing you can't do in paint beforehand. Because you don't have to enter any payment details, the process is quick and streamlined and we found ourselves finished within just a few minutes. Their system supports both JPEG and TIFF files, which is great for the more advanced photographer.

You can pick up your photographs within four to seven days and Big W will notify you by phone when they are ready.

Images produced by the AGFA printing service were quite good, but noticeably darker than the competition. In comparable foliage shots, the shadows around the leaves were a very dark green, compared to a lighter shade in other shots. The one exception to this seemed to be the colour red, which was much lighter than in any of our other shots. Edges were crisp and reasonably sharp. Overall, these were not the best shots we've looked at, but there will satisfy most people.

Read our roundup for a direct comparison with the other vendors.