Third time's a charm

Lately I've been having issues with Costco printing my photos--wait, let me rephrase that--I've ALWAYS had issues with Costco printing my photos. The first thing I noticed when I made the switch to Costco was that their 4x6 photos are NOT 4x6. They're a smidge off. Not a big deal when you're printing a 4x6. A very big deal when you're printing six 2x2s & two of them are 1/8" off. I've dealt with it by not printing up to the edge (which means I can't do six 2x2s, a relatively minor nusance).

More recently I've been annoyed by the cruddy color quality. Really not a new problem, but when I didn't do any photo enhancement in photoshop, I didn't mind. Now that I spend quite a bit of time editing my photos, it's frustrating to say the least! I know part of the issue is that my monitor isn't calibrated (something I need to do, like to do, but don't want to pay for!). But we're talking MAJOR off. Like super dark, and skin tones that don't look human.

Hence printing the photos for this layout no less than three times!

1) I forgot to "uncheck" the auto correct on Costco's website. Anytime you do post-processing, this should be turned off. But one would think that when pictures come out of the printer, the developer would say, wow! That cute baby looks like a corpse! Fortunately they were very understanding when I asked that they be reprinted.

2) This time I remembed to turn off autocorrect. But the photos were so dark & lacked depth. Just super blah. So I played around with the monitor settings & figured out that it was set to "super bright". That would explain why photos looked overexposed on my monitor & underexposed from the developer.

3) And take three! Hey, they're not perfect by any means! Most were taken indoors with cruddy lighting. Or outside at noon. But for the most part Abbie looks "normal".