Gift Maker Extraordinaire
Written: Jun 14 '01 (Updated Jun 14 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quick - Fast - Easy
Cons: Can be expensive
The Bottom Line: This has been a welcomed means of making photo copies as well as photos from my digital camera that I want printed.
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| rbinck's Full Review: Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk Printer |
The Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk
The Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk is a great companion to a high-resolution digital camera. Going digital allows you to take a lot of shots without any incremental increase in cost. Many times I will take two or three shots of the same photo and save the best one after uploading them to my computer. Many photos I do not wish to have hard copies of, but I am glad to have them on the computer.
This brings me to the Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk. Occasionally there will be the need to have a hard copy photo of one of my digital photos. Even though the cost is $5.96, or so, at Wal*Mart for an 8X10, overall the cost, considering film and developing, is much lower and I get an 8X10 instead of a lot of 4X6s or 5X7s that require storage space.
How the thing works
Basically the Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk is a photo printer. I think the output of the printer is 1200 dpi, so the resolution, or quality of the photos can be very good. I use the phrase “can be” due to the fact that the source for the photos can make quite a difference on the output photo quality. If the system is used to enlarge a photo, any blemishes or out of focus problems with the original photo will be amplified by the enlargement process. You can use many sources for printing your photos, including a scanner, 1.44MB computer disk, a CD-ROM, or a compact flash memory card from a digital camera.
Picture Output Layout Selections
The most common use for the unit is probably to make an 8X10 enlargement, but there are other printing layouts available as well. You can choose to make two 4X5 prints of the same photo or one each 4x5 print of two photos. You can also make a sheet of wallet-sized photos from a single photo. There are several other choices under the Advanced Photo System Layouts selection, so the system is very flexible. I have found that some of these advanced features will require the assistance of the store personnel, as they sometimes need to enter a password to get into these features.
Scanner
To use the scanner you raise the scanner lid and place the photo on the glass much like you would if you were going to copy the photo on a copier. When the appropriate selection is made on the touch screen CRT, the system will scan and automatically size the photo and display the photo on the CRT.
1.44MB Computer Disk
To use this feature, the photo needs to be stored on a 1.44MB floppy in a JPEG file format. Before you copy or save a file to the disk, just be sure it is in the JPEG format as bitmap formatted files will not work. If you have a file in some other format, it can be loaded in a photo editor such as Paint, which is furnished with Windows ™, and saved as a .JPG file type.
Picture CD or Photo CD
This option allows you to load the system from a Kodak CD or from a CD that you have burned on your computer. I think it will only read the CD-R type CDs and will not read the rewrite able or DVD formats. Just like the 1.44MB disk the files need to be in the JPEG format, if you are using burned CD-Rs. The Kodak prepared CDs are of course compatible.
Flash Memory Cards
On most of the Kiosks I have seen they will also load from your digital camera flash memory card. It may require help from a store employee as sometimes it requires the use of a special adapter or flash reader that may not be left with the Kiosk.
Picture Selection
If a method other than the scanner is used to load the system, you will be presented with a thumbnail directory to assist you with the picture selection. A thumbnail is a small picture presented on the CRT of the photos available on the source. If your source has more than 8 photos, you will have a previous and a next button to allow you to scroll through all of the photos on the source. To select the desired photo, you press the image on the CRT; it’s just that simple!
Edit Operations
At the point where you have the photo loaded in the system and displayed on the CRT, you have several choices as to what you want to do next. The simplest operation at this point is to just print the photo on the printer. Other operations you may want to perform on the scanned photo id to crop, or trim, add some text, change the tint, change the brightness, eliminate red eye, or add decorative borders. I may even have left some operations out, so take some time to check all of the editing features. It may be that at this point you do not wish to print the photo, but would like to write the scanned photo file to a 1.44MB computer disk. This is also possible at usually a reduced price, but I found that only one photo would be written to a single disk. I found this out because I wanted to post some snapshots on the Internet, so I took the photos to be scanned and scanned three to a disk. When I got home only the last photo scanned was on the disk. Now I take my laptop to copy the photos into after each operation.
Using the Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk for gifts
One thing that my family has done several times is to use the Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk to make gifts. Either taking a standard snapshot and enlarging it to 8X10, or printing out a digital photo and then inserted into an inexpensive frame available at Wal*Mart also, makes a nice gift to commemorate an occasion. The wife and I recently was on a trip and visited with some friends that I had met on the Internet, and left them an 8X10 photo of them, the photo and frame both acquired at Wal*Mart.
Funny, the first time we made several 8X10 as gifts, it was for my son and his wife. We took several particularly awesome snapshots and had them enlarged and framed. The snapshots were from their trip to Hawaii one year. Well guess what? They did the same thing! Boy was it a surprise when the daughter-in-law unwrapped the first photo. She just started laughing. Later when we opened our first photo, it was clear what she was laughing about.
Another gift we made was for a guide that took us down into Pololu Valley on mule back. My son had snapped a particularly good shot of his on his horse when enlarged and framed, turned out excellent. We took the photo back to the trailhead for him. Still another use for the system was when my daughter got married. I was decided to place a photo of the bride and groom on top of the wedding cake in place of those silly plastic GI-Joe/Jane figurines. The Kodak PictureMaker Kiosk to the rescue. Along with a heart shaped etched glass frame, an original photo was worked on at the kiosk until it would fit the frame perfectly and on the top of the cake it went. They have a great memento of the occasion and we received many great comments on it as well.
Copyrighted Material
They will not let you make a copy of any copyrighted material without written permission from the copyright owner. Photos made in studios, especially proofs, are not allowed. This service is intended for snapshots. We had some graduation photos of our kids that had been made in a studio and we wanted copies of these made. Well we didn’t know that they would refuse to allow us to do it and they took them at the checkout counter. I don’t know if all clerks would be that picky or not. We ended up having to get them scanned and put on disk to get the copies (at a different place). It wasn’t that we didn’t want to go back to the studio and purchase copies, we would have gladly, but the studio was out of business. The owner had died and the family just shut the studio down. I don’t know what happened to all of their negatives.
Summary
I don’t mean to imply that this is the end all for photo printing. Many times I have had prints that came out too pink, even though they looked fine on the CRT and on my computer screen. In some cases I have had to make more than one print to get it right. But if you show the store personnel the problem, they will usually work with you to get satisfaction, unless you are Mick Jagger, I suppose.
I do recommend this service for all of the occasions I have written about. It has been very handy on several occasions.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 5.96
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Epinions.com ID:
rbinck
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Richard Binckley
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 125
Trusted by: 26 members
About Me:
Retired A/V professional, likes Hawaii and Classic Cars
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