CVS Photo Center Services for the Desktop Publisher

The CVS Photo Center just might be an ally unknown to the freelancing desktop publisher and the small business owner alike. The need to have photos printed in great quantities in the particular size you want might crop up quickly and you might be at a loss as to how to get that done quickly with reasonable pricing. Whether it’s a brochure, pamphlet, or a flyer that needs a photo included, the CVS Photo Center can help. I recently found myself in a jam and found this service helpful and easy.

Incidentally, while we’re talking about outsourcing some of your DTP work, you might want to take a quick gander at the printing services discussed in Fedex Can Print Your Files From Any Location Via the Internet as well.

Getting back to CVS however, setting up an account online initially is just a matter of inputting your name and email plus a password. Then you can get right into uploading photos from your computer. I’m always a little anxious about these things, just hoping that the CVS Photo Center website is intuitive and can find my photos and give me the ability to browse through my photo files and choose the ones I want to be put on the album I want to create on CVS online. I don’t care to know how it works and I don’t want to learn how to create some sort of special file to make it work. I just want the ghosts in each of these machines to talk to each other to create a new online album. That means I pick and choose from my vast arsenal of photos to create an all-star album with whatever name I give it that gets stored on CVS Photo Center online.Since it worked, I felt obliged to include it here.

Once your photos are uploaded, you can edit them individually by typing in a photo description, tags, dates, and more. You can also crop, rotate, and do other minor image editing procedures. If you've ever created an album on FaceBook, then you'll be familiar with the process. And if you’re unfamiliar with tags, they’re a great function that help you locate pictures quickly because you might have a ton of them and forgotten the name you gave a photo long ago. For instance, you’re looking for a particular picture of a river so if you tagged all your river pictures ‘river’ they’ll show up when you search with that tag designation and it's much easier to find what you're looking for.

I was pleased to find their uploading function worked on my PC which has a Vista operating system so my pictures are conveniently located in my Windows “Pictures” file on the drill up “Start” menu and viewable on “Windows Photo Gallery.” The upload was successful apparently since I had the latest version of Java which my PC must have updated to at some point because it probably prompted me to do so. On the CVS site, after you’ve become a member with the simple steps above, it’s just a matter of clicking “Upload Photos” and then “Get Photos.” When I clicked on “Get Photos” all of the picture files on my PC appeared and I was so pleased; magic machines indeed.

Once you’ve created an album, you can have the prints made and shipped to you or travel to the CVS near you for quick acquisitions of those photographs you need for your DTP project. Picking them up at the store is usually much faster. When you’re done filling your online shopping cart, there is a wizard which brings up the closest CVS store to you for convenient pick up. If you don’t want to do your uploading and ordering online you can also bring your digital images to them which are stored on your camera’s memory card, a CD, or a flash drive.

Some other nice features the CVS Photo Center has include free storage of your created albums (which will likely be your most prized photographs because you've taken the time to select the best from all your images) which in turn you can easily share with friends and family via email. And for special occasions or perhaps to please a client with a photo book, you can have prints of the size you choose made into gifts. All in all the CVS partnership with Kodak that made all this possible makes for a job well done.