First things first, let me get this straight. I like PhotoCD. I think it's one of the most wonderful things ever. For usually less than $1/photo, I can get high quality, high resolution scans of my pictures which I can then quickly turn into the Web pages you see here. Digital cameras are getting pretty good, but still nowhere near the image quality, reliability, and low price of a traditional camera.
Unfortunately, I absolutely can not recommend Kodak as a vendor to process your PhotoCDs (Qualex is the brand-name of their photofinishing service). Yes, they're cheaper than going to a professional photo vendor with in-house facilities, but you have to deal with dust and other digitization artifacts, as well as clueless Kodak customer service if you have a problem. Here's an example.
Utah is a beautiful place. I took some fantastic
photos while I was there. As usual, I spent anywhere from five
minutes to half an hour per picture in PhotoShop cleaning up the mess
I got back from Kodak. This one PhotoCD, however, was bad enough that
I decided to send it back. Here's why. To the right is a photograph
of Delicate Arch (click for a bigger version). Below is a
magnification of the original, unretouched PhotoCD data.
This shows progressive zooms. The bottom-most image is at the highest
resolution available on the PhotoCD (approximately 3K by 2K pixels).
The images here are 300 by 200 pixels. So, at the largest zoom, you
are seeing 1/100 of the PhotoCD image. Those rainbow patterns are
not on my negatives. They're on the PhotoCD, in the same place,
on every single photograph. In most cases, you
can retouch around these with PhotoShop's clone tool, but
it's a pain. So, I sent the CD back to Kodak, including a printout
highlighting the rainbow pattern. Three weeks later, I get back
the original CD with this attached message:
Dear Customer Wallach:
Thank you for allowing Processing by Kodak the opportunity to provide your photofinishing needs. We are sorry for any inconvenience you may have experienced.
The enclosed CD checked out fine on our equipment. Perhaps you should check out your monitor and/or printer.
If we may be of assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact our customer relations department.
Sincerely,
Katherine Baccala
Customer Relations Specialist
So, there you have it. Quality photofinishing by Kodak. If you want real quality, I recommend going somewhere else.
That was in 1998. After posting this Web page, I eventually was able to get the attention of some folks inside Kodak who could actually do something about the problem. They did eventually fix my problem and process my next PhotoCD gratis. Regardless, Kodak processing is still plagued by dust and artifacts. Lately, I've been paying extra to use a local vendor with in-house PhotoCD processing. It's worth it.