Digital camera gurus?!

[GNICETRY]

Make my frustrating story quick. Have a Canon S30 3 megapix. Took some pics, stored them on CD and went to Walmart to print them. About 1/2 of them came out great picture quality the other 1/2 very pixelized. The lady told me it was the way I took the pics. On my PC ALL of the pics look perfect and the resolution is 1600 X 1200. The pic size is 4x6. Went to Sam's Club (they only had matte finish) and ALL of the pics came out pixelized. Same resolution. What's going on? I thought it was the printer, but 2 different stores? Shouldn't the pics look like how they look on my PC?

 

[BLACK6PACK]

send me the file to one of the photos that are pixelized and I may be able to tell you the problem.

 

[GNICETRY]

I emailed you 2 good ones and 2 bad ones. It might take awhile to download. Thanks!

 

[mjdwyer23]

It was a pain in the arse for me just to find a summer job, luckily Frank S saw my post and emailed me! I'm very fortunate for that.

 

[mjdwyer23]

OOPS! wrong post, weird, I had the right one on my screen when I replied... my bad I guess!

 

[Buick From Hell]

Without seeing the pics, I'm going to make an un-educated guess...

It may be that they're re-sizing the pics (even just slightly) rather than (or in addition to) simply cropping them, and their software probably sucks...

for example:
I have MGI photosuite on all my computers. I like the program because it's really simple and easy to use. However, re-sizing pictures, even by SMALL amounts, just totally messes 'em up! (ESPECIALLY for printing!)

Couple of tricks I've learned:
First, crop your pics YOURSELF, so they'll fit perfect at the size you want printed! ie: your 1600 x 1400 pics are at a 1.33 ratio, but your 4 x 6 prints are a 1.5 ratio...to make your pics 1.5 ratio, you need to crop the height down to 1066 pixels. (different "standard" pics all have different ratios; 8x10=1.25, 8x12=1.5, 5x7=1.4, 3-1/2x5=1.43)

second--if you want/need to downsize pictures, AND you have a photo program with any type of "screen capture" function (where it takes a "snapshot" of your computer of whatevers on the screen on any other program), then use Microsoft Word to re-size your pictures! Just use the "INSERT/PICTURE/FROM FILE" function, and insert the picture you want to re-size. Just click on the picture, and then you can size it up or down by dragging the corner--and you'll find that MSWord does NOT degrade the
picture as you resize it! (even down to thumbnail size!) Once it's the size you like, take a screen-capture snapshot of it, then finish it off!