Harvey Norman Holdings Online Photo Printing

Harvey Norman's photo printing service really managed to distinguish itself by offering rock bottom prices for smaller prints, as well as a full online gallery service. This service is similar to Kodak's online sharing system. It allows you to upload and store albums, sharing them with friends and colleagues, and generally get your work out there online.

Their prices are what will really attract people however, offering the lowest cost prints for all the smaller sizes. At a mere $0.29 a copy for standard sized prints, and with larger 6x8 inch shots costing just $0.99 (they can cost upwards of $3.00 at other places), Harvey Norman is definitely the place to go for the budget orientated photographer.

There are an impressive number of print options as well. Whilst not as varied as those offered by FujiFilm, you can get prints stretching from regular 4x6 inches all the way to 20x30 inches, which is as big as we have seen. Now you too can plaster giant versions of yourself around the house for all to see.

Rather than doing the photo processing themselves, Harvey Norman have elected to license out FujiFilm's technology. Unfortunately however, they have added a hefty amount of signup time to the otherwise effortless client. Customers will eventually be greeted with the wonderful FujiFilm web-based photo interface, but not before they have gone through several email correspondences and signed away several years of their life (or so it seems!). We understand that it may be necessary to properly utilise the web-based gallery functions, but for people who just want to print out photographs it is a huge waste of time.

As a result of outsourcing the work, photos can take up to a week to be delivered, although depending on your location it may be sooner. The cost is a meagre $2.50.

We found Harvey Norman's image quality to be excellent. They produced the liveliest shots, with bright colours and clean edges. Our outdoors prints were sunny, yet accurately shaded. These were the lightest of all our test prints, but we thought they looked the best.

Read our roundup for a direct comparison with the other vendors.