Using Costco's Photo Lab

I like to use the Costco Lab for proofing or quick prints, but I like to do my own image corrections. It is not uncommon for the lab to forget and run their corrections anyway. The staff are usually very pleasant about it and they re-print my files right away, but it is an inconvenience. From talking to the staff at some of the different Costco Warehouses in my area, I have learned a few things which I thought I might share with you.

The above image shows what the code on the back of the photo should look like if the lab turned their image correction off. You only need to worry about the part I marked in red.
The sequence code should be:
N N N N---
(four n's and a set of three dashes)

If their image correction was on at the time of printing, the sequence will be:
N N N N NN
(four n's followed by a double n)

I hope this was helpful.

Cool Feature - Automated Crop & Straighten Photos in CS2

This is a really cool feature in Photoshop CS2. (I would think CS3 has it also?)

I was importing album art into iTunes today for old albums that iTunes cannot find artwork for. I remembered this fun feature and wanted to share it with you.

If you have a bunch of old snapshots (or in my case, old CD album covers) that you want to scan, place them on your scanner bed, leaving gaps between each. Scan as usual. When you have the file inside Photoshop goto:
File -> Automate -> Crop and Straighten Photos
This magic feature does what it says, plus it puts each image into a separate file!

Very cool.

It is a bit quick & dirty, though. My scanner auto calibrates to each scan, so leaving a lot of empty space around the images changes the way the files come out. I ran "auto levels" on the files before saving and that worked well enough for what I wanted.