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Last Updated: Thursday, 21 March 2024 14:42
Published: Saturday, 05 October 2019 22:09
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Photo:

In USA, you can almost always print photos for free or very low cost (lower than what it would cost in ink if you were to print yourself).

Free Photo:

You can search on slickdeals.net for "free photo" and you should see any available and past offers. I'll try to put these under deals and also below under "free photo deals". These are some of the popular stores for getting free photo:

1. Walgreens: Almost every other week, they have free 8x10 photo, free 5x7 photo, free 4x6 photo, or 1 cent 4x6 photo. It's usually limited to one use of coupon per account. So, if you are 2 members in household, make 2 accounts on walgreens with 2 email addresses, and that way you can avail 2 free offers every time. These photo offers usually expire in a day or two, so be sure to act fast !!

2. CVS: Just like walgreens, CVS also has free photo offers. However the offers at CVS are fewer, may be once every couple of months. Since 2020, I have seen them, maybe 3-4 times a year.

3. Walmart: Walmart has 4x6 photos available for printing for 10 cents or less. This is an emergency option if you can't afford to wait for free photo. CVS, Walgreens, etc have much higher regular prices.

4. snapfish: This website snapfish.com has free photo offer, along with free shipping a couple of times every year. You also get few free photos for signing up. Search on slickdeals.net.

5. T-mobile: If you download "Tmobile Tuesday" app, you will get multiple freebies every Tuesday. From time to time, you get "10 free photo prints" at CVS. Anyone who is a T-mobile customer (all phone numbers on a family plan) can download the app and take advantage of the freebies.

 

Big Size Photo or Canvas:

If you want big size photo with frames to hang on walls, then you will need to spend money. I'm talking about 18x24 or 20x30 photos or 36x48 photos. These are not printed on paper, but rather on canvas (a  cloth). It looks really nice when hung on a wall, especially if it already comes "stretched on a frame" (frame is not that thick, but good enough). One thing to note is that the image needs to have enough pixels on it, so that it looks smooth when enlarged to these large sizes. Any image with more than 2000x2000 pixels (or more than 4M pixels) will do great. You can click on "properties" for any image on your computer, and that will show you the size and the pixels it has. Any image with size > 2MB usually has enough pixels to get enlarged.

Best website that I've found for printing economical canvas prints is canvasonsale: https://www.canvasonsale.com

You will get much lower prices if you look up their offers on groupon.com. Groupon has 20%-30% off deals almost every month. If you wait for such a deal, and then buy canvas from this merchant, and use a cashback website for purchasing from groupon (topcashback or ebates) , you can essentially get 40% off already reduced price. You can also get groupon gift cards for 10% off, so use those instead of using your credit card.

I had bought 36x48 and 24x36 canvas from above website. They came with "frame" and were carefully shipped. The print quality was amazing. I paid about $25 for 24x36 size and $40 for 36x48 size with shipping included. This is before cashback and before gift card discount. These are priced at around $300-$500 each on their website (which is non sense price anyway). I don't think you can go wrong with this merchant at these prices for these large canvas with frame.

 

Passport Photo:

In USA, passport pictures are pictures needed for use in your passport or other government applications. The photo size requirements for US passport are different than those in India. Here you need 2 inch X 2 inch passport photo. You can get these passport pictures taken in India also, as they know the requirements there too.

To get your passport picture, you either need to goto walmart, CVS, Walgreens or some other stores, which charge you $10 for a pic. You can put your camera to use, and save some money. If you take the photo yourself, it will cost you 10 cents or less, and in the process you will gain a valuable marketing skill on taking passport pictures !!

Website for Passport Photo:

This website creates correct passport size photo on  regular 4x6 photo size.

https://www.idphoto4you.com/

steps:

  1. goto website above using internet explorer. This doesn't work in firefox, as it just doesn't show any option on 2nd screen. If it doesn't work on your browser, try another browser. i can confirm it working on Internet Explorer.
  2. choose passport "2x2" for USA passports, since they require pic of 2 inch by 2 inch. Follow instructions to upload a photo.
  3. Then on next screen, adjust brightness and contrast. Usually not required.
  4. Then on next screen, crop photo. It shows 2 green bars. Your face should be in between those 2 green bars.
  5. After crop, your picture will be ready for download in 1 minute. After a minute, download the photo to your computer. It will have 4 pics of 2x2 on a single 4x6 paper size.
  6. You can print it at any store the same way as you print regular 4x6 pics. You can cut the resulting 4x6 to get 4 passport pics of 2x2 size. It shouldn't cost you more than 20cents as most stores print it for 10 cents or less. I do not print it at my home printer, as it's hard to get good paper. Store printing is cheaper than printing it at home, as printer ink are expensive.

Important tips:

  • Take picture with your camera against a white background. Take picture during day (in shade and outdoors, where light is coming equally from all sides).  Else you may end up getting a shade of your face in the background, which may be a reason for rejection
  • For white background, buy Kid's white paper that they sell under "school supplies" in Grocery stores, Office stores, Walmart, etc. These white papers are about 2 ft X 3 ft, and are thick enough to be placed behind the subject. Just have someone hold the white paper behind the subject, while you take the picture. Don't use clothes as white background, as they develop wrinkles, which reflect light at different angles, causing some weird colors to pop up in printed pictures. These colors may be removed by adjusting contrast/brightness, but not worth it. If you have a thick cotton sheep, that may work out OK.
  • Once you upload picture to any website as CVS, Walgreens, etc, adjust the brightness over there in their software. Do not adjust it in "idphoto4u". I've seen that adjusting brightness in walgreens website, gets rid of any blue or similar color that comes when you take photos with white background. On walgreens website, this is what you do: Under "enhance" option, increase "brightness" and "contrast" to 50% or more (i.e 1/2 of maximum value). You will see that the background getting more and more white. If you get too much contrast or brightness, then the printed photo will get washed out or appear not natural. so, be careful overdoing it.
  • All my photos got rejected for all applications the very first time, because they all had whitish/bluish background, even though I had used "White Paper" as background. I tried adjusting it multiple ways, but nothing worked. The ultimate thing that worked was using walgreens website to adjust brightness/contrast. Don't use any photo editing software to change the background, as those can easily be identified and will be rejected immediately.
  • See the passport website "travel.gov" for various samples of photos. Don't let your application get rejected due to a bad picture. It's just more hassle.

 

Good Luck and happy photography !!

 

 

Walgreens/CVS Free photo Deal => See on link below for updated codes.

This link on doctorofcredit.com lists all codes for 8x10 free photo:

For other codes or other sizes as 4x6, 5x7, etc, search on slickdeals.net or on doctorofcredit.com here =>

Deals:

 

 

 

2023:

 

 

 

01/09/2023: Walgreens 5X7 magnet photo for $1 - Code 5x7MAG (expires 01/10/2023)

https://slickdeals.net/f/16368871-walgreens-5x7-photo-magnet-0-99

 

 

2022:

 

 

12/24/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code SNOWDEAL (expiry unknown)

https://slickdeals.net/f/16336318-walgreens-free-8x10-photo-code-snowdeal-0-00

 

 

12/08/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code ICESK8 (expiry unknown)

 https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

 

 

12/02/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code FREE-8BY10 (expiry unknown)

 https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

 

 

10/17/2022: Walgreens 2 of 5X7 Free photo - Code  PAIR

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-2-free-57-photo-prints-with-promo-code-your5x7/

Free as always. It's smaller sized 5X7 this time.

 

 

09/19/2022: Walgreens 5X7 Free magnet photo - Code FREE-MAG (expiry unknown)

https://slickdeals.net/f/16046371-free-5-x-7-magnet-at-walgreens-w-code-free-mag?src=frontpage

 

 

08/22/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code EMAILONLY (expiry unknown)

 https://slickdeals.net/f/15991876-walgreens-photo-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-pickup

 

 

08/14/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code FREE8BY10 (expiry unknown)

https://slickdeals.net/f/15976981-walgreens-photo-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-pickup

 

 

06/15/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code FUNINTHESUN (expiry unknown)

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

 

 

05/02/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code MAYFREEBIE (expires 05/05/2022)

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

 

 

04/04/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code RABBITPRINT

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

 

 

03/20/2022: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code SPRBREAK

https://slickdeals.net/f/15680635-walgreens-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup

 

 

 

2021:

 

 

12/31/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code ZERO

https://slickdeals.net/f/15539821-walgreens-photo-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup

Last Free Photo of 2021.

 

 

12/25/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code FROSTY8X10

https://slickdeals.net/f/15527032-walgreens-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup

Free as always

 

 

12/12/2021: Walgreens 5 Free 4x6 photo - Code 5FREEPRINT

https://slickdeals.net/f/15496597-walgreens-photo-5-count-4x6-glossy-photo-prints-free-free-store-pickup?src=frontpage

Free as always

 

 

12/03/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code MERRY8X10 => expires in couple of days

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

Free as always

 

 

11/14/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code GRATEFUL8X10 => expires in couple of days

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

Free as always

 

 

11/12/2021: Walgreens 5X7 Free photo - Code  IGOTMYSHOT => expires in couple of days

https://slickdeals.net/f/15393793-walgreens-photo-5-x-7-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup?src=frontpage

Free as always. It's smaller sized 5X7 this time.

 

 

11/05/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code FALLSMILES => expires in couple of days

https://slickdeals.net/f/15377812-walgreens-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup?src=frontpage

Free as always

 

 

10/30/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code ONEBIG8X10 => expires in couple of days

https://slickdeals.net/f/15364711-walgreens-photo-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup?src=frontpage

Free as always

 

 

09/21/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code 8X10AUTUMN => expires in couple of days.

https://slickdeals.net/f/15293506-walgreens-photo-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup

Free as always

 

 

08/18/2021: Walgreens 6 customized set of 5x7 Free photo - Code FREEHELLO => will expire soon.

https://slickdeals.net/f/15223435-live-walgreens-photo-set-of-6-customized-5-x7-premium-photo-cards-free-store-pickup?src=frontpage

6 customized 5x7 photo set for free. Site was having issues making a photo set, but appears resolved now.

 

 

08/15/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code BIGGER8X10 => expires in couple of days.

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/walgreens-free-8x10-photo-print-with-promo-code-eightdec/

Free 8X10 photo as always.

 

 

EXPIRED: 07/25/2021: Walgreens 8x10 Free photo - Code JULY8X10 => expired on 07/27/2021.

https://slickdeals.net/f/15182485-walgreens-photo-8-x-10-photo-print-free-free-store-pickup

Free 8X10 photo as always.