Costco $19.99 11.5 x 14″ Calendar
As y’all know from my past posts, I’m a big fan of the 12×12″ Costco photobooks. Since I’m sitting at home all day everyday in 2020 thus far, I’ve occupied my time organizing my various visual work (i.e. digital photo hoarding) ;). I thought it would be nice to make some calendars, just to see the print quality.
The Costco online photo center offers two types of calendars. One 8.5 x 11″ for $10 and a higher tier 11.5 x 14″ for $20. With their print products I’ve found you should just stay away from the lower tier photo books. It’s just printed on lower quality paper and the process is similar to something I could get from my color laser here at home. This calendar I really like though. The print quality of the main images is similar, if not the same, as the Fujicolor Crystal Archive HD prints I get in the premium photo books. (Again, I really like the quality of these Fujifilm books and think they rival the New York books, especially for the price)
So yes! I think these calendars are easy to make and are nice gifts I can give to people.
Misc Notes:
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The front page and the actual calendar page paper stock is similar to the heavier color laser print you’d see at like Office Max. This is good if you need to write something on the date.
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You can pick the starting month of the calendar, so it could be this month, or start fresh in 2021, because as we all know 2020…
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The main photo image is glossy and again, similar to the premium photo books. The chemical process really smooths out gradients and can make even a cell phone image not as “digital.”
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You can put photos in literally every day/block in the calendar portion. This is considered your own “holidays/special dates” and is carried over to the next calendar you make. You can change the color of the date in the block if it does not show up against the photo. This is also carried over to the next calendar, so care needs to be taken, because a day might not have a number because it is white text on a white background. When you make a totally new calendar you have to manually delete the images you placed in the random days/holidays.
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The back page is glossy and white, except for the Costco logo in the lower left hand corner and a barcode on the right.
I really like this calendar’s image quality and you can’t go wrong with the price. After tax and shipping it comes out to around $28 for me, and I can get them in around 4 days after design upload from nearby FujiFilm USA in Greenwood SC.
What I would like to see is a bit more options for adjusting the text in the calendar portion, even a simple color gradient change for the top or the background itself would be great!
