Quick Stop Photo

CLOSED as of January 3, 2012. Very sad, but an unsurprising sign of the times.

I had a rather unpleasant experience here. A gentleman helped me at the counter and he was very nice and friendly when I dropped 5 rolls of film off. Trying to pick it up however was a completely different experience.
I do not understand how a place which boasts to process in one hour can then explain that they are backed up and it will be several days. My photos are important to me and I understood that there would be a several day wait when I left the film there. Stuff happens, I’m understanding enough.
After 2 days I called to find out of they were ready and the woman would NOT check for me. She wanted to know when I dropped them off and responded «they will probably be done by 2pm if you dropped them off that day, we are backed up».She then all but hung up on me!
At 2pm I called back and asked if they were ready and she then told me to «You need to check your online account». When I expressed I didn’t have one she seemed EXTREMELY put out that I asked her to check my name and to see if they were done.
I’m so sorry to inconvenience you with my business. I had to take a bus there on my lunch hour AND make my way back to work to get them, the least she could do is be nice enough to look up my name and tell me if they would be ready when I got there!
My 5 rolls of film ended up costing me $ 75. This was JUST for processing and scanning 3 rolls to a disk. The company seemed ungrateful of my business and that’s just fine with me. I will gladly trek to St. John’s for my processing knowing it may be a little out of my way. At least they’ll be kind to me and appreciate the hard earned money I’m spending on an obsession with a dying art form.
I really wanted to like this place because it’s on my daily commute and I shoot 1 – 4 rolls of film a week. Sadly, it isn’t going to work out for me with that type of customer service skills.

I wanted to love Quick Stop when I went in. I’d been referred there from Citizen’s Photo who apparently does not do in-​house printing on Saturdays! Who knew?!
It was 10AM, and I needed some sample prints for a gig I was doing that afternoon, so I went into Quick Stop with my digital files and asked for some prints. When they asked «when do you need them?» I said «well, as soon as possible» and they said «well we’d love to have until about 3:00».
I did a double take and said «don’t you do one-​hour prints? It says so on the window» and she grumbled, saying they were still getting things set up, and sort of implied she didn’t know why that sign was there… but eventually, after consulting in front of us across the room with the woman at the printers, agreed that she could do it in an hour only if I wanted glossy paper. So, being in a somewhat desperate situation, I figured beggars can’t be choosers and said that was fine.
Well, the images came out unusably bad, which was almost certainly the fault of my files. apparently I’d put the wrong resolution on the thumb drive. But Quick Stop printed them anyways and when I arrived to pick up, the woman there told me «they aren’t as sharp as you might like, but oh well». I would not have printed them yet, if I were her and had seen how bad they would look… It was nice to meet my time demand, but knowing they would look so bad and seeing they were meant to be used as informational examples with captions, etc, I would have waited and asked before printing something unreadable.
Either way, I ended up paying for prints that I couldn’t use and leaving very unhappy with the experience, service, product, etc. I will not be coming back. Which is sad, because like I said, I really did want to love Quick Stop!

I do photography for a living and use them when I need something quick. Highly recommended.

The ABSOLUTE WORST photo lab experience of my life.
First off, let me stress how much I wanted to love this place. I’m a professional photographer that has recently relocated to Portland, and in hopes of supporting my local economy, found this lab to print for my photography & wedding albums. I looked past the out-​dated website and deciphered their ridiculously and unnecessarily complex ordering system to place my first order online.
And, the first prints were… dark & dingy. They admitted to that & offered to re-​print them, great. I asked how I could calibrate my monitor to match their printers so as to avoid this type of issue in the future, they told me to print an 8×10″ and «match it» to my monitor. Can’t you just give me a color profile? But, OK. I’ll go along with that. They say they will mail me the print, I order it, go on vacation, a week later it’s still not here. So, I order another, this time for pick up, go in and there is my first print but the second one isn’t ready yet. Meanwhile, the first album they’ve now reprinted too light and all washed out. I don’t want to be a nag, so I take the sub-​par photos and pay for them.
This was a huge mistake. I will NEVER again pay for such awful quality work. It makes all the work I do meaningless if it’s not printed properly.
Now, here is where it gets awful. The calibration print is beautiful. Actually, everything glossy or metallic from them has looked just as it should and as it does on my computer. MATTE HOWEVER, looks terrible. So, I order a new huge album & JUST TO BE SURE, call before I drive clear across town for my prints. They’re not ready yet. Online it says «next day store pick up» but, she tells me it won’t be ready until the following day. I show up the following day and it’s STILL not ready. They tell me to come back after 5. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I explain how hard I am trying to give them business, how far a drive it is to Hawthorne for me, and they agree to print the rest of my order while I wait. 30 minutes later they hand the matte prints over the counter and… THEY’RE DARK and dingy again. I happen to have another sample album with me, printed from the EXACT same files from another print shop before I moved (I was making another sample album), and the difference was NIGHT AND DAY. Even they admitted their work looked awful next to the original album. They offer to reprint again. Fine, I come back the following day and NOW all the prints are completely washed out and over saturdated. People’s faces look bright red instead of flesh tones, most ridiculous print job I’ve ever seen. And EVEN AFTER ALL OF THIS, they hand me this unprofessional prints and try to charge me the full price.
If this place had any idea what the term customer service meant, they would at least cut me a discount for all my trouble. ESPECIALLY when I’m flat out telling them I have four more huge albums to print, I’m offering them hundreds of dollars in business! I tried so hard to be SO nice and let them waste my time and money, went to multiple meetings without the new album, just so they could try to pass off these awful looking prints. I could NOT BELIEVE it.
I’ve worked with MANY print studios for MANY years, and I’ve never seen a product that looked anything like this. If you want your photos to look as great as they can possibly look, PLEASE DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME HERE! Find absolutely ANY ONE else.
They are a complete NIGHTMARE, totally UNPROFESSIONAL, and their work is AWFUL. By far, the absolute worst small business experience I’ve had in Portland.

A lovely little independent photo processing place, better quality and cheaper than Fred Meyer IF (and here is the catch) you use their horrendous online uploading system. A dreadful example of web design circa 1990, this is the most horrible remnant of the bad old days of the web I’ve seen in a long time. I hate it.
Fix your web-​site Quick-​Stop, and you’d get five stars!

I absolutely LOVE Quick Stop!
They can process all your film-​handling needs (yes, ALL of them… including ridiculous push/​pull/​etc questions) quickly and without ridiculous prices.
I’m not as crazy about the quality of prints — specifically color prints from color film (which must be scanned before printing) but their developing, customer service and film knowledge nominate them for canonization.

Quick Stop processes and prints black-​and-​white film in their own labs. This means they don’t have to send away film and, in turn, offer same-​day and rush services that other fine-​art photo centers can’t offer. (Blue Moon, in St John’s, is the only other one I know of. Citizen Photo sends all BW out.)
They offer competitive services, including hourly and rush printing, and the end prints beat out any generic drug store or supermarket print. Folks enjoy the border option for a hand-​printed look and photos craving to be framed. Customers also enjoy a frequent-​developer punch card for free rolls.
For a photography student or photo enthusiast, they offer the best range of services, quality and customer service for the price.

This photo processing center recently moved from downtown to thier new Hawthorne location; now Quick Stop photo and online
are both housed here at 24^th and Hawthorne. It is a welcome addition to the neighborhood. They offer a wide gamut of photo processing services encompassing both film and digital, and better yet their prices are only slightly higher than Fred Meyer.
Needless to say their lower prices translate to slightly lower quality in prints than other pro-​shops.
Another bonus is that Quick Stop will gladly cross process your film, too! (That means they’ll develop your slide film in C-​41 chemicals creating saturated interesting effects). Thanks Quick Stop!