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View Full Version : My Honest Opinion on the Photopass CD



NJGIRL
12-05-2008, 11:35 AM
I have never been a big fan of the pictures that are taken by the photopass people in Disney. I have bought a few through the years but thought the overall quality was poor.

Most of the feed back on Intercot about the photpass CD has been nothing but wonderful so I thought maybe I was missing something so I decided to give it a try and prepurchased the CD for our trip last October.

It was really nothing but a waste of money and time IMO and here are my reasons why.

Most of our pictures only had the two boys (10 & 14) in them and 75% of the time one of them was not looking. I don't fully blame Disney for this although I think they could have taken multiple pictures to assure both kids were looking. If I had been taking the pictures with my camera I would have known right then and there that the picture needed to be taken again and I would have done so. Now I do not have shots that I would have liked to have had.

In over half of the pictures the quality was not good (too dark or blurred). My camera takes much better quality pictures. There is one shot that the boys are in front of the castle at 12:00 noon and it was sunny and bright out. In the picture it looks like it was taken while the sun was setting.

While the idea of having boarders added to the pictures sounded like a good idea it took such a long long time. I think it took me 3 hours to preform this task. The program moves very slow. The choice of boarders was also very limited so you had to use the same ones over and over again not to mention that some of them were Christmas and since we weren't there at Christmas this made our selection even smaller.

I had to take them to Ritz Camera to get the pictures printed because my printer was not working properly. After spending all that time doing the boarders alot of them were cut off of the pictures. Example "2008" may have been cut in half or the leaves on another boarder was missing half the leaves on both sides. They did this on both my printer and the Ritz printer so I know this was not my fault. Ritz told me that the boarders were programed to close to the edge.

I also wanted to give my parents a copy of the CD but no go. Even though they are my family pictures and I purchased them Ritz could not make me a copy of the CD.

Even if I said not one of these things was Disneys fault (which I don't beleive)just the whole chore of this CD purchase IMO was not worth the $99 especially since I could have taken them for free.

I'm glad so many people like the photo pass CD but we won't be doing it again.

Figment104
12-05-2008, 12:27 PM
I think it's really great that you're presenting another side to the photopass CD. We decided to go this route as well on our most recent trip and while we really liked most of the shots that were taken I do understand a lot of what you're saying about not realizing that some weren't coming out. I had a bunch at the beginning that due to the way I was standing it looked like I was about 4 months preagnent (I'm not) and I never would have realized it if we hadn't stoped at our hotel to look at the ones that had been taken.

I also agree that the program on the website is way to slow and very frustrating.

We haven't had a chance to print ours off yet so I don't know about the borders but with all that being said we will still more than likely try it one more time. With it just being DH and myself it was really nice to having to ask people all the time if they minded taking our picture so that we would have some with both of us in it.

Thanks again though for giving a different opinion than most other people, I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate it!

SurferStitch
12-05-2008, 01:03 PM
I do see your point, but here is how I correct some of the problems.

DH and I are professional photographers, so we are VERY picky about quality.

I Photoshop everything! I've even amazed myself of some of the "repairs" I've done to Photopass photos. Color balance, sharpening, everything. It's time consuming, but very worth it.

Borders - I simply resize the offending images to a slightly smaller size. I then increase the canvas size in Photoshop, and no more border cut-offs (works well when framing a photo). Works like a charm. I've only ever had to do this a couple times. The borders usually print perfectly for me.

Different FP photogs will take different amount of pictures. We've had some that took 5-10 pictures, some that took 1-2. We've noticed that when character lines are very long, they tend to speed up the process a bit. I guess they unfortunately can't work with every family to get the perfect picture all of the time.

The site is just terrible. They need a much faster server. Way too much time is wasted in waiting for pages to load. With DH also being a web designer, this drives him nuts.

Overall, I feel the CD is a tremendous value, if you have the resources and time to work with the images. While I don't have much time, I do try to perfect the photos as much as possible. I would say, though, that at least 80% or more of the photos turn out gorgeous without any help from me at all.

Marymouse2003
12-05-2008, 03:01 PM
In '06 I used photopass. I purchased the CD b4 leaving WDW. I didn't know anything about borders. Was this something that was added since then? I FINALLY got a new computer & popped in the CD the other day. I must say, some of my photos are great. I WOULD LOVE BORDERS. Can someone please fill me in. Will be @ WDW 12/8 - 12/15. I wasn't planning on using photopass again, BUT maybe. I didn't even know they had a web site. Can you guys tell me more about this? Any/all help will be GREATLY APPRECIATED!! THanks and God bless,
Mary

faline
12-05-2008, 04:20 PM
Information can be found here:

Photopass CD (http://www.disneyphotopass.com/previsitcdplan.aspx)

NJGIRL
12-05-2008, 04:49 PM
I do see your point, but here is how I correct some of the problems.

DH and I are professional photographers, so we are VERY picky about quality.

I Photoshop everything! I've even amazed myself of some of the "repairs" I've done to Photopass photos. Color balance, sharpening, everything. It's time consuming, but very worth it.

Borders - I simply resize the offending images to a slightly smaller size. I then increase the canvas size in Photoshop, and no more border cut-offs (works well when framing a photo). Works like a charm. I've only ever had to do this a couple times. The borders usually print perfectly for me.

Different FP photogs will take different amount of pictures. We've had some that took 5-10 pictures, some that took 1-2. We've noticed that when character lines are very long, they tend to speed up the process a bit. I guess they unfortunately can't work with every family to get the perfect picture all of the time.

The site is just terrible. They need a much faster server. Way too much time is wasted in waiting for pages to load. With DH also being a web designer, this drives him nuts.

Overall, I feel the CD is a tremendous value, if you have the resources and time to work with the images. While I don't have much time, I do try to perfect the photos as much as possible. I would say, though, that at least 80% or more of the photos turn out gorgeous without any help from me at all.


Thanks for all the great tips but I doubt I will be doing anything else with the pictures at this point. Unfortunately I just don't have the time to spend doing all of that especially since I paid $99 to get pictures that were ready to print.

Disney Doll
12-05-2008, 05:37 PM
I do think it is important to have the other side of the story so thanks to the op for sharing.

We did the photopass CD on our last trip and IMHO it was worth it. It was a special trip for us (our son's 1st) and we took tons of photos with the whole family, which we usually never get without photopass. I liked being able to enjoy the moment watching my son kiss Mickey and high five Donald without worrying about getting the pictures.

We always got multiple shots so we had at least one good photo at every location. Like a previous poster mentioned, you can do a lot with image editing. I don't take the time to do any more than an auto correct and that was usually enough to do the trick.

I don't really care about the borders, but I can see that being a disappointment because there really isn't much to choose from. The website really is slow which was frustrating for me and I wasn't even adding borders.

Besides the photopass photos in the parks we did a private sitting with a photopass photographer at the GF and she was awesome! She took tons of pictures paying very close attention to who was looking, what was in the background, and how the shot came out. She was extremely patient with our son and got some excellent photos.

As far as sharing the photos we just loaded the photos to the photo sharing site we use and didn't hassle with copying the CD. However, I think if you really want to make a copy you can. Just download the pictures from the original disk onto your computer and then burn a new CD.

I think we really got our money's worth last time, but I won't do the photopass CD on every trip. It is a little pricey and we probably won't always want that many photos. I think the biggest benefit is getting pictures of the whole family without worrying about the photographer getting left out. If you only want shots of your kids I think it would make more sense to take the pics yourself for free.

mom2mickeyfan
12-05-2008, 09:54 PM
We have purchased the photopass CD the past 2 years. To me its been worth it because more pictures mean more chances of getting a good one. Even thought we bought the CD, we still took some pictures with our own camera. But there were also times when we just video the whole time our son was interacting with the characters. So I'm glad to have the videos without having to worry about pictures. But like the OP pointed out, not all of our photopass pictures turned out.

Now the first year we ordered and I printed pictures, I noticed some borders being cut off. This year, when I put a border on I made sure I saved it in all the sizes I might want to print. So that means that a few of my pictures got saved as 4x6's, 5x7's and 8x10's. Because even though its all the same pictures, when they are saved as one size but printed in another, you may lose some of the picture (border). I hope that makes sense. I always started with the smallest so when the CD came I would know which one was which. Since I did that I found that it didn't seem like my borders were cut off. I haven't printed a ton of my pics yet so I can't swear that this works 100% of the time.

The OP made some good points about the photopass. Its not for everyone. Its good for those trying to decide to see all sides on the topic.

SurferStitch
12-06-2008, 09:19 AM
Now the first year we ordered and I printed pictures, I noticed some borders being cut off. This year, when I put a border on I made sure I saved it in all the sizes I might want to print. So that means that a few of my pictures got saved as 4x6's, 5x7's and 8x10's. Because even though its all the same pictures, when they are saved as one size but printed in another, you may lose some of the picture (border). I hope that makes sense. I always started with the smallest so when the CD came I would know which one was which. Since I did that I found that it didn't seem like my borders were cut off. I haven't printed a ton of my pics yet so I can't swear that this works 100% of the time.

That's an excellent point. I did the same thing, but I forgot to mention it. A 5x7 will not print like an 8x10.

thumperbug
12-06-2008, 02:01 PM
On our trip in April of 08 we preordered the photo cd. In the past while there were not tons of photo pass pics we wanted...there we times that we did want some and the cost was just a joke. I figured we had nothing to lose by pre order. If we got home and didnt like the pics we didnt have to get the cd and would get a refund.

We did get a lot of pics we liked. A trick is to tell the photographer that you pre ordered the cd. They tend to take more pictures if they know you already ordered it.

We ended up with over 100 + pics...I didn't bother to play with borders. I had all the pics put on the cd and got it within days. I can easily print off of it and make borders as needed.

I also take a lot of pics on vacation...300+++. Almost all of my son and with my DH. Never pics of the 3 of us...with photopass we have a bunch of fun pics of the 3 of us.

For my next trip I will be doing the preorder again.

CaptainJessicaSparrow
12-06-2008, 07:06 PM
One thing it seems like everyone is doing is that they are waiting until they get home.

I find that to be the biggest mistake. If you view them in the parks at the camera/photo shops, they can adjust them there, including the lights, the borders, the balance, zooming, cropping, everything. That's how I did my photos from Photopass. I haven't gotten the CD (I never care too and I don't take enough photos since I work here) but the few I've purchased were adjusted in the parks.