fuckit, went to Wallmart (after the drugstore ruined $30 worth of prints). Ordered my prints, no option for glossy or matte. The guy at the counter "we only do matte here"
Bought a canon pixma iP800. Hope it doesn't suck to bad. Says it does up to 8.5x11 so all my needs. I figure I shoot a canon, a canon photo printer can't be that bad, right? Well, hope it doesn't go to ebay next week. Anyone with experience with the pixma line?
Edited to add: Photo print quality is very nice. Looks to be a good printer. Price of ink, now that will be another story I'm sure
The price/performance ratio of printers today is ridiculous. I recently bought a Canon Pixma i6700D for $90 (after rebate). I just wanted something to mess around with for the time being, and I was amazed to find the results were far better than what I consider "messing around" quality.
As people have mentioned, color calibration is an issue... something I need to learn more about. My prints always look a bit different than what I anticipated. The screen on my laptop doesn't help--it produces a beautiful image but the contrast changes dramatically with the viewing angle so it's nearly impossible to say what's "right."
It's obviously a better idea to have photos printed on a Fuji Frontier, but it's so much fun to do them at home. Hey, it's cheaper to buy recorded music instead of recording it ourselves, but that's no fun. (To be honest, that's not a fair comparison since a concert recording is often/usually BETTER than any commercial product, but I digress...)