The Brown & White

Lehigh's Printing and Mailing Services has partnered with Dan's Camera City in Allentown to bring to Lehigh students, faculty, and staff a fast and convenient way to order their digital photos online, have them printed and delivered.

Printing and Mailing Services launched an easy online ordering form at www.lehigh.edu/mypics on Nov. 1 that allows anyone in the Lehigh community to upload digital pictures from their personal computers and have them sent to be printed at Dan's.

In the program's first week, four students and seven staff members utilized the photo printing service.

The camera store offers a variety of sizes of high quality photo prints at 29 cents per photo with a variety of glossy and matte finishes available to choose from.

The service is offered to anyone with a Lehigh campus mailbox.

Students living off campus and students who do not have a mailbox are able to pick their photos up from Dan's Camera City in Allentown.

Glenn Strause, director of Printing and Mailing Services, and Michael Woodland, CEO of Dan's, collaborated and came up with this new program.

Other universities and institutions also offer similar high-quality photo printing process programs for students and they report their individual programs as being successful. Lehigh decided to partner with the non-franchised, family-owned local business to offer a similar digital photo printing service to the Lehigh community.

As press release issued by Brynn Buskirk, assistant director of marketing, said: "It allows Lehigh's Printing and Mailing Services the ability to offer this unique service to the community, and also supports a local, family owned small business."

The new program offers three delivery options that are designed to bring convenience to the customer.

The printed pictures can either be delivered to the person's Lehigh mailbox at no additional cost, picked up at Dan's, or the photos can be mailed to a different address for an additional cost.

The printed pictures are delivered on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but the deliveries must first be logged into the system by Printing and Mailing Services, and the printed pictures will be placed in the respective mailboxes the following day.

It takes one to two days to process the pictures, then an additional day at the Printing and Mailing Services office.

The new photo upload site is similar to other digital photo upload Web sites like snapfish.com and CVS-photo.com.

Users are able to create detailed individual accounts that will let them store photos online, create online photo albums, and order prints as well. The simple upload format on the new Web site also makes this service streamlined.

Some Lehigh students said they are really excited about the new service.

"I think this service is a great new feature that Lehigh is offering. I don't know how readily I would use it, however, but other people might find it much easier than going to CVS to get their photos printed," said Ricky Hernandez, '11.

Casey Hoppel, '13, also likes Lehigh's new photo printing service. "I think it's a pretty good idea, but I probably would not be inclined to use it since I do not really take my own pictures that often," she said. "The online aspect of this program sounds easy to use and convenient."

Emily Waterfield, '13, said she would take advantage of this new service. "I always want to display my own pictures on my walls or around my dorm room, but that is difficult since all my pictures are digital and on my computer," she said.

Additional services will be offered through this program such as photo books, cards, and gifts incorporating uploaded pictures. There are currently no other specials or offers available, but in the future Dan's will run specials.

"This new service sounds very convenient, and I would especially be more likely to use it if there were special offers offered as well," Waterfield said.

Austin Baker, '11, disagreed. "I would definitely not use this new service because I know how to print my own photos by myself," he said.

"This new service is a great idea because now I won't have to go to Rite-Aid or CVS to get my photos printed," said Bea Dizon, '13. "It's very convenient and the 29 cent price is reasonable as well."