Kodak, CVS partner on photo album printing kiosks

Forget printing photos: Kodak's latest drugstore kiosk can now create entire bound photo albums in a matter of minutes.

According to a story reported on the business journal StreetInsider.com, new Kodak photo kiosks being rolled out to CVS/pharmacy drugstores nationwide allow you to create customized hard-cover photo books while you wait.

Details on how the new kiosks work, how long the process takes, or what customization options are available are sketchy, but according to a related press release, users who hold one of CVS/pharmacy's ExtraCare shopper cards will be reimbursed for the cost of one photo book created through July 19.

Overall, the Kodak kiosks seem like an interesting approach to what's traditionally been an online purchase (through sites like Snapfish.com and MPIX.com), and the promotion is a great opportunity to check out the results without laying down hard-earned cash to do it.

The latest kiosks, which should be up and running at 4,500 CVS/pharmacy stores by the time of this writing, also allow users to create photo slideshows (complete with music and video effects) and instantly burn them to DVD for home playback. For all the details on the new kiosks, head over to StreetInsider.com.

UPDATE: Kodak's PR folks were able to provide clarification on how the album binding system works. The same photo printing kiosks that have been in place before are actually used for the system, only they're now set up to assist users in laying out and printing album pages from a selection of templates.

Users build and print their book page layouts using their photos and the kiosk's templates and then print them. The printed pages are then bound into book form "behind the counter" by a CVS/pharmacy employee, rather than within the kiosk itself.