Kodak places 3,000 kiosks with drugstore chain

(CVS is one of the nation’s largest drug store chains, with a total of about 4,100 U.S. stores.) The Digital Stations will serve as front ends to the stores’ digital minilabs, turning out customers’ photos while they shop, making CVS

the first national chain to offer customers “the opportunity to print from digital media including camera cards, CDs and disks in all of its photo lab stores.” CVS said it has “already successfully tested digital printing solutions from Kodak in several pilot markets.”

CVS vice president of Merchandising/Photo Judy Strauss Sansone commented, “Women are the memory keepers. Our customers don’t want their memories stuck on hard drives. CVS is providing them with a convenient and affordable solution that enables them to enjoy their digital images just like traditional photos – to frame, store in albums and share with family and friends.”

The Kodak Picture Maker Digital Stations will allow CVS customers to input their digital photos from all popular formats of camera memory cards as well as Picture CDs and picture disks, order print sizes and quantities, and make image enhancements including red-eye reduction.

In a separate deal with Wal-Mart Canada, one of Canada’s largest photofinishers, Kodak will handle orders for prints from digital images uploaded by consumers to a Wal-Mart web site. Kodak will make prints on silver halide paper and send them back to selected Wal-Mart stores, where customers can pick them up.