Method and system for collecting images from a plurality of customers

Abstract

System and method for collecting customers' images into a kiosk, and transferring images to an image-processing provider for processing. The kiosk includes a computer, a data storage device, an upload port, and an interface for capturing digital images. One method includes accepting image information from a customer into the interface of the kiosk, accepting user-identifier and order information into the kiosk computer, storing a digital representation of the image and associated user-identifier and order information for each customer into a data structure, and sending the data structure to the image-processing provider via the upload port connected to a communication medium such as the internet. Some embodiments also include accepting credit-card payment information, displaying to the customer at least one image from the image information and/or a plurality of thumbnail images from the image information, and/or printing a receipt and/or a printout of thumbnail images from the image information. Optionally, the user specifies a modification to be made to the image information and/or specifies a plurality of delivery addresses. Optionally, the kiosk includes optical scanning of film or prints to generate digital images, transferring image data directly from a digital camera, transferring image data directly from a storage medium, and/or transferring image data into a kiosk data port. Some embodiments include accepting a container of undeveloped film into the kiosk, processing the undeveloped film in the kiosk, and optically scanning the developed film to generate digital representations of the developed film.