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.