In article .net,
Joe Negron writes:

Went to the Dominican Republic back in July and took many photos. I
sent them to Mystic to develop and while the photos came out well, I
wasn't happy with the JPEGs: almost all of them were way too dark and
required the use of an image editing program to adjust the brightness
and contrast.

Is there an alternative to Mystic which will do a better job for a not
much higher price?

Mystic Photo used to be an independent concern, but was bought up by a big
photofinishing chain. I've forgotten the name of this big chain, but they
also own Clark and several other brands. They turned the Mystic PO box
into a forwarding box; the film actually goes to the Washington DC area
for processing, IIRC.

The original Mystic Photo employees have set up their own business under
the name ABC Photo Lab (http://www.abcphotolab.com), located in Mystic
Connecticut. I've only used them a few times but the service was fairly
good, and similar to what Mystic used to be a few years ago. I've also had
good luck with PhotoWorks (http://www.photoworks.com) in Seattle
Washington. Dale Labs (http://www.dalelabs.com) in Florida has a very good
reputation but I've not used them in years. A&I (http://www.aandi.com) in
California is another well-respected mail-order photofinisher, but I've
never used them.

Also, Mystic's policy for undeveloped pictures is that you get a credit
which can be used on subsequent orders. Is this standard practise? I
have a few rolls which I suspect will have more than a few
"undevelopable" photos and would rather not be charged for them in the
first place.

The last I checked, the use of coupons for unprinted shots was pretty
standard for mail-order photofinishers. Some now offer a service where
they scan the negatives, put the scans on the Web, and let you order just
the prints you want. You then pay for just those prints, plus a charge for
developing the film itself. You might want to look for something like
that.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking