handling photos - fingerprints?

I'm working on my first big project and have had most of the photos printed at Walgreens. I'm noticing a lot of fingerprints on them from handling. I wash my hands carefully before handling them.

Should I be getting photos printed on matte?

Should I be waiting until the photos are attached to the scrapbook page and then somehow cleaning them off? If so, how?

Any help would really be appreciated!

One word: matte!

It's the easiest way to resolve fingerprints. BUT, a lot of people do use glossy. It's hard to find places who print matte in 1-hour. Walmart's the only one I can think that does it.

Otherwise, wait till you're done with your LO, and use a clean cloth to wipe the prints away.

I learned this years ago and I'll pass it on. Buy a piece of flannel, wash it, and then use it to remove the fingerprints. The prints come completely off and don't scratch the photo. If it gets dirty, just re-wash and start again. Before I put my LO in an album, I wipe it down with the flannel piece.

Hope that helps if you want to use glossy. Lustre (or matte) is better if you want less fingerprints.

Thank you both soooo much! I'll get the rest of the photos printed in matte from now on. I have a stack of 150 glossy prints to use in my project, so your advice is really helpful.
Many thanks!

I use an eyeglass cleaning cloth I got from the Dollar Tree to wipe my photos.

The trick is to wipe them off ASAP. If the fingerprints stay on too long, they will become permanent.

I get My photos printed at Costco and they do it in one hour, and they have Matte finish. I have completely stopped getting my photos in glossy because of the fingerprints. Plus I think the matte finish looks better.

I second the idea of the eye-glasses cleaning cloth. One came with my glasses, but I never use it for that because it's on my scraptable!

Having worked in a photo processing lab, I'm conditioned to wear finger cots when I'm working with photos. It saves clean up and I think it makes picking them up easier.

Before I started getting my photos in matte finish, I would wear white cotton gloves.

One of the uses for "The Perfect Cleaning Cloth" is removing fingerprints from photos. (It also does a great job with glitter, sanding dust and removing anti-static powder from dark papers but I digress).