Print at home or send out?

I used to print at home with an Epson 2200, which was about a $2k printer, as I recall. And yet, 15 years ago, I spent a great deal of time trying to get my print to match my screen and I lost interest.

 

Has technology changed significantly over the past 15 years, whether we are talking about printing at home or sending it out?

 

I never really considered sending out my prints because I like to use photo rag papers and other papers that might not be available if I send it out. But perhaps there is a high end service out there that has every kind of paper. If so, I'd like to hear about. I take mostly black and white.

 

I am just a hobbyist, not a professional.

Good luck even finding such a service that will supply actual output profiles for their process that you can use to soft proof. That means, no soft proofing and no matching to display. Yeah, they sometimes tell you where to download profiles for soft proofing then tell you you can't use them to convert to the output space using them. So throw the option of soft proofing to your desired rendering intent out the window. And you don't know if said profiles actually describe the print process because you can't even use them for conversions.

You want to control the print process and soft proof for a match; do it yourself in house.

I have had good success with Bay Photo in the past. I am told Costco make good large prints. You need to have a calibrated monitor.