Where do you get your photos printed

I would like to know where you guys send your photos to be printed? I tried Walgreens and Epingo but the second

one charged me $10 for 8x10 print, the first one on the other hand will NEVER print the way I want and I like to have

a little 1/4" white border around my image and for some reason Walgreens keep cutting that, one time I made the

border 1/2" wide they cut it down do 1/4" that's what I wanted but I cannot be making my borders wider just because

they decide to do weird stuff with it. Sometimes I think I'd be better off just printing myself but I'd have to invest in

printer and inks and I don't print that often, so maybe some of you could point me the right direction

 

Thank you

After I edit images, I store a jpeg file for every image conceivably worth keeping on the Kodak Gallery. With the Prenium Service" ($25/yr) I can download the files if I ever need to. I've had good luck with enlargements from Kodak. (I rarely bother with anything smaller than 5x7.) I get panoramas printed at EZPrints. The first couple had low green contrast, but recent prints have been well done. Sometimes I will hit a sale at Adormama. My inkjet printer is reserved for quick and dirty jobs.

I scan my negatives, and upload to Adoramapix.com for printing. An 8 by 10 is around a couple of dollars. From your remarks, it sounds like you do not scan? It's getting harder and harder to find a good lab for prints where you just hand them the negative and they do the rest. For best results, you almost are forced to do the scanning yourself. My "workflow" is as follows: send out the negative for development, scan myself with SilverFast to creat a tiff file, apply adjustment via lightzone and save as a jpeg file, and then upload the jpeg files to Adorama for printing. My prints are excellent. I'm getting better results than I ever did using a lab. Of course, I needed to learn about color management, icc profiles, etc., but I love learning, so that was also fun.

 

I just started trying Kodak Lustre paper. It is really nice. A slight gloss, with excellent color saturation.

 

There are many other online printers besides Adorama. I only mentioned them because I use them. They are fast, and have good prices and quality.

A lot of printing success depends on just who is operating the machine. So one store can give you great results on a Tuesday and bad on a Friday. For non-critical work I use a chain store. I've had both good and bad results from Walgreens, CVS, and Wal-Mart. You could get just about as many good testimonials as bad ones from people here with regard to one or the other chains. The one good thing about the ones I mentioned were after I pointed out what was wrong with my prints, they all did them over with no complaints for free. CVS did require 3 tries to get it right, and Wal-Mart lost my work but didn't lose the digital files I uploaded to them and were able to redo the job right away, but if I hadn't followed up with them, I'd still be waiting for a phone call.

 

You might want to eventually do it yourself if its important work, but for just snapshots, you'll be a lot better off price wise if you send it out. Other than sending off to a national pro lab, I'm afraid you just have to spend (waste) some time trying to find a local printer that you like.

I use Costco. They profile their printer and post the profiles. I convert my digital files to their profile in CS2 and then upload for printing. 8x10 prints are about $1.70; 4x6 are $0.17. If I upload the files before midnight local time, the prints are ready for pickup at 11 AM the next morning, which is when Costco opens.

 

Since I tag my files "NO AUTO CORRCT" the files are printed "as is" with no operator intervention. This makes the prints as operator independent as possible. Of course the operators do have to load the machines with fresh chemicals. They seem to do that.

I use Costco as well. The lab techs know me and I bring them home processed black and white all the time. They make

excellent neutral tone prints on Fuji frontier machines. Their color is not bad either.

Thanks a lot for your help. Seems like Adorama has a pretty good deal on 8x10's plus you can choose "as is" or with correction I will try them see what they offer.

Kris,

 

Adorama also posts their icc profiles for the different papers, so you can softproof correctly. I always choose "no color correction". My prints match what I see on my monitor (which is calibrated and profiled).

 

have fun.

I go to costco because ive lways got good results and 8x10s are only 1.25$

I would never use anyone but myself. Nobody can ever see a picture in the same way that you do. Whatever method you use, traditional bromide prints, scanned negatives, or totally digital, you will only get what you saw in your mind's eye if you print it yourself. Don't waste your money on anybody else. Beg borrow or buy an enlarger, a scanner, a printer and practice. All of your pictures will be better.

I scrounged a printer, brought a scanner and am as happy with my pictures now as I was 30 years ago when the only option was to have complete darkroom setup and it is so much less trouble now.<div></div>

Costco is the best. Great quality, fast turn around, local, and a great price. Plus, they offer 8x12 Full Frame for the same price as 8x10. ($1.49)

Another vote for Costco. I have good success without it, but for fine-tuning many Costcos (and other stores) post their ICC profiles to <a href="http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/">Dry Creek Photo</a>.

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My local Costco prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, which I quite like, and I believe in-store they can do up to 12"x36" if I needed it.

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Although now that Ilford has a "real" black and white paper designed specifically for digital printing, I'm tempted to find a place that has that as well...

I'm going to be in the minority here, but I use one of the Ritz Camera locations here in Boston. The staff at this location know what they're doing, they're pleasant, and they've always made excellent prints for me from uploaded jpegs. Other Ritz locations have disappointed, but never the Ritz on Boylston St. :-)

I've had good luck with both Shutterfly and Mpix. Mpix seems to do a particularly good job with skin tones in portrait work, which woudl make sense because they're a division of Millers, which is a big wedding and portrait professional lab.

mpix.com has done me well. They don't have color profiles, they just expect your input to be in sRGB color space. I have a calibrated monitor, and they come out great.

For my personal "snap shots" Sam's Club/Costco...For professional prints...Miller's.

 

bob

Mpix.com

Easy answer: Costco.

I've used Adorama a couple of times lately, and so far I've been impressed, especially for the price. If cost

isn't a big object give Pro Photo in Lakeland Florida a try, www.prophotoimaging.com. I've thought about sending

the same file to both labs sometime just to see if Pro Photo is still worth it, but I suspect it depends on the

subject as much as anything with them. They cater to wedding and school photographers, but can do anything.

 

If I had known how good Adorama was a couple of years ago I doubt I would have ever bought the Epson 1800. Some

of my prints look a little better, but not enough to justify the cost, and sometimes not at all. These days, the

Epson is just for instant gratification. Both times I used Adorama the turnaround time was 5 days from upload to

arrival in Florida, and the first time was for 20X30 prints.

 

As with anything, your mileage may vary. There are a lot of labs out there, and you may have to try a few to

find the one you like. There are a lot of good choices, and what one person thinks is a good print someone else

may think is junk. You may be happy with Costco, Sam's, Ritz, etc, or you may only be satisfied by a high end

lab like Pro Photo. At the very least, I know if you send the same file to Pro Photo 6 months later you will get

the same quality print as the first time. That may not be the case at the less expensive mass market labs.

On my inkjet and Costco.

I always use Mpix. I tried snapfish and the like but they always seemed to cut off peoples heads or the colors just weren't quite right. Mpix gives you a choice if you want your photo's color corrected or not. You've got to try them at least once. You've also got to try their metallic paper. It is beautiful and gives pictures a pearl finish, which is really beautiful on portraits. They have never messed up any of my orders. Their prices are very reasonable and they are FAST. www.mpix.com

For the most part Mpix is ok in my opinion. I have experienced, a number of times, variation in print quality from them. The customer service was less than what I had expected from them when inquired about the variations. It seems to me that printing in house would be the way to go, given some decent equipment and all of the necessary profiles.

maybe this sounds silly but do you crop your photos in PS before you send them to printing like for example you crop it 8x10 to print same size or do you just send them straight from camera (after some tweeking)

mpix.com Metallic paper

I print them in an improvised darkroom and develop them in trays in the bathtub. Paying someone else to print didn't

work out for me as well. I guess I didn't fit the typical customer model for most services because I keep odd hours and I

usually am more finicky about the prints. I also do mostly black and white, which retail-wise, puts me in a fringe

minority; not impossible, but it's just not what most people, here locally, demand from the corporations running the processing places.

 

I used to work for a one hour photo place, just for a little while when I was a teenager. Judging by what I learned about

the pricing schemes, I would definitely be on the lookout for sales coupons for 50% off, at most any store. I say this

because speed was considered a factor when determining customer demand. The way it breaks down is, if you don't

actually need it in one, I mean one, hour, then the services are probably worth the 50% price. Most people really can get

by with a two-hour or shopping mall visit's worth of time, so they may be paying a little much. Really, the only

customers I saw who seemed to be time-sensitive were people filing pictures for development related to litigation or

insurance claims.

 

You can do well if you send your stuff out to the right people for your needs; but, for me, the answer was to print myself.

Besides getting the print quality the way I wanted, there was also a budgeting advantage. That is, if I stock up on

supplies, or if my income gets sporadic, for example, I can continue slowly feeding my interest in photography using the

equipment I have on hand here. The result was, more pictures! I didn't have to rely on cash in the wallet and long periods of waiting to get

a print. Drop off (and have them do it again) may take as much as two weeks. Print in the bathtub? About 15 minutes, any time of the

day or night. Even though the costs work out to be about the same, by printing myself, in a way I was also switching to an economic

model that matched my disposition, talents and needs. So, there was not only an increase in satisfaction, but in productivity.

 

Sending your stuff out works; but, it helps to align your interests with the economic model that matches your interests.