Pro-Quality Printing Labs

[friskybongo]

<p>Hi All,<br>

Hope this is the right forum to post in. I've just had some old Kodachrome 35mm slides scanned and am looking for an excellent pro-quality lab to make some prints. I'm thinking I'd like to display them on my living room wall in sizes from 5"x7" up to 16"x20"; maybe mounted/framed in a variety of print surface types.<br>

Looking for some recommendations for a top quality lab from those of you who have actually used them.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Think it would be helpful to know where you are Louis.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>I don't know where you are, but in Paris, I would always recommend <a href="http://www.arkalab.com/arka-labo-photo-paris/laboratoire-photographique.php">ARKA Laboratoire</a>, which I have used for years for big format prints. Top quality and they do Epson Digigraphie^® label prints. </p>

[friskybongo]

<p>All,<br>

Sorry, forgot to mention that I live in the New York City area.</p>

[david_henderson]

<blockquote>

<p><em>It doesn't really matter where you're located</em></p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Yes it does and that's why I asked. If he'd been in UK or Europe the suggestions I make would have been very different. The combination of shipping and tax having prints made in the USA and shipped to Europe was more than enough to persuade me to stop buying from labs I liked dealing with in the US, and start buying in the UK as soon as the right technologies emerged here. Moreover its not just the tax, but the fees charged by the Royal Mail for collecting the entry duties. Not only did I save a fortune but the lead time was cut from weeks to a couple of days.</p>

<p> Having explored the costs of getting quality prints made in different countries over the years I can't see that today you're likely to achieve any positive advantage in getting prints made overseas by comparison with what you can get in the USA. Sure there are high end and lower priced printers in the UK, but there are in the USA too and international delivery will always cost more.</p>

<p>I bought a lot of prints from transparencies made by West Coast Imaging in California, until the rest of the world caught up. <a href="http://www.westcoastimaging.com">www.westcoastimaging.com</a> The same people still seem to be around and they offer a range of print types -Chromira and Inkjet on a wide range of papers. They have a sister company. operating from the same premises, called Aspen Creek that sells more cheaply to people who provide print ready files -which I suspect most of us do these days.</p>

<p>You might also like to take a look at The Lightroom- again on the west coast- who made one nice batch of prints for me at a good price which didn't work out only because of the above mentioned tax and delivery issues. <a href="http://www.lightroom.com">www.lightroom.com</a></p>

[wgpinc]

<p>If you have decent scans mpix.com does a credible job for a reasonable price. if they are good scans even Costco will do an okay job.</p>

[WJT]

<p>I'll give another vote for West Coast Imaging. I have had many large Chromira prints produced by them using my files and they have always been of exceptional quality. I have also had some of my 4x5 chromes drum scanned by them and, again, excellent work. They are not cheap but you are getting a quality product.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>At least many Coscto's are <strong>fully</strong> color managed! Meaning you can use their <strong>actual</strong> output profiles for actually soft proofing and converting via whatever rendering intent you desire from a wide gamut RGB working space (sRGB is suboptimal for this task). <br>

https://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/</p>

[Stephen_Prunier]

<p>I haven't tried them yet, but will. This company gets high marks in my area, Boston, MA). <a href="http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/">http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/</a></p>