what to do with your pictures ?

benrock · Dec 29, 2008

whats the best way to do your prints ?

snapfish , fliker or by a nice printer and do it your self ?

what are the best print sites for this , i have a canon 50d

also when you do the online prints does it take forever to upload 15mp pictures ?

and are they as clear as when you shoot them ?

sorry for the dumb questions , just want some advice , thanks everyone

Jaszek · Dec 29, 2008

I print them 4x6 just because I found a coupon online for 25 free prints at riteaid that i can use everyday till the end of this year. But without this I would print them at what size I want them. If it's something I would like to hang on my wall as a poster I would print bigger. Something to just show people around I would do 4x6 or 5x7

Overread · Dec 29, 2008

Well what company to go with depends greatly on what country you are situated in.

As for what to do with photos its really up to you - they are your photos

MY recomendation is this:

1) get a moniter calibrater - no matter if you print at home or if you print at an online lab you are going to need to have your computer moniter calibrated. This has to be done by a machine or by a lot of printing and trial and error (which is very tedius if you are ordering from an online printing lab). Spyder are a popular and good brand of screen calibraters that people use - its also important to remember that calibration has to be done ever so often as all screens will drift over time causing changes to the colours. Calibrating takes only a few minutes and is will worth doing

2) If your just printing for yourself and not making and money out of the deal I would recomend looking at printing from either a local printing firm or an online printing lab - this is because to do justice to your prints its going to cost you a lot for a good printer - plus paper costs - plus (and this is the worst) ink costs - and you can go through a lot of ink very quickly. Printing at home does leave you fully in charge of things, but unless you really know what you are doing then its not really giving you any advantage over a good quality lab print.

3) downloading photos to a print site takes a long as it does - on a good broadband connection it might not take too long, on the other hand it might take all night. If you find that it takes too long many companies will let you mail them a DVD/CD with the photos on it to print or you could look for a local printing firm and take a DVD/CD to them.

4) Clarity of prints is a pain if your using an LCD screen - screen calibrators (point 1) will go a long way to showing you that an LCD is very bright and its not uncommon that people find prints look a bit dark when printed out (very dark if the don't calibrate their screen). A few adjustments and photos should look as bright as they do on the computer -barring the fact that when on paper they tend to not have a backlight

5) you might be noticing that there is a difference between on screen and on paper - and this is very true, a photo will look different on a print and thus does demand an adjustment to editing the photo - noise tends to be lost in prints very easily, however sharpness is also lost just as easily. ITs something where there are no real rules or guidlines and trial and error are the best teachers here (or a course on photography

)

mrodgers · Dec 29, 2008

Just my take, since you mention Snapfish. I sent 3 images to Adorama ($0.15-$0.19 4x6), MPix ($0.29 4x6), and Snapfish ($0.09 4x6).

The 3 images were a B&W of an old iron bridge, a colorful shot of my 2 girls with a flower out in the sunshine (read as great light for my camera), and an antiqued styled shot of my youngest daughter walking down the road.

From these prints, I have ultimately decided to send everything in the future to Adorama I was so impressed with them. I had a broad collection of 4x6, 8x10, antiqued, B&W, matte finish, lustre finish, and metallic papers done. I was so stunned at how they came out that I am going to use them from now on for everything.

As for Snapfish, all prints I received back from them was terrible. With the 3 images I sent to the other printers also, Snapfish turned out with very noticeable "pixelation", for lack of a better word, look to them in comparison. I won't recommend Snapfish to my enemies after seeing what they gave me compared to the other 2 printers.

Many people highly recommend MPix. I highly recommend Adorama. I was thoroughly pleased with the prints, even more than thoroughly pleased.

chrisburke · Dec 29, 2008

i print mine through smug mug... some go on the wall.. some in a book.. and some i dont print

manaheim · Dec 29, 2008

+1000 to everything overread said.

I personally like mpix, though I have to say that if you're extremely picky on color you may wind up having them do reprints for you now and again. I always feel horribly guilty about that, but their service is EXCELLENT.

If you're confident enough of your calibration and have compared it to their calibration kit, you should be ok to do printing without their adjustments, but when they get their adjustments right they do a VERY nice job.

Great company, either way.

McKaso · Dec 29, 2008

There are benefits to printing yourself and sending your prints out depending on your needs. I use to print myself, but switched to sending my prints out. For me it has been a great move. There are a couple of previous threads on this subject at
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...ews/148530-buy-printer-have-them-printed.html

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-shop-talk/145502-place-order-prints-online.html

The only printing service I have ever used is Adorama. Online photo sharing and digital photo printing from AdoramaPix.com I chose Adorama because of 1) print quality 2) paper type and available sizes and 3) price (both prints and shipping). Quality and Paper selection are my top priority.

It is absolutely vital that you calibrate your monitor for the best results. I calibrate my monitors once a month and they have matched my prints perfectly from Adorama. Adorama has never made an adjustment to my prints.

Upload times depend on your Internet provider's connection. I use a cable connection with a 3mb speed, so a download of 24mb only takes at most 3 minutes. Uploading will take longer, but it has been very reasonable for me. This also depends on how many files you are uploading and how large they are. If you post process your file sizes are also likely to be larger.

In addition to file size how "clear" your photo will be is greatly affected by how you save your files. I post process my files before printing, so I begin in camera with a RAW or the highest jpeg setting available depending on my needs during the capture of the photo. When I process the file I save it as an uncompressed tiff file including my adjustment layers. This file is usually on average 250 to 350mb large. I then save a second file of the photo after flattening all the layers, which drops the file size to 48 to 60mb in size. When I am ready to print I save my flattened tiff file to the highest jpeg file possible only once. This reduces my file size to under 40mb. I save the file as a jpeg only once, because the jpeg file is a compressed file and if it is corrected and re-saved over time it loses data. Refer to: Steve's Digicams - Tech Corner - October 2004. I save to jpeg because Adorama requires a jpeg format with a file size not exceeding 40mb. It is important to know your printers file requirements.

Good luck in making your decision.