Large Prints

RxForB3 · Feb 20, 2012

No sharpening was done or any editing at all aside from the crop. I suppose I probably should have mentioned I chose to have printed on their posterboard. I wouldn't have thought that would have affected the contrast, but then what do I know

I've got a lot of reading to do it sounds like. It's a slow day at the pharmacy, but not THAT slow, so I guess it'll have to wait!

Redeyejedi · Feb 20, 2012

i print much of my own images, however if i were in your position i would seek out a local photography printing lab.
Please stay away from the walmart,walgreens. the average disneyland snap shooter has no clue of the difference and those may suit them fine, but it's those exact players that have made it hard to find quality labs in the first place. sure the shift from film has a part to play with labs that didn't ride the carriage in so to speak, however i have seen several labs lose business to drug store and super market photo printing services and this is peeve of mine; they pay some kid $8/hr to load a disk/flash drive and hit the print 2x 4x6, or a set of 5x7....half the time they can barely load paper magazines correctly, the chemicals are tapped, and mix-ups are common.
shop mom&pop, keep it local(if possible), stay with the reputable, and help keep honest hard working folks in business.[]

RxForB3 · Feb 20, 2012

Hm...now that I'm home, I realized there's no way for me to give the details you all are asking about. The picture that was printed was essentially a crop of a crop. First I cropped the photo to a panorama, then the walgreens program forced me to crop it further to fit the 20x30 ratio. It seems to me, though, that size/ppi wouldn't affect contrast...which I believe was the problem (not sharpness.) Or am I wrong about that? In any case, I think my original question was answered quite thoroughly. I'm going to look into a local place and give them a shot first and then maybe go to MPix or one of the others mentioned here. Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

MLeeK · Feb 20, 2012

Is your monitor calibrated properly? I am willing to guess it is not by you saying that contrast was a problem. Reason I say that? Monitors out of the box are extremely bright and extremely contrasty for gaming and internet use. Not any good for editing images. Hence the contrasty image you see on your computer is NOT what your image really looks like.
Walgreens is not the best, but... I suspect you won't be getting any images to look correct no matter where you print until you get a calibrator and properly calibrate your monitor.
As for the sharpness-a crop of a crop is going to be poor quality and not going to be sharp.

RxForB3 · Feb 20, 2012

The sharpness actually turned out quite well (I think). Just the contrast, and considering I'm on a laptop, you might be spot on with the monitor being the issue. I suppose I'll have to move to a monitor or TV of some sort. What is this calibrator you speak of? The best option for me right now is to use a "leftover" fully HD TV with my desktop. I don't actually have any monitors in the house

Could I calibrate that TV appropriately?

MLeeK · Feb 20, 2012

OH! That's even worse. yeah, none of your prints will look like your laptop. You CAN calibrate a laptop, but it's not even capable of displaying the full range of colors in an image, so... It's just not good for images in any way.
You can calibrate a HD TV as long as it's a monitor-and most of them are. You'll need a Spyder or i1D2 or similar and the software. Otherwise you could order prints and then try to hand adjust to make the screen look like the prints-NOT exactly easy.

KmH · Feb 21, 2012

RxForB3 said:
No sharpening was done or any editing at all aside from the crop. I suppose I probably should have mentioned I chose to have printed on their posterboard. I wouldn't have thought that would have affected the contrast, but then what do I know

I've got a lot of reading to do it sounds like. It's a slow day at the pharmacy, but not THAT slow, so I guess it'll have to wait!

OK. Here are some points for you to consider in the future.
I mentioned in a previous post that sharpening is all about controlling edge contrast. Specifically it is about controlling the size of edge halos.

Did they print directly on the posterboard, or did they mount a print to posterboard. If they printed directly on posterboard that would explain alot about the low contrast.

There are 3 kinds of printing:

Chromogenic, which uses paper that is coated with a light sensitive CMY emulsion. Red, green, and blue lazes or LED's are used to project your image onto the paper. The paper is then developed in a chemical process. Durst Lambda and Fiji Frontier printing machines are both chromogenic print machines. Chromogenic color print - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Inkjet, which is pretty self descriptive. Small droplets of CMYK ink/dye are sprayed onto paper. The choice of paper determnines how much, if any, of the ink/dye gets absorbed, or not, by the paper. Inkjet printer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia High quality inkjet prints are often called a Giclée (zhee-clay). Giclée - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Offset or half-tone, which is also CMYK color model based and usually used for large commecial batches of printing. Offset printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posterboard is not a chromogenic paper, so unless your photo was mounted on posterboard it likely had to be an inkjet print.