Newbie here with printing questions and a few others

bowen.deanna

TPF Noob!
Joined
May 9, 2012
Messages
30
Reaction score
4
Location
Kentucky
Can others edit my Photos
Photos OK to edit
Hi I am a newbie and lost in all there is to learn about photography and how to get that special shot. I have read and watch videos online and do alittle practicing. I done a few shots yesterday and took them to Walmarts to get them printed to see how they looked in print. On my computer everything looks decent but when I printed them off URG!! I was sooo disappointed. I am trying to learn aperature, shutter speed and ISO at the moment so I thought by seeing them in print I could tell more where I went wrong. Well the quality of the pictures were crap which I knew they wouldnt be the best because I was told if you wanted good clear prints to order online..so that is one of my questions...who do you recommend for best quality and price wise? I am not a professional. I am learning photography for my benefit. I love having pictures of my daughter and niece but it runs into sooo much $$ getting others to take them so that is one of the main reasons I decided to try it myself.

Also a friend gave me a copy of her PS7 to play around with before investing into a editing program myself. Well I dont know anything about it but hope to learn. I played around with some features on it and when I printed them off the colors were way off and a bit grainy. I did do some cropping on them so I dont know if that was one of the reason or what. How do I know when I cropped a picture if it is a good size for printing?

I hope that I am making sense on everything as I am a newbie and want to learn so much. Thanks for allowing me to be part of this forum.
 
One thing you should know - if you are doing your post-processing on an uncalibrated monitor, then you are not giving yourself a chance at all. Unless you have a calibrated monitor, I would wish you luck in trying to match what you see on your screen with what you get from any external printing source - online or offline. The other side to this is that a calibrated monitor does not guarantee that what you see on your screen is what you will see from your printer. The colour space for your monitor and your printer are different, by their very nature - your monitor is a display and you are looking at colours as they display on your screen and the "results" will depend on the type of monitor that you have and its ability to display various colour spaces. Your printer is just that - a printer - and the colours it can produce are going to be different than those that your monitor can display - I mean it only has so many different possibilities depending on the number of inks that your printer has. You will need to know the ICC profile of the paper that you are printing on given the printer and inks that you are using - these are ususally available from the manufacturer of the paper. I know this may not be something that you want to know about, but it is a fact of life when it comes to going from captured image in your camera to your results from post-processing on your display to printing, either on your own printer or someone else's.

As far as the quality of ordering online versus printing at Walmart, or some place else, I would question anyone who says that online printing maybe better and I would really want to know what their basis is for such a statement. I do all my own printing, so I cannot offer you any personal experience, I just know that from what I read in this and other forums, a lot seems to depend on who is doing the printing and not the "location" that you get it done. My 0.02¢ FWIW.
______________
WesternGuy
 

Most reactions

Back
Top