Professional Quality Printing?

dk_hopper · Feb 23, 2008

Hi all! Thank you all so much for this forum. It has been extremely helpful with my journey in photography. It has truly become a passion of mine, thanks to all of your kind information.

I have been taking fairly good pictures of friends and family and am frequently getting asked to do photography for friends of friends. I love taking pictures for them, but I need a little income to support my photography habit. I am wondering if you guys have any suggestions of professional quality online printing sites that I can upload the images I take and have them purchase them through the site and allow me to get a percentage of the purchase, or any other ideas on this matter. I am sure you all experience this.

Thanks again! :wink:

Jon0807 · Feb 23, 2008

I've had 8x12's done at mpix.com and they came out great. I think alot of people here use them as well. I've also had good results with shutterfly.com but only had 4x6's printed with them.

Sandspur · Feb 23, 2008

Mpix and Shutterfly are both great!

I have a pro gallery with Shutterfly and use it to sell thousands of dollars worth of prints every year. But unless you do the kind of event photography I do, you don't need to pay for a pro gallery.

Jon0807 mentioned that he didn't have experience with Shutterfly prints larger than 4x6. I do. Even up to 20x30. They're great!

usayit · Feb 23, 2008

:thumbs: mpix

JIP · Feb 23, 2008

Another vote here for Mpix and if you start to do more volume you can move up the pro side, Millers.

eminart · Feb 23, 2008

Whoa! I've never heard of this. Of course, I'm just trying to get into photography. Can someone explain more how it works? Would I just set up an account and upload photos? Do I pay anything for the account, or just for prints ordered?

Jon0807 · Feb 23, 2008

with both mpix and shutterfly you just open an account for FREE and start uploading pics that you want to print. Mpix only holds your photos for a certain amount of time but shutterfly is also a hosting site like Flickr. You can keep your photos there indefinately I believe.

usayit · Feb 23, 2008

go to www.mpix.com

There site explains the whole process pretty well.

dk_hopper · Feb 23, 2008

Thank you all for the feedback. Has anyone tried Printroom?

iriairi · Feb 24, 2008

Does anyone know what colorspace these sights use?

domromer · Feb 24, 2008

iriairi said:
Does anyone know what colorspace these sights use?

I was talking to someone at mpix a few days ago. This should answer your question.

Please save your files in RGB color mode in 8-bit color, not 16 bit, to achieve the best print results. Please - no CMYK, Grayscale, PSD or LZW compressed files and if you work in layers, be sure to flatten the file and remove any extra channels before sending. We accept JPG or TIFF files. Most customer convert their Tiff files to Jpeg for uploading as there is very little difference in printing quality between the two formats. Lossless or highest quality jpg compressions are more than adequate for high quality printing. In the early days of digital that wasn't always the case however the compression algorithms have become very sophisticated and it is nearly impossible to distinguish a jpg print from a tiff print with the naked eye.

sRGB is the working space for all our photographic printers. Consequently working in a larger color space does not offer any advantage from a printing stand point. A larger color space in theory allows a greater range of colors and dynamic range to be captured and manipulated. We suggest sRGB as the working space because that is the color space that the printers require. Before images are printed here they must be converted to sRGB by suggesting that clients use sRGB as their working space they are insuring that what they see will be what they get as much as possible.

Will I lose quality by sending a JPEG over a Tiff?

The JPEG compression format is a very efficient, lossy image compression algorithm designed specifically for saving photographic images. It takes advantage of how humans see color versus brightness to only save information needed to reproduce the image for people to view. Image data is lost during compression, but at high levels of quality you will not see a difference between a JPEG and a TIFF printed to photographic paper. JPEG compression is perfect for sending files to the lab for printing, but be sure to avoid using the compression as a working file type.

iriairi · Feb 24, 2008

That was what I wanted to know. Thanks domromer.

Brent17 · Feb 27, 2008

Hey everyone. New to this Forum. Just wanted to chime in. Mpix and Millers are fine, but they are owned by Millers, and there is no difference between them except Millers can charge more because they are " Millers ". I didnt like mpix's customer service...you have to email them any problems, you can't actually talk to them. I recently switched to a lab called Nations Photo Lab. The service is same day on Kodak Endura, and they are typically anywhere from 20-30% less than MPIX, and 50% less than Millers. I didnt see the value in using MPIX when I could get better service with these guys, the same quality, and spend less money.

Sandspur · Feb 27, 2008

A couple of additional comments about Shutterfly:

1. A basic Shutterfly account is free, as mentioned above. Also ... colorspace is sRGB.

2.A Shutterfly Pro Gallery costs $199.00/year. You can put up as many separate galleries as you want (up to, I think, 10 gigs). You set the pricing; they take a percentage of your price + a basic charge.
When you do a project, you set up a new gallery for it, give your clients the Shutterfly address, shoot, upload ... and wait for orders.

I have approximately 1,000 to 1,500 images up right now in 6 or 7 galleries.

3. Since they normally apply an auto enhancement adjustment (they call it VividPics) to everything they print, you should have that option turned OFF for all your projects (assuming, of course, that you optimize files in Photoshop before you upload them. You DO optimize your files, don't you!?) I also crop every file to 8x10@300 dpi before uploading, simply because I don't want my customers to get pix that are clipped.

In the almost three years that I've had a Pro account with Shutterfly, I've sold a LOT of pictures. I've never had a client complain, their service is great, their customer service for pros is excellent too.

(e mail or PM me if you'd like the address to a couple of my galleries)

I'm sure other similar services are out there, and that most of them are good. I've used Mpix only a couple of times, but their work has been great.

Brent17 · Feb 28, 2008

Just to let you know Shutterfly doesn't do their own printing. They outsource everything to District Photo. Its nice to hear though that they are doing a good job. I really wouldn't expect it from a shop as big as District.