What the H#$%!!!

LisaCadwell · Dec 2, 2012

I started to shoot in RAW a couple of months ago and I will admit that I've edited the photos and posted them; but, I've yet to actually develop any. So a couple of days ago I picked out a few of my favorites and sent them to Winkflash (which is where I normally get my prints). I order some 5x7's and a few 8X10's to use as possible Christmas gifts and I get an error message from them. Low quality picture.

I took the photos in Raw and did some editing. Not a ton of cropping but a little. How is it even possible to get an low quality photo error message? The files were between 1.5-5+ MB???

Did I really lose that much quality while editing? Or do I need to be sending my files to a photo lab?

tirediron · Dec 2, 2012

We need more information! Please post one or two examples of the images which were flagged as "Low quality" along with full EXIF data. There are a number of things that could have gone wrong, but as long as you have the RAW files, then all you will have lost is a little time.

Tee · Dec 2, 2012

Post the picture that was denied.

BrianV · Dec 2, 2012

Did you send the RAW format files, or did you export them to JPEG after editing? Did you resize them?

If you sent them RAW- be sure the the lab can decode them. Most RAW files have an embedd "low resolution" JPEG file in the header, used for thumbnails, in addition to the raw image. If the lab used that thumbnail, could explain the low-res message.

LisaCadwell · Dec 2, 2012

I sent them the edited jpeg photo can't I post the photos on here as they are too big???
My Public Share Images At Winkflash Would this help you to look at? These are the photos that I uploaded to print. ???

e.rose · Dec 2, 2012

My guess is that when you exported them to JPEG, you exported them at too low of a resolution. I clicked on one of your images in the gallery, and there was a "direct link to image" and when I went to THAT address... the image I'm taken to is tiny. And if THAT'S what you're trying to print... that's WHY you're getting a warning.

What do you edit in? Lightroom?

BrianV · Dec 2, 2012

You images are ~1050x1600, and were about 300KBytes each. That implies "medium" compression, on old "Photoshop 7.0" was a 7 on a scale of 12.

You will be losing a lot of detail, and the prints will probably show the loss in quality. As an example, I took a raw image, scaled to 1065x1600, saved with "lossless" jpeg compression, and then used the setting that was close to yours. I cropped the image for these attachments from the 1065x1600 images. You can see the detail loss.

TheFantasticG · Dec 2, 2012

Well, I was going to post something useful but rose wrote my thoughts out for me

BrianV · Dec 2, 2012

The images posted in a different folder,

My Public Share Images At Winkflash

are :

Resolution:

3888 X 2592

Size:

3.5 MB

So, sizing problem and compression problem.

e.rose · Dec 2, 2012

The nifty tool at the bottom says she's still viewing this thread. I'm assuming that she just left the page open and walked away from her computer, cause I'm still anxiously waiting for her to tell me what program she's using to edit her images so we can help her figure out how to properly export her images.......

LisaCadwell · Dec 2, 2012

e.rose said:
My guess is that when you exported them to JPEG, you exported them at too low of a resolution. I clicked on one of your images in the gallery, and there was a "direct link to image" and when I went to THAT address... the image I'm taken to is tiny. And if THAT'S what you're trying to print... that's WHY you're getting a warning.

What do you edit in? Lightroom?

Yes I edit in Lightroom. Is it maybe a setting in the exporting that I have wrong? I have the quality at 100 and the resolution at 11000. ?

Hmm... I just noticed that the file size is a lot lower than the file on my computer. All of the pictures show 400.5KB. My files on the computer are showing at the lowest 1.5MB.

Maybe Winkflash has a file size limit! ARG.... Where is a good place to get photos printed?

TheFantasticG · Dec 2, 2012

www.bayphoto.com - www.whcc.com - www.adoramapix.com

I've used all three and liked the results from each.

e.rose · Dec 2, 2012

In Lightroom...

Under file settings:

Format: JPEG

Color Space: (Mine is sRGB, but set it to whatever your printer prefers, if anything)

Quality: 100

Under Image Sizing:

Resize to fit: UNCHECKED

Resolution: 300 Pixels per inch (why on EARTH is your resolution set to 11000ppi?! Haha... that's like... unnecessarily huge. I didn't even know that was *possible*. :lol:

)

Check around Winkflash and see if it says anything about sizing images down, but even if they do, one would think they'd size it down so that it was still at a printable size for them.

There are a million places to print images... just depends on what you want them for.

Try Mpix... you don't have to have a pro account to use the regular mpix.com

LisaCadwell · Dec 2, 2012

I was away from My laptop. Too much going on today. I think I set it at 11000 because that was the max allowable- so I figured it was full amount and would avoid this problem. I will low it to the 300.

I'm starting to think that the problem is with wink flash and the upload to them and not my files. That would make more sense I guess. But you are right. What photo printing place is going to limit the quality of a photo???

RxForB3 · Dec 2, 2012

Some places give you an option (like "high quality upload") that must be checked for the files to upload at your full quality. Perhaps this is the case with Winkflash?