Printing Images

[Chris_Johnstone]

Hey guys,

Where do you go to get your images printed or do you print them yourself?

I was curious and went to the old high street store to see what they could do for me. I got about 15 prints including some HDR images. However, most HDR images came out underexposed, so not ideal.

Thinking I had exposed (or manipulated the exposure) correctly, I went into lightroom and discovered that all the images that were well exposed on the prints were exposed 'correctly' (had a typical well-exposed histogram or thereabouts) whereas all my HDR images' histograms were slightly under exposed. So now you're thinking, well you should have checked the histogram before printing! However to me eye and on the comp they all looked great. Moral of the story (get the exposure bang on before sending them off).

What I mean by the top question is, do you make sure your prints are run off by someone who is likely to look at them and adjuct them before printing or do you rely on what you give to the high street man and hope for the best?

Chris

[Tormentil]

I print my own. Printer will only do A4 though (Canon i990). I figure that if I want a bigger print, I'd get it done commercially.

[pressld2]

I don't print my own as I think it's too expensive and too much mucking about calibrating everything in sight, loading printer profiles specific to the paper you're using, and so on.

I get my prints done by mypix.com. When I first went digital I tried about six different printing sites - they were all offering 30 free prints as a 'come on' so I had the same 30 images printed by each of them and compared the results. mypix.com were streets ahead for quality. Better sharpness, saturation, tonal range - you name it, they were best. Their web site is cumbersome and confusing, they constantly convert prices between Stirling and Euros so the end price is never quite what you thought it would be (only pennies different but confusing and annoying none-the-less), they are a French company with a very blasé attitude to customer service and they are affiliated to pixmania.com who I will never, EVER buy anything from again if I live to be a million! But I forgive them all that because I can't get prints that good from anybody else. (Or at least I couldn't - it's been three years since I did the comparison so it's about time I repeated the exercise.)

When ordering prints there is an option called "compensation" which is ticked by default. This means that they will give the images a contrast and saturation boost to make them a bit punchier. If you've already done that in your own software or if you would prefer a slightly low key, understated print then it's best to un-tick that box.

Dave P.

[Purplepixii]

When I print I print my own. In the past, when I was a member of a camera club, I entered competitions with my photo's and would only ever print them myself - much more control over the final product!

I did invest in a decent A3 Canon printer though, and although it is now 4 years old it still prints as well as it ever did. I always stick to Canon cartridges - I have tried others and they are no-where near as good on quality.

Yes, calibration of your monitor is time-consuming, however if you do it once and do it correctly you're all set. Home-printing is definitely for me!

[mart_d50]

I gave up on printing my own photos last year, I was just totally fed up and demotivated. Went through 4 different colour inkjets in 7 years and they were great to begin with but soon developed faults in one way or another to do with:

-cartridges drying up too quickly
-nozzles getting blocked too easily which necessitates cleaning cycle which wastes an astonishing amount of ink "wow that's just used up 1/4 of the cartridge"
-printers claiming cartridges are empty already "hey I could swear that cartridge is at least half full"
-feeder wheels/belt drive wearing out quickly, making marks on the paper or no longer pulling the paper through evenly
-depositing of ink in various places within the printer, on the roller, pads, which invariably ends up smearing on the paper

Cartridges are sooo expensive, and all in all it really felt like throwing money straight into the bin. My last two printers I got so frustrated with I used a big hammer on them ! It felt good but I can't be doing with it anymore !

I have used photobox several times and I find their prints and customer service really good, but am not overly impressed with the quality of their gift products. The first time I used them the prints were slightly too green, but this was fixed when I downloaded their fuji calibration profile. I will give mypix.com a try too.

[John D]

I find the above all very interesting and can't believe the trouble most have in printing out their own photographs. I have printed out all my photos from day one and I have many, including calenders. However I have sent some for external printing now and again, for comparison purposes, but haven't see any real difference to that I have printed myself. By doing it myself I have total control from the time I release the shutter until the print is exited from the printer. If it isn't quite to my liking it can be easily adjusted as all control is in my own hands. Third parties are not involved.The satisfaction for me is it is all my own work.
Why go to the bother of taking a nice shot only to let some external source prepare the final output, ie the PRINT, if it can all be done by yourself, why not???????
Just my humble opinion!
John D

[Tormentil]

Totally agree John D. In my case its probably a throw back to the time I did my own developing and printing.

Switch your printer on every couple of days, even if you're not going to print owt, this will help prevent having to do those ink wasting head cleaning routines.

[GerryNick2]

I now print all my own Photos. Early attempts were a bit disapointing but once I calibrated the monitor and obtained profiles for the papers I use everything fell into place. How the print turns out is now a mirror image of what I see on the monitor.

Gerry

[John D]

Originally Posted by GerryNick2

I now print all my own Photos. Early attempts were a bit disapointing but once I calibrated the monitor and obtained profiles for the papers I use everything fell into place. How the print turns out is now a mirror image of what I see on the monitor.

Gerry

Gerry, as a matter of interest how do they compare with the image as taken. There seems to be a lot said about the print being similar to the image on the monitor but very little said about how that compares with the image as taken.
As I said on a previous thread I periodically check images I have printed with the actual image photographed ie a flower, pot of flowers,butterfly, brick wall, a coloured leaf etc etc. In order to get a reasonably true comparison the print has to be made ASAP and the comparison carried out ASAP. Colours of the print can change a little over a 24 hour period but I have found this to be neglible.
I feel the most important thing is to have the print as true a represention of the original image/scene as possible unless there is a 'real need' to improve the original in some way and I do accept that this may be the case sometimes.
John D

[GerryNick2]

Hi John

I shoot all my images in RAW, if I print a RAW image from within Lightroom with absolutely no post processing and compare with the original scene there is to my mind no noticeable difference. I tend to leave the camera colour space set to sRGB as opposed to Adobe RGB. The same cannot be said however for jpeg,s the variations which can no doubt be attributed to the in camera processing.

I also aim to have the final image as near a true representation of the original scene as possible. Consequently I very rarely use Photoshop and tend to do all of my post processing in Lightroom. In the main post processing consists of a small tweak here and there and added sharpening.

A lot of my time is devoted to photographing fungi and to aid identification it is essential to keep the colours as true as possible and I have carried over this principle to other subject matter.

Prior to having my monitor profiled and the paper profiled, the colours were not even close to the original subject which was the main reason for setting up the correct colour management.

Gerry

[John D]

Hi Gerry,
That is very interesting. Like you I shoot in RAW but use Photoshop Elements for mainly sharpening and the smallest of tweaks. I also leave the camera colourspace in sRGB. However I have'nt profiled my monitor (an NEC MultiSyncFE770) using hardware, but have been fortunate to have found the 'colour profile provided by NEC' to give an adequate level of colour management. This is confirmed when a printed image is compared with the colours of the subject image and in turn compared with the monitor colours. (Some allowance must be made of course when comparing the print with the monitor colours due the difference in the way the colours/image is displayed.)
The printer again makes use of the 'colour profile' provided and papers used are also taken into consideration. I do 'tweak' the printer settings at times but this is very seldom.
In addition to the above I calibrate my monitor every 3/4 weeks using 'Quick Gamma' which I find to be very good.
So far I am very pleased with the prints obtained as they are in 'my opinion' and as far as 'my eyesight' can determine a very true representation of the original image.

John D

[zan]

I personally use photobox and have found them to be great. I don't have the money for a decent printer with ink\photo paper at the mo, and online printing works out ideally for me. Maybe if I started selling prints in large numbers, I would probably look into it, but it's too much to start on now.

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by zan

I personally use photobox and have found them to be great. I don't have the money for a decent printer with ink\photo paper at the mo, and online printing works out ideally for me. Maybe if I started selling prints in large numbers, I would probably look into it, but it's too much to start on now.

Same here. I use there 15 free prints a month. I find their quality to be very good, and extremely quick. I can order at 10:30 at night and I get an email telling me they're in the post a few hours later! I had a poster done that was much better quality than I managed to get from my printer.

[Meta menardi]

Originally Posted by John D

I find the above all very interesting and can't believe the trouble most have in printing out their own photographs. I have printed out all my photos from day one and I have many, including calenders.
John D

Hi John, as a matter of interest, what program do you use for your calendars? I have done calendars for ages using different programs, but the ones I have been using have all got problems (one won't display jpg from my Fuji, one crashes as regularly as a clown's car). I have started using DTP, but I used to be able to do them for my diary and so on all in one swoop.

[MeadsMan]

When you use online printers,what size and format do you use,to email your potential prints ? Do you need to do anything to them,or are they generally enhanced at the printers ?

Mark.

[pressld2]

I usually upload full size jpegs which from my D70 means 3000 x 2000 pixels (unless I've cropped) at 100% quality. I haven't yet uploaded any from my D300 but I have had a few 30 x 20 inch posters done and for these I interpolated the images up to between 6000 and 7000 pixels on the longest side.

With the printing site I use (see above) they will enhance saturation and contrast by default but you can uncheck the box and stop them from doing that.

Dave P.

[Geoff F]

Firstly, before I forget, Calendar question from Meta Menardi. Can't speak for John D but I use Serif Page Plus for my calendars. Perhaps not the cheapest of desk top publishing software but I don't use any of the Windows text programmes so it actually works out OK pricewise.

Secondly, prints. I originally went digital to avoid the oversaturated 'colour corrected' prints that I was getting from my local developers. Most of my friends still use them with their digital images. But, if I take a photo of a green sea and a grey sky I don't want it coming back bright blue.

Doing your own printing does take a bit of getting used to but it isn't really difficult. I think the main principles are get a decent photo quality printer (it works out cheaper in the long run) and use top quality paper. Originally I used Epson printers (R800) but I found they did suffer from nozzle clog, although it is simple to automatically clean them if you do get problems. Wanting to go up to A3 I switched allegience and bought a Canon 9000. Seems OK so far; but a lot of professionals prefer the larger and more expensive Epson printers.

It cost me around £400 which I probably won't recoup although paying for an A3 print isn't cheap. I do sell a few seascapes and have found that A3 prints sell a lot better than A4.

So, if you get a lot of enlarged prints and you want total control over the process I think that printing your own is the only option.

[John D]

Originally Posted by Meta menardi

Hi John, as a matter of interest, what program do you use for your calendars? I have done calendars for ages using different programs, but the ones I have been using have all got problems (one won't display jpg from my Fuji, one crashes as regularly as a clown's car). I have started using DTP, but I used to be able to do them for my diary and so on all in one swoop.

Hi Meta, I have tried several but the one I used for 2008 was in fact Free on a CD attached to Digital Photo Magazine Nov 2007. I found this one to be very good, it included several alternative layouts/templates. It was just the case of selecting the preferred layout/template and dragging the selected image after opening in Photoshop Elements. It was also possible to edit layouts and add text as required.
I don't tend to buy if I can obtain an acceptable alternative for FREE.
John D