printing in china How to Print Photos

I individually buy from Ritz,printing in china, Adorama and Amazon. I can't vouch for any other ads.





How to Make Great Prints
© 2006 KenRockwell.com



INKJETS ARE DEAD

See quality instances here.

I first published this page in 1999. Back then, inkjets were the cheapest way for non-professional photographers to make prints from digital files. Ultra high-end mercantile labs with the equipment to print from digital files onto real photo paper were almost nonexistent outdoor of the advertising worlds of New York City or Los Angeles. In those days we scanned our film. It wasn't until the end of 1999 that Nikon introduced the world's first practical DSLR, the D1 at $5,000, and at less than 3MP was only for newspaper.

Things change! The 1990s are yet the dingy ages of digital.

Inkjet printers went obsolete behind in 2004. I still use a $99 Epson printer, but only for typography emails and, once a year, business cards.

This is because today we can get much better prints on real, light-sensitive, chemically-processed photo paper at almost whichever lab including Wal-Mart, Costco and Target. They, and probably your local camera store, have entire bought the $50,000 and up machines necessitated to print electronically onto real photo paper. Adorama Lab's printers price $150,000 each and the ones at Calypso spend almost $500,000.

I'm defining photo paper as light sensitive, chemically processed paper. Inkjets spit ink onto plain paper. I'll reserve this prejudice. I prefer the look of real photo paper for my work.

Sending prints out costs less than inkjet paper and ink. You don't have to buy or nourish a printer, either!

Prints made from my files for bottom dollar at Costco are far better than the prints I used to get from expensive professional labs from film negatives.

Thank God the fashionable lab machines are consistent. You no longer have to depend on the kid going at a lab to get your photos to see right. I ask for "uncorrected" and my prints always match the file I send, even at the cheapest printing places.

It took photographers a few annuals to get to digital from film. Today everyone does it. It's the same for sending prints out, just a few years newer. Inkjet printer producers today spend tons on improvement and seminars to reserve you musing you need one. Nikon and Canon never needed to try to keep you stuck in movie. Inkjets aspired to "photo quality," yet never got there for me. I love the ultra glossy, vivid wet-look prints I get on Fuji Super Gloss. Inkjets don't get namely glossy.

I print photos, not canvasses. Inkjets are still the way to go if you need to print on canvas, napkin, T-shirts, CDs, DVDs and cardboard.

Mainstream medium is just starting to pick up on what photographers and savvy buyers already know. The New York Times, October 8th, 2005 pointed out that that the ratio of prints made at home is dripping. The NY Times quotes Consumer Reports that tangible print costs at home are 50 pence each just for paper and ink, and they are as low as 13 cents each at places like Sam's Club or 10 cents if prepaid at Snapfish.com. (You may be able to peruse the treatise here.) Of course to make prints at home you'd also have to buy a photo printer. Sending prints out you get free use of someone else's time and their $50,000 Fuji Frontier or Noritsu or Agfa printer.

Which makes a better print: a $50,000 printer using real photo paper at Costco, or your $1,800 Epson. Duh, the $50,000 printer of course! Remember: all the hours of painstaking editing and optimization are reflected in your digital file. Your talent is in the file, regardless of where you take it to print.

Even the Wal-Mart in Flint, Michigan had a Fuji Frontier in June of 2002. If they had one I'm sure your local discount store or lab has one, too, in 2006.

GICLÉES

Giclée is the French word for inkjet. People too mortified to confess they are selling inkjet prints spat out of a computer say giclée instead of inkjet. It's the same thing. Giclée is also used in the painting world for a technique where ink is spritzed onto the middle, which is why it's been adopted to euphemize inkjet printers. Emails printed on my $99 Epson are also giclées!

MODERN PRINTING

Pro Labs

I discern not extra intention for outdated pro labs. In the antique days you needed 1 to hope to obtain the right colors. Today the printers everywhere are automated to give you the same colors in your document. It used to take a lot of black wizardry to clone your slip and even more to get color from a negate. Wal-Mart's Fuji Frontier machines do an even better job automatically printing from your files.

No longer do good photographers need to disburse top USD to a custom vocational lab to have a children screw up your prints. The children at the expensive custom lab who used to get between you and a great print is worked. You can get a large publish nearly everywhere.

I use an expensive pro lab like Calypso today because they have the competence to print on Fuji Super Gloss at any promiscuous size I want. They dictate by the square foot and every order is custom. Getting special sizes or materials are the only cause to pay more for a lab providing to pros. I see no feud in image quality between Costco or anywhere another for standard size prints. They all use the same machines and chemicals.

Profiles

We don't need no reeking profiles!

I astound my friends with knockout 12 x 18" prints made at Costco for $2.99 directly from the JPGs that came out of my camera. The results are even now further what an inkjet can do that people are floored.

For me life is too short to screw with profiles for printing at deduct labs. Their machines are well ample calibrated as-is. Shoot at the default sRGB color space and you're nice. If you're a wise fellow shooting Adobe RGB you will must screw with colorspace transitions, otherwise you'll get duller colors!

Hobbyists love to make things as complex as likely. That's why they're phoned hobbyists: they enjoy the process of all this for its own sake. I'm a photographer and favor to make pictures over piddling with details.

People who enjoy fiddling with their calculator more than creating images adore to violin with silhouettes from areas like drycreekphoto.com. Adorama likewise publishes color profiles. Most labs, additional than the deepest discounters, publish these.

When you try to get intelligent and go outside the standard procedure with these profiles often an worker ambition kick a bad button and you'll must ask for a re-do!

File Formats and Color Spaces

I never anxiety about this. I always send sRGB JPGs to everyone and love the results.

Of way no one can print raw files. Raw files all must be converted to a standard, like JPG or TIF, 1st.

When electing my files at Adorama's network site it showed only my JPGs. I don't know if they print from other formats. JPG is the only format I'd use online, since TIFs consume too much period and space in transfer.

Matching Your Screen

My prints match my screen. They also match my camera's LCD. I get this everyplace I've tried.

If your colors don't match, your screen probably out of calibration. See my page on monitor calibration.

Great news: calibrating a screen is simple and cheap. Calibrating printers is a afflict. Sending prints out you don't need to calibrate any printers. Modern lab printers calibrate themselves for us automatically.

If your computer matches your camera's LCD and you're not getting this from your lab, migrate on to dissimilar. Just be sure your files are sRGB!

Big Prints

12 x 18" is my standard size. My local Costco prints up to that big on real Fuji chemical photo paper in that size. I send out to Calypso for bigger prints.

Labs constantly print up to a certain size on their good printer, and revert to an inkjet for bigger ones. These good printers are expensive, like $150,000, so smaller operations may no go up to 12 x 18." They purchase as big a machine for makes sense to them.

You absence apt query the lab up apt how big they print aboard the real paper. Go somewhere if they merely offer Epson, inkjet, giclée alternatively whatever because the bigger sizes you absence.

DIGITAL LAB SUGGESTIONS

Be careful that the lab uses chemically processed paper, not just an inkjet or dye-sub printer in a big box! Look on the back of the prints and they ought to mention Fuji Crystal Archive, my favorite. Some may mention Agfa or Kodak. Beware of any inkjet prints, which don't look as good and are going to disappear or smear and have different levels of gloss depending on the gloom of each portion of the picture. Some labs also offer "giclée," which is just the idea French word for inkjet.

Avoid labs and kiosks that cheap out and print on inkjet or dye sublimation ("tinge sub") printers. You need to make sure that they print on authentic light emotional, chemically processed photo paper.

Color and Exposure

I'm an talent and want asset done my path. I want prints that match the direction I established them on my shade.

Be sure to ask for NO AUTOCORRECTION. They used to depart it unattended, but immediately the people who love to screw up a good thing apply "correction" to each print. Remember to ask them to PRINT AS IS, NO CORRECTIONS and you'll get what you want, presuming you have never screwed with the settings of your monitor at family.

Online, good labs will have a NO CORRECTIONS box to retard.

MUCH MORE DETAILS:

Online Printing

Walk-In Printing

Black-and-White Printing

Creating Serious Works for ############## Display