prints from digital

[SDunbar]

After going "digital" last Feb., I thought it was finally time to get prints made from my pics. Since I had over 300 to do, I just ran them into Costco. Since I've edited many of them, I was told to write "Color Correction Off" on the orders. I just picked them up, and most of the u/w shots are way, way too blue. Even people's faces are blue! The other colors seem to be fine except the blues. (But that blue eel is rather unique!)
Also the edges around my dig. images are gone, so I have heads, tails, noses, etc. cut off. Needless to say, I'm not too thrilled.

Any words of wisdom? Is this just because I went to Costco for the prints and need to go elsewhere, or should their color corrections have been "on"? (Or maybe they just didn't follow instructions.) Do all prints from dig. pics. cut off the edges?

Thanks for any info. you may have.

[SubMariner]

Originally Posted by SDunbar

After going "digital" last Feb., I thought it was finally time to get prints made from my pics. Since I had over 300 to do, I just ran them into Costco. Since I've edited many of them, I was told to write "Color Correction Off" on the orders. I just picked them up, and most of the u/w shots are way, way too blue. Even people's faces are blue! The other colors seem to be fine except the blues. (But that blue eel is rather unique!)
Also the edges around my dig. images are gone, so I have heads, tails, noses, etc. cut off. Needless to say, I'm not too thrilled.

Any words of wisdom? Is this just because I went to Costco for the prints and need to go elsewhere, or should their color corrections have been "on"? (Or maybe they just didn't follow instructions.) Do all prints from dig. pics. cut off the edges?

Thanks for any info. you may have.

Did you preview your pictures BEFORE you had them done; i.e.: DL'd them to your PC to see how they would come out, or did you just take in them in on a cd or on a memory card?

IOW, without more info we don't know whether or not it was actually the shots you took that were at fault, or the development.

Can you give us more info?

[Charlie99]

Originally Posted by SDunbar

Do all prints from dig. pics. cut off the edges?.

First of all, most digital cameras have a 4::3 aspect ratio while the common print size of 4"x6" is less squarish. If you just give them the whole file, they will just print down the middle section, removing a strip down both the top and bottom of the long side.

Secondly, to account for errors in alignment of the paper in the printer, it is typical to "overzoom" the prints by a couple of percent to make sure that there is picture all the way out to the edges rather than uneven white border strips.

I crop my photos to 4x6 ratio before having them printed, and assume that there will be about 1/4" around the edges that won't get printed.

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Costco probably uses the popular Fuji Frontier 330/350/370/390 series of printers that are common at 1 hour photo shops.

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/ has info on color correction for these printers.

[Dee]

Did you just take your memory card in or did you download them to your computer and make any adjustments yourself?

I've heard this story many times, it's one of the reasons I haven't taken any photos to be printed at these places.

I recently got an email from Yahoo that an old photo album I had on their site would be removed from lack of use. I had forgotten all about them as they were from a trip about 3 years ago. There was a link to Ofoto for printing so I decided to them a try. I wasn't expecting much because all the adjustments to the photos were made using the auto fix feature back before I knew anything at all about Photoshop. I was very pleasantly surprised that every single photo came back looking exactly like it did online. The price was a bit cheaper than Costco and Walmart charges. The only problem was the cropping you mentioned but it wasn't too bad.

I plan to use them again, I'll just resize them myself first.

[justleesa]

I wasn't really happy with photos that were printed at costco....snapfish (pictures were always sticking together!), shutterfly (poor colors), walmart ....and a couple of other places. I finally found a local specialty shop that does a good job. As the others say I don't always agree with the cropping, but the quality is GREAT.

To avoid that cropping trouble I guess you'll have to take that extra step and size them before printing

[Ancient Mariner]

I've been making my own prints on a HP Photo Smart printer and feel that I've been getting good results,i.e. the results seem to be precisely what I see on my monitor, whether I've worked with them in Photoshop or not. Doesn't anyone else print them at home?

[Charlie99]

Maybe I just have low standards , but so far I've had pretty good luck with several different Fuji 1 hour labs that use glossy Fuji Crystal Archive paper(Walgreen's, CVS, Long's Drugs, Brooks, etc.). I don't like the matte paper used by Walmart, but otherwise their processing has been reasonable.

Some locations do a bit more enhancing or auto correction to the photos than others, but the effect is only noticeable on low contrast or low saturation photos. If either the photo has decent contrast and color, or if I have already processed the photo (color cast correction, levels adjust, etc.) then whether or not I request "no corrections" seems to make little difference.

If you are really concerned about printing fidelity, one option is to print out a color chart, photograph it, then get it printed at the shop in question. Then compare the original and the print with one another, either by eye or by scanning them. If you really want to go whole hog, you could repeat the print then photograph then print cycle several times to increase any errors.

Printer test article
B&W resolution test pattern

Color test pattern is near the bottom of this page.

The Fuji 1 hour shops with their 300dpi laser to film printer did a better job on the above than did my HP7150 Photosmart inkjet. Just comparing normal prints, they seemed to be equivalent quality, but the resolution test target showed much more aliasing on the HP. The inkjet also varied slightly from a straight line edge on the thick angled bar of the test pattern.

[justleesa]

I have an HP printer too and if I need the picture in a hurry I'll print them at home. I was so against printing at home....but we got the printer as a gift and I am amazed at the results that I get. But as said, only for some pics, gets to expensive considering all the photos I print.

[SDunbar]

As far my procedures, I DL'd from my C5050 to my computer, and edited or improved (or left alone) as I saw fit: color cast/hue or brightness correction, cropping, etc., first in Adobe Album for some and then Adobe Elements for others. I then picked the shots I wanted prints of, and copied them onto a CD, which I took into Costco, and used their nifty little machine to DL the pics. for them to make prints of. Like I mentioned before, I asked about their process, mentioning I had mostly u/w shots. The tech. said to write "Color Correction Off" in big letters.

One other little frustration, and that was that all the pics. were scrambed up when I got them back. Now, that's not a big deal when you just have a few, but I had one package of 182 and one of 127 -- and they were different locations. It's going to be a job to get them back in some kind of order, and then figure out what prints I can live with and what ones will be reordered.

It does sound like I need to be more aware of the 1/4" throw-away space around the edges due to their overzooming. Since many of these are already cropped for the optimum shot composition and viewing value (at least on the computer screen), are these pretty much a loss for getting prints off the digital shots?

I'm heading in to Costco today, hopefully, so I may be asking some questions of them.

(You all really would like that blue eel, though.)

[justleesa]

I got a roll of film devloped as Costco and was not satisfied with the results....I got my money back. Try it, you might be lucky. Next time you try a place out only get a couple of photos printed to test their quality.