Review of Online Print Suppliers

[boBQuincy]

While I usually print my images at home, I still use online services for things like Christmas cards where I don't want to print mass quantities.

Here is a review of some online services:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2074729,00.asp

 

[Olaf]

I conducted my own little test a few years ago, sending the same images off to several online printers. Shutterfly won hands down. Wal-mart was terrible, and dotphoto wasn't much better.

FYI Shutterfly has a special going. You prepay for 200 pics at 12 cents a piece. Not bad.

 

[jann1033]

thanks

 

[MICKEY88]

that is an interesting review, it's the first I've ever seen that rated mpix poorly...

it's also interesting how many printed the pics too dark, one must wonder if it's the labs or if the reviewer just likes his pics lighter than most people...

I worked in a one hour lab years ago, and the lab manager and I never saw eye to eye, he said I printed too dark, I thought he printed too light, yet we both had a pool of customers who would ask for us to do their printing because they thought we did the best job..


the other thing I question in the review is the one hour labs, you certainly can't judge a chain based on one store, one walmart may have lab techs that are sub par, while the walmart across town might have the best lab tech in the state,

I know that when I worked for RitzCamera, our store had customers who would bypass a store that was 5 minutes from their house, to come to our store, which was 20-30 minutes depending on traffic, because we had a better lab manager who would flawlessly color balance our machine every morning before the store opened., and was better at training the other lab techs

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I'm leery about any article comparing print shops that makes no mention of color management, gamut, colorspace, or profiling. That's sort of like comparing which piano sounded most like yours when you hadn't tuned your piano first.

I recognize, of course, that the overwhelming majority of people aren't ever going to calibrate their monitors. They won't have a clue what the gamut of the camera's sensor is. They won't know what the difference between two colorspaces is. They won't do any color management at all. The problem is reviewing print shops without the reviewer doing these things will lead to inconsistent results.

 

[MICKEY88]

I'm leery about any article comparing print shops that makes no mention of color management, gamut, colorspace, or profiling. That's sort of like comparing which piano sounded most like yours when you hadn't tuned your piano first.

I recognize, of course, that the overwhelming majority of people aren't ever going to calibrate their monitors. They won't have a clue what the gamut of the camera's sensor is. They won't know what the difference between two colorspaces is. They won't do any color management at all. The problem is reviewing print shops without the reviewer doing these things will lead to inconsistent results.

actually if you send the same digital file to all printers, you would get a fairly accurate idea of how they would print your stuff. but if your