Printing pro quality photos? Costco?

[thedutt]

I have been shooting for the past year or so using the 300D + 17-40,70-200F4L and finally starting to print some of my pictures. I have done some research and searching, and would really appricate expert opinons.

Questions:

1) I use LCD screen and do not have a high end CRT, can I still get to see the photos as they would look like when printing if I have the printers color profile?

2)The pictures when they are printed, loose out on saturation big time. The "pop" that I see on the screen is gone by the time I print them, and it is a much more subdued photo. I have attempted to address this by saturating the colors even more before printing (for blue sky add about a good +10 to +20 saturation just to see what the heck happens), but the results are almost identical. Any way to fix this?

3) So far I have been printing only at Costco & Sams club 1 hour photo. I have tried both the gloss & matte and I do turn off the "auto correction" functionality. I know other people here do printing at Costco, so is the print at Costco professional quailty? If so, any suggestions to my workflow? If not, any recommendations for someone in a hurry?


I do sharpen for printing ( Smart Sharpen 4.0/100 for large, 2.0/100 for small, adjustements per pictures ). The sharpening part is satisfying, but the pictures look quite a bit more dull in print than on monitor. Please help me bring my pictures alive, as the coming weekend there is some oppertunity for me to make some money from them to fund the camera upgrade :)

[LoungeLizard]

First question: do you have a calibrated monitor/LCD? If the answer is "no", that's your problem.

You need to calibrate your monitor and then what you see will be a lot closer. I have printed a lot of stuff at Costco (the local lab here is wonderful - except for one of the girls who works there, though I could fall in love with the other!) A lot of my first portfolio was printed there. I can tell the difference between them and MPix/Miller's, but it's acceptable.

I had similar problems until I calibrated my monitor. The prints would look as if you had lightly spraypainted a light coat of grey on them.

[thedutt]

I have attempted to calibrate using the software tools that are offered by Adobe/MS but that did not produce good results for me. (ended up leaving the LCD monitor is a much worse place..)
I did talk with the technicican at the local costco, and I may have been able to identify 1 point of failure... If you upload the photos to costco.com with auto correction off, then that works fine. If you are printing at costco, then it is up to the technician there, which can be tricky.

Thank you once again for your help, any thaughts on calibration besides:
http://www.gballard.net/nca.html

I do have PC, (NEC LCD 1712 1024x768,) Dell D600 (1400x1050 LCD display)

[AjP]

software will not give you good calibration.. close but not as good as hardware tools.

as far as Costco.. prited one time there and don't like the result...I'm stuck with MPix.. like the quality and service.. cost more then Costco.. but I'm fine with it.

[ndsimm]

Originally Posted by LoungeLizard

I have printed a lot of stuff at Costco (the local lab here is wonderful - except for one of the girls who works there, though I could fall in love with the other!) A lot of my first portfolio was printed there..

If you are talking Willowbrook, I could do the same if we are talking about the same one

When I take mine into Costco, I always instruct them to print with no corrections because I have their color profile on my PC and I've never had a problem with them.....

[brad]

You need calibration so that your monitor will match printing.. that's true no matter what printing you use.

Sam's and Costco... my experience is that they have good equipment, but not always good techs. I used to swear by my Sam's.. but the good techs I had there have all been promoted or otherwise moved on... and I'm left with a couple of kids 80% of the time that could care less.... so I'm probably switching to mpix for stuff that has to be absolutely right.

[LoungeLizard]

Originally Posted by ndsimm

If you are talking Willowbrook, I could do the same if we are talking about the same one
.....

Them fighting words...

[thedutt]

Thanks once again for very helpful suggestions and information. The last week has been full of experimentation (and tons of learning). My local costco does have two Noritsu printer, and all the digital processing is done on the new 300DPI printer

1) One of the items that I did not realize was that unless i updated the images from home computer and manually clicked off the auto correct off, my fate was in the hand of the operator. One has to manually request to turn off "ALL auto corrects" and hope that the opperator follows through. Presumablly there are more than 1 type of auto corrects that happen on these printers, not just color.

2) The Tech at my costco mentioned that they profile their printers twice a day. once in the morning when they open and other in early evening, he mentioend at lot of pro shops do not do this as often.

3) I have started to upsample the images to 300PPI at the time of RAW conversion. Not sure if this makes a difference, visually on 7x5 from 300D I cannot notice, but the Tech at costco had recommended that I match the DPI of the printers with PPI of the image. The whole matching of PPI to DPI matching subject seems a little fuzzy, but I have read that minor upsampling at time of raw conversion is a good idea anyhow. (Argument being that whats an additional 15% when already 66% of pixels are extrapolated)

4) Profiling... This made a world of a difference to me. I manually profiled the LCD to the limited capablity that it can be profiled, and then saved my printer profiled images from profile from Drycreek. This has allowed me to be more consistent with the what I see on the screen and what prints out on the paper. I am happy with the results.. and now on to learning how to take better photos ;-)


Thanks to everyone once again for all your help. This has been a learning experience.

[CobyPhoto]

Ok, I will probably get alot of varied opinions on this, but bottom line, COSTCO and SAMS are NOT professional quality. All of those 'good' techs that leave end up in the REAL professional labs that turn out quality prints, simple because they pay more for qualified techs. You have a bunch of High School kids running the machines and they ultimately do what is easiest for them, not what results in professoinal quality prints. Keep in mind, COSTCO and SAMS only get a small and I do mean small portion of their income from photo processing and printing. Their bottom line isn't about quality photos, it is about COST.

On the issue of profiling their printers...most COSTCO and SAMS labs do not have the same professional level software and profiling equipment as do the professional labs, like Miller's, MPix, Pounds etc. They do the bare minimum to get by. They can't afford to invest in the state-of-the art equipment and software to profile their printers...again, back to cost.

Bottom line is this, if the print has to be right, and you make your living from photography, COSTCO and SAMS isn't an option. You need to be printing through a professional lab that will go the extra mile to give you a quality final print. No matter if you allow them to do the color correction or you do it yourself.

Professional labs depend upon quality output...it is the ONLY thing they do. Not just a minor portion of thier income.

On the subject of monitor profiling, you have even more variables to consider. With CRT's no longer being manufactured, you are forced to purchase a Level II LCD to get consistent profiling results and use that monitor as a reference monitor. Level II LCD's start at about 1,500.00 for the smaller, more economical models.

You noticed improved results, but I assure you, you will be astounded once you have a fully calibrated monitor to view when proofing prints. It goes back to your lab, and the calibration system they use in order to get it exactly correct. Most professional labs have a standard method of helping you calibrate your monitors in order to assusre color match from monitor to print.

CJ

[brad]

Just like a good photographer can get fantastic results from a point and shoot camera... a good tech can get good prints out of a machine at Sam's or Costco.

You're point was similar to mine... the good techs move on too quickly, though. When the "high school" kids are there, its not worth it. As I said in my previous post, I've moved to mpix for the stuff that matters.

[CobyPhoto]

I agree with your thoughts Brad, the equipment isn't a factor in the equation, the methods utilized are...bottom line, cost is the important factor and not the quality of the prints when dealing with COSTCO and Sams and that translates into poor quality prints most times. Running those machines isn't cheap, and they will cut corners to keep costs down and profit up.

CJ

[brad]

Exactly, which is what I've run into at my Sam's and why I've been disappointed with them lately. The good techs have left and the new managers have started cutting those corners.