Large(ish) Printing Options UK

Hello, after years of procrastination I have decided to (probably ) print a few of my images quite large. It has been years since I looked into it all, so not sure what the options are in the UK, and who would be good or bad.

I am looking to print at least 30-50cm on the shortest edge. I will probably printing B&W and colour. I've been attracted printing on aluminium for the B&W, and maybe acrylic for the colour. Not sure with frames or not. They will be going on a wall. I've never been a fan of canvas prints.

Does anyone have any recommendations for anyone who they have used to print large images like these?

Trade Canvas Print, an advertiser on here, do large prints on various papers.

TCP

Website

I suspect that the main issue is less to do with which lab you go to, but more about your file preparation skills relative to your chosen medium ...

admirable said:

Trade Canvas Print, an advertiser on here, do large prints on various papers.

TCP

Website

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to post.

I'm looking more towards aluminium and acrylic prints rather than canvas.

droj said:

I suspect that the main issue is less to do with which lab you go to, but more about your file preparation skills relative to your chosen medium ...

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting.

I think I am OK with editing images, and have had a few images printed before, though many years ago. It was after I got a printed book back dark that I realised editing with a calibrated monitor was the only way forward.

How would I need to edit for a particular print medium above and beyond editing an image to be the best I think it can be?

Just did a search for "photo printing uk", and got the list below. Some of them I have heard mentioned for many years, and some of them never heard of before. Experiences of any of them, good or bad would be appreciated.

CEWE

Vistaprint

Boots photo

Snapfish

Photobox

Whitewall

Largephotoprints

Dscolourlabs

Digitalab

Max Spielmann

Simlab

For large prints I always use DS Colour Labs. Used to use Photobox and they were OK, but I like the fact that there’s a better selection of papers at DS. I tend to use Maxima paper for my black and whites.

Ilford do lovely black and white prints but by jingo they’re expensive. I sent the same file to DS and Ilford to compare and the considered opinion of my friends at the monochrome group I attend was that the Ilford one was better but not by that much and not enough to justify the difference in price.

I think that if you feel that you've fixed the too dark / too light issue, you're halfway there. These days it usually involves having the display at 45-50% brightness. And if you're calibrated I wouldn't think that colour would be an issue. The next step is to get into soft-proofing (look it up), and this is output-specific in terms of individual media, for which any decent lab will offer downloadable profiles. They allow you to simulate how a given medium renders tones, and enable you to make tonal adjustments to your original file before re-saving it as a print-specific variant. I find that I often have to apply a tone curve to up the contrast beyond what's seemed satisfactory on my own display, and saving an image with that curve applied before committing to print.

Printspace, Point 101 and Loxley are good, but there are many others, DSCL are, I think, cost effective especially for C-types, which may not be what you had in mind. Harman are good for trad mono prints on photo paper from digital file.

Your search list is pretty random, & I wouldn't bother with most of those - they're geared to the mass market of snapshooters.

I'm heartened by your dislike of canvas prints - I thought that I was alone in that! Photographs 'pretending to be paintings' are a cultural travesty! Anyone who wants that much texture should maybe take up knitting? ;-)

To be cautionary, and I know that it increases the effort & expense, I would consider getting some small scale proof prints done to test each process before the main run.

Good luck!

redhed17 said:

Thanks for taking the time to post.

I'm looking more towards aluminium and acrylic prints rather than canvas.

Click to expand...

Trade canvas Prints do paper prints as well as canvas..
They even offer a metal paper.
I've not used them a lot as I do my own printing but from experience they are excellent quality and very helpful people.

I used One Vision after being recommended here. They seemed pretty reasonable, price wise.

What I would say is that you need to look into calibrating monitors and downloading paper profiles to proof in LR (or your PP Programme of choice). I didn't know any of this. YMMV. But here's the link to my own thread where I gained some of that knowledge

I just got a couple of big prints done from Whitewall. They were very expensive but the detail and resolution is really impressive. Really pleased with them. If I was doing big prints to display in the house from a camera you paid a lot of money to get good resolution etc, id spend the extra and use a professional photo printing site.

Got a few A3 images of the kids done by photobox which are fine. Much cheaper but not as detailed.

The biggest revelation to printing my images lately was to get a screen calibrator!!

I've used TradeCanvasPrints and been really impressed with their work (that was just for canvas).

I've used Whitewall for regular pints for exhibiting and they are very good too. Not the cheapest.