Getting decent prints of digital photos

thoughtcat

thoughtcat

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Richard
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Hi, I’m new here so hope this is all in order… I’m an amateur photographer looking to get some nice 7x5” prints of about 350 iPhone 13 (12mp) photos made for an exhibition. I’ll need one print each of the 350 different photos, and each one will be framed. The photos are all of landscape settings by the River Thames, ie trees, grass, sky, river, a few boats. Some photos are a more gloomy than others depending on the weather. I’ve never really thought much about prints until getting involved in this project, so just for research I got some gloss prints done in Snappy Snaps in the high street, Fujifilm online and Snapfish. Snapfish were the worst quality with poor colours, while Snappy Snaps seemed marginally better than Fujifilm, albeit 3 times the price. Altogether these popular services were anywhere from rubbish to ok. So my questions are:
1) for a project like this where buyers are expecting a nice framed photo, what printing service would anyone recommend? Preferably one that does mail order but I could collect from somewhere in west London if necessary.
2) if there’s the option, is it worth spending extra on nice photographic paper given it’s going to be fairly small and behind glass anyway?
3) should I edit each one before sending them off to set my own levels of contrast, brightness, colours etc given that I’m not very experienced and what looks good on my Windows laptop screen may not look as good in a print? OR are there services that would look at the original photos on a case by case basis and optimise them for colours and exposure?

Thanks in advance and I hope these newbie queries aren’t too annoying.

Best, Richard
 
I’ve had some very nice prints from Loxely Colour, and they have an option they offer for someone to look at/tweak the prints (which I chose).

No idea on pricing, it was more expensive but also larger prints than I normally do.
 
Hi Richard, I'm not in London so can't recommend a printing service but here are a few thoughts:
2) the prints will be quite small and framed, behind glass (?) if so satin type paper would be better than gloss?
3) as the iphone pics will already be highly processed, I would only make light edits to exposure and save as jpgs ready for printing.
It might be worth running some numbers to see if you're better off getting your own printer? for 350 pics it's going to be a fair investment. On the other hand side it would be a steep learning curve.
 
Craikeybaby said:
DSCL would be my choice for this sort of thing.
Click to expand...
That doesn't address the methodology.

In the old days, when film was all there was, lab processors offered 'machine prints', which was a cheap baseline where all was automated. Colour was pretty good, the common problem was with exposure. Given the possible costs here, you may be better off preparing the image files before sending to print. But how, & what with?

Ah - you're selling them ! You'd better get it pretty right, then.

You have an editing app? In-built, free, whatever? The trick is going to be to review each image individually & process as seems necessary. Some will be fine, some will need a tweak or two, some that don't pass any tests should really be junked ...

Printers may offer an option to print as sent or auto-adjust, which last may equate to the machine prints that I first mentioned, unless things have moved on since then? Myself, I'd rather get it right before sending, whatever.

Matching screen to print is the other hurdle - even if in a rough & ready fashion, which could be enough in this context.

Many screens ex factory used to be too bright for this purpose - is this still true? I run mine, for instance, at a brightness setting of 50% max.

But anyway & thereafter, tweak the tones of a few, ingest the website directives of a firm like DSCL as mentioned above, (or even phone them up & ask), then send off a small batch for print, in order to proof the relationship between screen & print. The hinge may be how you prepared the files, but you can reappraise this till it comes out (more) right.

Hope this helps (a bit).
 
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First of all, 350 framed photos? Wow. 7x5’s or not that’s a huge amount of photos and frames. I think I had 50 A3 and 4 A2 frames at my biggest exhibition and that was a lot of work.

I’d echo the good advice from the other members:
  1. DS colour labs would be my choice for that volume. Not sure where you’d get 350 frames from but you’ll need a lot of room, and a lot of time to mount and frame all those.
  2. I’d just stick with the standard lustre paper, at that size I’m not convinced you’d see the difference. And if it’s behind glass then definitely lustre.
  3. iPhone photos tend to be well exposed anyway but the colours are optimised for a backlit screen and not print so may need toning down (or up). I’d suggest getting a sample of maybe 10 to get a feel for how they look and then make a judgement call as to whether they need adjusting.
Don’t expect to make your money back, but good luck with the exhibition!
 
Sounds bonkers, but DSCL or Loxley if you have to do it.
 
Well, the OP seems not to have been back so I guess not the advice he was hoping for. A shame, as I'd love to know what sort of project it was that led to his questions.
 
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