Morry Loc: Palm Springs, CA

Does anyone know if I can send a dvd to a lab and have a 8"x10" black and white print made from an image? If I can could you also recommend a lab that might handle this?

cedymock Loc: Irmo, South Carolina

You may need to explain the purpose of this so we may understand how to help, if it is digital on dvd why not just upload to the printers website from your computer.

tcthome Loc: NJ

If this is the way you want to send them the file, call the lab of choice & ask. The reason you want to send them the photo itself so they can see how you want it to look?

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Check Walmart. They used to.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Why a DVD? You can just upload the file you want printed. No need to send anything through the mail.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

If, by DVD, you mean a DATA DVD and not a VIDEO DVD, then yes, many labs will accept them. Video? No. You would first need to extract a frame from a video with editing software, then convert it to grayscale.

In any case, optical discs (CD and DVD) are no longer the preferred media of choice for lab submission. If you are going to send physical media, send a cheap USB flash drive.

However, labs prefer you use their online portals with ROES (Remote Order Entry System). With ROES, you can order any product the lab makes, and send the file over the Internet directly to their server.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

I concur with most that the third-party firms that produce high-resolution prints on a variety of media such as paper, glass, and metal should all have a website dropbox that accepts large files for processing so sending the image files on a CD or DVD by mail or express is not necessary.

I DO RECOMMEND that you ask them to perform color correction for you if you do not have a color-calibrated monitor that you used when you processed the images for printing. If you don't, you may be quite surprised at how different the printed images look from what you viewed on your computer screen.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

I'm going to make the assumption that since you have a DVD created, that you have a computer. If so, load the image you have in mind to said computer, select "print," change settings to maximum quality available for your printer, insert photo paper, print. No need for an outsider. And if you don't have a computer/printer, your neighbor does.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

You're obviously online or you wouldn't be in the forum. In the time it took to write your question you could have sent the file to any printing company electronically. I would give up the idea of mailing something and just send it from your computer. If doing this confuses you, you might email it to a friend who could submit it for you. That same friend might be able to print if for you. Reading this back to myself it somehow sounds a little snitty. I don't mean it that way at all. It's just a suggestion for a better way to handle this.
...Cam

User ID

Color correcting black and white ?
Care to explain how that works ?

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

As a former lab owner I would concur and suggest that if there is some reason you need to use a DVD/Cd media, contact the lab of choice and explain your needs. They will instruct you what to do.
Otherwise, all labs, photo finishing services have an upload vehicle to send files.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

As an ex-lab guy, I'll take a stab.

Once upon a time, there was black-and-white film. (There still is, just a small fraction of what there once was.) It was printed on black-and-white paper. There was no need to worry about color, unless you ordered toning from a custom lab. But you did have to worry about contrast and gradation and tonality.

At some point, Kodak and others started making black-and-white CHROMOGENIC papers. These were papers that could be processed in color print chemistry, allowing labs to run everything through the same process. The images on these did not have the same depth and character as real silver-based emulsions, but they were cheap, convenient, and allowed big labs to streamline things. And they still produced "black-and-white" (grayscale) images. With that scenario, STAIN was an occasional issue, caused by a dirty processor and chemical neglect (inaccurate replenishment or replacement... Some labs get slack about it during busy seasons).

Then, along came the age of DIGITAL mini-labs. Unfortunately, these did not work very well with chromogenic black-and-white papers. So labs decided to print black-and-white files on COLOR paper. That's when the fertilizer hit the rotary distribution mechanism.

A digital mini-lab printer that is even slightly out-of-calibration (linearity of paper exposure in all three channels) or out-of-control (a chemical process imbalance) may produce a color cast in every image... even black-and-white ones. It is especially noticeable in black-and-white images. The lab I worked for struggled with this. When I ran the printing area, we always ran exposure calibration and process control tests before a batch of black-and-white, making corrections to calibration and replenishment as needed.

Color correcting black-and-white is required *partly* because files are submitted in RGB JPEGs. Exporting a grayscale bitmap or TIFF image as a JPEG converts it to an RGB bitmap with identical values in all three color channels. So when it's printed, it drives three color channel exposures. If the printer isn't calibrated to reproduce perfect gray at every level from 0,0,0 to 255, 255, 255, there's a color cast. If the process is out of control (no process is EVER perfect), there's a color cast. And you never know how much is calibration and how much is control, because the printer and processor drift independently.

The other issue with black-and-white is the same as it is with color... MONITOR CALIBRATION and MONITOR PROFILING. If the person who created the black-and-white image adjusted it on a computer monitor that is "visually dishonest" (i.e.; out of calibration, improperly profiled, or off standard), then the tonal appearance of the print will not be good. It might be washed out, or murky and muddy, or otherwise not match the photographer's "rendering intention."

The solution to this latter problem is to "color correct" the photographer's *monitor* — i.e.; calibrate and profile it to achieve ICC standard linearity. But if the photographer won't or can't do that, paying a lab for file adjustments may produce a better result than leaving the file alone. Or not...