Dr.Nikon Loc: Honolulu Hawaii

I’ve been printing on metal and canvas for a log time .., if I ever needed a photo paper print except for reference purposes ,.. I just used my home printer .., Otherwise I use all digital …to deliver to clients ..

Recently , I’ve had so many requests for 8x10 .., 10x14 .., 12x16 etc prints to be done with photo paper and a mat .., put in a plastic sleeve and delivered ..

So of course .., I turned to my metal and canvas people .., boy .., what trash …too dark .., no clarity .., total lack of pazzazzz …I get prints that look like they were gang printed ..Costco who were doing a bang up job printing large metal prints and Pictures Plus here locally really crashed and burned …complete trash .. when it came to printing on photo paper .. their photo paper print quality made it look like I had a disposable camera .. My Digital images are clear .. bright and pop on canvas and metal …just like they do on the digital image downloaded to them ..

I know my work .., it’s not that my monitors are to bright or back lit making my photo to bright .., I use 3 different monitors that don’t lie especially about the clarity ..I’ve seen better print paper prints from Longs ..CVS ,, and Walmart than what I’ve had to return rejected to my metal and canvas suppliers …in the last 2 weeks .., to the tune of almost $300.00 …

I’m going to try MPIX as I’m happy with their metal and canvas work and they come highly rated doing photo paper prints ..

Can anyone with experience getting large Photo prints on paper steer me onto a quality print house … that looks at the digital image sent by the customer and makes sure the photo print being produced is a close match to what the customer expects .., before that ship …can’t they just say they can’t even come close before charging and shipping junk which just gets returned ..

Thnx …in advance …

paulrnzpn Loc: New Zealand

That's no good at all.
I'm in New Zealand so I can't really offer any useful advice for you.

However, here in New Zealand I use Harvey Norman's print shops. I say "print shop", but really, it's in a bigger store that sells all sorts of things, so it is not a specialist photography store.

Harvey Norman is an Australian retail company that has lots of stores all throughout New Zealand. They have in-store photo print kiosks, which is what I use, and they also have an online service where you can upload your photos for printing. They do printing on paper - both mat and gloss - as well as canvas, metal, wood, and lots more. I have only ever printed on paper, and I have had quite a lot of very large prints done for framing over the years - I prefer framed paper prints over other printing formats. Anyway, I once had a print that came back with a darker vertical line patch (for want of a better description), but otherwise I have never a problem with any others at all over about 10 years or more. Harvey Norman's print shop is Fujifilm - that is, their kiosks, the printing, and the paper. I mostly print from 16bit tiff files, which I process from Camera RAW. That gives a lot better quality than 8 bit JPEGs produce - for large prints that is. Little standard 6x4s from JPEG should be fine though.

It sounds to me that it is more likely to be the print shop end where your issue is though.
Some people I know get little 6x4 test prints done first. If those look okay then they get their big prints done after that. But it means more time is spent messing about, and I have never bothered with the little test prints.

I hope you can find a solution soon.

Dr.Nikon Loc: Honolulu Hawaii

Whooopzzz ..