pigpen wrote:
Yes, the machines I've used in the past had the choice to print as is. I always thought , since you'd like to think their equipment is calibrated (?????), that the auto adjust (enhance) would be the way to go.
Unfortunately many (maybe most) times their equipment is not calibrated well or often enough.
I took an 8X10 file to WalMart two weeks ago. A guy's Border Collie dog had to be put down on Saturday and on Monday he realized he only had one good picture of her. When he took the 8X10 out of the frame to have it duped, the photo's emulsion surface was stuck to the glass and it got really messed up as he got it loose.
He knew me from shooting his home the week before so he called in a panic to see if I knew anybody to fix it. I restored it myself that evening and used WalMart to print two new ones the next day.
I knew the photo was a little faded from UV from being mounted and displayed in sunlight, so I let the "Auto Enhance" do it's thing. That resulted in excessive contrast so that the black dog was so black the individual hairs of her coat were mostly lost, the background dark evergreens became green like palm trees, and a tile house roof in the background went from orange to red. I thought it was vulgar and far too much but then I remembered he (as a snap shooter) would probably think it was intentional and better. So I met up with him with those copies. If he complained I would reprint them at my own expense but he was totally "WOW'd" by the enhancement and thanked me profusely for "bringing the photo to life (?)." Maybe it was his grief talking... I don't know.
As far as the machines being calibrated, I can't say that's true for my two area WalMarts either. I took my 3-year-old son's passport photo in my kitchen with a white wall behind him and daylight CFL bulbs. The background wall wasn't white enough so I actually painted in a pure white wall with no imperfections in Paintshop Pro X6. Thus I knew for a fact the background was going to pass inspection with the passport people. He was wearing a burgundy shirt and a black tie and has brown hair.
When I used the one hour machine at the same WalMart to print 6 little 2X2 versions on one 4X6 sheet of paper plus printed one 8X10 for our wall, I did NOT use the auto enhance because I knew the color, contrast, saturation, and sharpness was exactly what I wanted.
When they printed on their HP printer in the back room, my background had a blue tint and the whites of my son's eyes were almost as blue as Late Night Craig Ferguson's robot's eyes. It was absolutely stupid. So I complained and said I wanted another one.
The female manager heard me and came over. After a bunch of crap about my monitor and theirs not being the same and their machinery being properly calibrated but my monitor wasn't, she said she'd "allow me" to print it over once without charging me but I'd have to use the auto enhance and then take control of blue manually with the blue slider that could be brought up on the screen.
I was a bit snippy and said, "So... you ALLOWing me to print again is what WalMart calls Satisfaction Guaranteed?" She replied that yes, my second print was to create my satisfaction but if that didn't work out I was not going to be printing over and over until I got it right. I said, "It's your machine that's whacked not my file. I am a professional photographer editing photos by the hundred every week and I know the white is pure white because I painted it in myself with Photoshop (so I lied but she wouldn't know the difference)."
She didn't care what I said. So I went back to the crappy CRT monitor that showed me a 1/4 screen version of my photo and reduced the blue quite a bit although the monitor version didn't look blue. The next print was corrected about 90% and that was good enough.
So I'm saying that even without auto enhance their machines are completely out of whack.
On the other hand, I went to Costco yesterday and had (9) 11X14s, (2) 16X20, and (44) 4X6 prints made withOUT auto enhance on their LCD flat touch screen system, and the prints were absolutely perfect - and cost half as much as WalMart! The guy had been in that photo department for 7 years and we talked about them calibrating daily, how they are selling about 1/3 as many prints monthly now as they were two years ago, etc. I came out of there very happy.