best place for digital prints - local or online

[Kym]

Rick, thank you once again for your tutorial on callibration. I really hadn't heard how it can effect your photo process. It all makes sense. Budget wise the Sypder 3 may be out of my price range at the moment.

Then at least calibrate manually. It will help.
http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...445#post232445

[arthurking83]

I can only give a laymans response to this problem, so here goes!

Most 'print labs' prefer Adobe RGB colour space,(hence you should really be working with RAW images!), and from my asking, most quick print shops use sRGB colour space.
Reason most quick print places like HN or Woolies or Kmart, use sRGB is that they get mainly P&S users going in for 'quick prints' straight off the camera, which is all sRGB.
Adobe is supposed to be better in many aspects of professional prinitng, so the pro labs prefer using it and recommend that an image is saved in Adobe RGB.

I've never actually printed any of my images anywhere, except my lil Canon home bubblejet, and every image so far has come up spot on, in terms of colour balance and brightness! I haven't yet got myself a calibrator either!

So for most printing purposes, any half decent calibrator is going to suffice.
maybe one is better than another, but of course you can find that soem calibrators work better with some monitors than with others.. so take any review of a calibrator with a grain of salt. I'll say that again! Not all reviews of a calibrator is going to relate to yoru situation, because the chances are that it hasn't been reviewed with your monitor in your environment!! I can post more useless info to back that claim up, but Smorters usual colourful metaphor is not quite accurate!
A calibrated monitor should be better than an uncalibrated monitor, if done correctly.

Maybe Smorters experience is borne of issues with his hardware, where the eye thingy simply did a better job with his current monitors of the time.
Remember calibrators work differently with different monitors and you may actually find that the Xrite is going to be worse than the plague with your monitor!(even though Smorter is adamant that it's worse than the plague).

When in doubt, there are online printing services that can help to get your monitor [I]approximately calibrated/I]... to level that should at least yield an acceptable result to what you want.
I think digitalworks has something like that as a service.

Back to the topic of calibrator reviews, and that link that Smorter posted actually speaks volumes for the older Spyder 2 calibrator.(yes! contrary to the summary in the last paragraph!!)
Why? .. because I said so! LOL! seriously read the table of results where each individual calibrators performance is ranked for a given monitor!!!
That's where I think the secret lies(literally)
While the original Spyder did perform below average compared to other calibrators, not only was the Spyder2 a better performer than most of the others, those others include a sea of Gretag MacBeth's which are supposedly the 'best' calibrators. But the pattern is there to see, if you know how to read statistical data and make your own conclusion.

The data is inconclusive to say the least!! That's it. there is probably no real 'better calibrator' as one if better than the other for a given circumstance!

Just to go against Smorters recommendations!!...

The Spyder2 was particularly impressive on the HP p920 and IBM LCD.

Quote from that Drycreek review site! Yes!!... the one linked to by Smorter!

.. better brace yourself for the next plague!

ps. Smorter!! If you don't post information that could be detrimental to the person seeking advice, then you'd find yourself less and less the victim. Try to keep it balanced and objective, and explain your experiences!
I have no experience with them, yet I've seen them in action time and again, and everyone has a different experience to tell... but I've seen many design studios using Spyders for calibration. Andrew's Spyder is doing sterling service on his images, as well as mine, so your 'comment' is somewhat opposing to what I've experienced with them.

Why haven't I got one yet. No real urgent need, my screen seems to be working well(and printing well off my lil bubblejet), and I've yet to find one for a decent price.
I actually am looking for a Spyder3 as it has the ambient sensor, and ambient lighting is what I find the most annoying 'difference' to how my monitor looks.
I have an old Sony 400PS rescued from a media/video production company, and funnily enough calibrated with Spyders(originals) back in it's day

[Dan Cripps]

None of the consumer labs in Hobart are much chop in my opinion.

I've been using Bond Imaging for the last 6 months and have been pretty happy with their output.

[charton]

I received some prints back today from digiworks.net.au, I am sooo happy with them!!! Just what I expected them to look like. Def. will use them again and again.