Recommend printing/poster places?

[OldNick]

Obviously there can be a balance between price and quality and that I have to decide for myself, but has anyone got any recommendations?

Speed of service is not really critical. Obviously quality and paper quality are. I am more interested in consistent output, I guess, because IMO, often the only way to ensure good exposure on the final print from your shots is trial and error on smaller prints, no matter how you calibrate your monitor, unless the place has a standard chart or other method of communicating their output. I had many small prints done at Snapfish and many were really dark, but only on certain shots. It seemed SF were "adjusting" to suit some person's or machine's opinion

Thanks for any help

[Film Street]

Hi OldNick. Try here mate.

[OldNick]

Thanks for the reply.

HAH! You _would_ say that!

I see you offer fit-cropping. That is excellent. I will happily pay for the larger print and trim it rather than lose some of an unusually-shaped shot.

Do you have any way for me to judge the lightness of your print process? Is your process consistent for lightness, and does it try to adjust the lightness to suit a "standard"? I would prefer not, so that at worst I can get some test prints and see what the result looks like compared to what I see on my screen and require.

I have had dark results, as I said, and also prints that I specifically wanted dark sent back boosted.

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Oh yeah! I could only see 10*15 prints. Do you do larger?

[Film Street]

I wrote the page on aspect ratio so people know what is happening to their prints and that they have a choice regarding cropping.

As for testing correct brightness, that is going to depend on your monitor set-up. As my customers are mainly photographic enthusiasts, I do not allow the lab to auto correct any digital files. All digital images are printed as you have processed them. I may fix an obvious sensor dust mark if I find one but apart from that there are no changes to your files.

The lab uses sRGB colour space so stick with that and the results will be consistent. Also, I colour balance my paper often for best consistency.

If your digital files are dark that is how they will print. No auto correct on digital files.

I only manually correct film process printing unless asked not to do so. (Holga/Lomo shooters don't even want those corrected).

At the moment 10x15" is the largest size I print.

If you want to test, as a new member to Film Street you receive two free 8x12" prints in your first digital order so you can test with those.

[OldNick]

Thanks for that. Sounds like an ideal setup and I appreciate your attitude to us toggers. It can be really frustrating when the lab plays around with a shot, especially when it's jut formulaic. The entire mood can be lost to vanilla.

Pity about the posters, but I do have some shots that would handle smaller prints.

Just a matter of getting my bum into gear and DONG SOMETHING about it!

[Ezookiel]

Drat. I was also looking for some info on people who do large poster sized shots, and can accomodate my weird aspect ratios, which vary from shot to shot depending on how I cropped them.
I'll definitely keep FilmStreet in mind for the smaller stuff though.

[OldNick]

Well in the end you may just have to make sure they will do a "no loss fit" option and you pay for the next bigger print....or have you been looking and only found lossy cropping?

[Ezookiel]

No, haven't looked much at all yet, just keeping an eye out, without specifically looking if you know what I mean.
Haven't the budget yet to get many of my photos printed yet, but there are now several that my wife and kids are asking me to get done as full size properly framed shots, so just keeping an eye out if I see something come up.