Digital Image Printing Quality?

[Old Salt]

Cannot seem to find any digital printing company that makes it easy to understand what sort of quality print they will send me when I upload my digital images.

They don't want to talk or enter into one-on-one communications.

For high-quality prints, I will have to upload maximum quality digital images, I would expect; seems to me that would take an extremely long time to upload only twenty images; I have close to forty of a special wedding.

The Jessops shop here really made of mess of thirty very special Paris, images; had to take the DVD over of Milton Keynes, which is a lot of trouble and takes up a lot of time (which I am very short on). So it really did cost a lot to get six sets prints, twice!

There has got to be an easier way...........

Old Salt

[woofgang]

buy a Canon printer and print them yourself....simples

[Count-A-Strong]

The quality of the print will depend on three main things. 1) The quality of the lense on the camera it was taken with, 2) The megapixel rating of the camera and 3) The quality of the printer. To a lesser degree the quality of paper it's printed on is also a factor. If you are sure of 1 and 2, try to ask the printer what resoloution they will be printing at (The higher the better).

[Old Salt]

Tried that, but the colour and finish didn't look very professional.....It was an expensive HP printer

But, thanks for taking the time to reply
OS

[Old Salt]

Thanks for the reply Count-A-Strong

But, that is the major stumbling block for all these companies online. It is almost impossible to get someone to enter into a dialogue. And when you do they are not able to help. Usually refer you back to the Help page

OS

[shiznit]

I work for a large format digital printers as a designer, what do you need to know?. We print banners, vehicle/building wraps etc. So the images we receive of customers range from professional shots to photos from camera phones, and the best quality is always expected. We try to work on 100dpi resolution at size policy, but depending on the final finished size of the product this is not always achievable. If you are only talking about normal photograph sizes you can keep the resolution as high as you want, obviously this will increase the size of the image and if you are uploading then this will factor. Also the type of substrate you require the prints on needs to be accounted for. Are you just requiring photo quality paper?.

We do both photographic and canvas prints, and the quality of the final images obviously changes between the two substrates no matter what quality image you use for them.

Hope this is of some use to you

Shiz

[Fitzer]

Photobox say that they print at 300 dpi for prints of 15" x 10" and under and 254 dpi on larger sizes, they also tell you what papers and machines they use. They are one of the companies often recommended over at The talkphotography forums, I haven't used them so can't speak from personal experience.

[Old Salt]

Nice one, shiznit,

They're just HD digital images, which all the family is expecting to look-and-be-super-pics. The photo shop at Milton Keynes did a good job last time. Therefore, as always, I accept there is no suitable alternative, so I will take a day off, go over with Mrs OS and make a day of it. I seem to remember they have a couple of very good cafe's, where the coffee and food are great.

Thanks for the short version, with just enough detail.

OS

[Old Salt]

Same here Fitzer

I'm going to go to a shop I know and have seen their work. Also, I can check the quality before I leave the shop

Thanks for the reply

OS

[shiznit]

My pleasure OS, wish our customers would ask questions before sending in the crap they do and expecting us to polish poo.

If you work on around 300-400dpi your quality should be excellent. I prefer a matt finish photo paper, digital printers ink vary from manufacturers. You are well within your rights to see a sample of your photo on various substrates, we often have to supply samples to cutomers before they agree on how they want their jobs producing

[scotman]

Shiznit

Pardon me for interrupting. I would like to get a single copy of an image stored as a pdf file. I have printed it best quality I can at work at A3 and it is not big enough to read the text. It is a colour image. How large can pdf files be printed before they lose quality? I was thinking of A2 obviously as A3 is too small.

[snags]

''How large can pdf files be printed before they lose quality?''

It depends on what resolution/compression settings were chosen when the .pdf was originally made. And also the resolution of any images that bwere placed within the original document prior to it being saved a pdf...

[snags]

^ Final quality will also be dependent on how large you want your print blown up from the original pdf file...

[shiznit]

To add to what snags said, when saving PDF files you have the options of print quality, depending on what you use to create the PDF. We use PDF as a lo resolution soft proofs to send to customers as a final check, obviously these are not fir blowing up and are usually viewed on screen or output on A4. Does your PDF contain images or text and logos or all of these?. Did you create the PDF? If so you may be able to create a higher res pdf.

[scotman]

Shiznit

Thanks for replying.

I did not create the file. It is a map so it contains 'everything'. At A3 the quality is fine but too small to read easily.
Estimating by eye an A2 print would probably be OK.

[snags]

Just to confuse the issue further: if you are making the .pdf yourself, aside from compression and resolution settings, make sure all the fonts used are embedded: if not, the final.pdf may look alright on the computer that made the .pdf (as the fonts specified are on the comp) but may not print out as expected if the repro/print house doesn't have the fonts, therefore always ask to see some sort of proof beforehand...

[snags]

''I did not create the file''

^ Didn't see that before posting my last reply...

[shiznit]

Holy crap, I forgot about fonts ha ha, one thing that is a real pain in the ass at work. Where did you get the pdf from scotman?. I know what you mean regarding the text on maps, we did a 30 mtr map for a Landrover exhibition last week and on screen you could hardly read it but when printed the text was about 10cm high. Have you got Photoshop?, you can the rasterise the file ad view it at print size. Is the file vector based or bitmap?

[leeherbie]

you could try http://www.printne.co.uk - these did some prints for me and they were great

[Catapa]

Online photo printers like Fotoinsight have a traffic light style quality indicator, which is a reliable indicator without having to go into details of dots, pixels, RGB and CMYK.

[Old Salt]

Thanks Catapa

I have found a small local photo lab and we agree a price and timing per batch; that ensures that he doesn't get overloaded. But, he is running on a 'shoestring' and a 'prayer,' not sure what his life expectancy will be.............. and extensive longevity would be great.

So far I have only run through a few batches as I am being very careful of my printing budget.

Thanks for the reply

Old Salt