best digital prints

fergie23 · Posted: Oct 19, 2004 8:26 am Post subject: best digital prints

where is the best place to get good quality digital prints & enlargements? Thx Very Happy

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

I like Costco's service.

640Pressman · Addict Joined: 14 Nov 2003 Posts: 753

try shutterfly.com

pyrocasto · Posted: Oct 20, 2004 7:19 pm Post subject:

I do my own to 8.5 by 11, but I am gett a bigger printer soon. I would go costco or some other place with reputation.

BillJ · Posted: Oct 20, 2004 8:37 pm Post subject:

I had some 20x30" prints done by mpix.com and I'm extremely happy with the results and their service. I uploaded the pics on a Monday night and placed the order with overnight shipping and had them Wednesday at noon. Nice. And most importantly they look great! I've framed them and have them on my walls.

fergie23 · Posted: Oct 21, 2004 7:56 am Post subject:

BillJ, what megapixel camera did you take the pics with? Mine is a 4mp Kodak...trying to figure out how large I can print.

pyrocasto · Posted: Oct 22, 2004 6:24 pm Post subject:

At good quality it says 8x10 usually is the biggest for a 4mp. If you got a good picture though, I'm pretty sure you could go 11x17, maybe 13x19.

John Jared · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 726 City: Round Lake, IL

How can you determine what print size you can go up to?

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

Go into Photoshop or similar editor and open up the image size window. Look at the document size. It will give the size of your pic in inches at 72 dpi (or whatever the DPI setting is currently at). Change the 72 DPI to the resolution of the printer to be used. (if the box showing DPI is at a different setting then change it accordingly) Most ink jets are 360 DPI. If you did change the DPI setting uncheck resampling at the bottom, this keeps your file from be resampled (uprezzed). Files converted from RAW will show the DPI settings from the RAW convertor. Observe the new document size, this is the native print size for pics from your camera on your printer. That's how I always figured it. (or you can do the math!). Remember that print resolution is different from screen resolution. Most monitors display images at 72 DPI no matter what the print setting is.

pyrocasto · Posted: Oct 23, 2004 7:06 pm Post subject:

You can print less dpi than that though. I have friends that have blown them up the 20x30 with a 6mp camera, so they had to print at much less than 360dpi.

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

fergie23 · Posted: Oct 28, 2004 7:52 am Post subject:

BillJ, thanks for the tip...the prints from mpix.com are beautiful!

BillJ · Posted: Nov 01, 2004 11:43 pm Post subject:

fergie23, I'm glad you liked it. I'm planning to order quite a few more prints from them. Anyone know where I can get prints larger than 20x30 done?

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

Bill,

These guys do a 30X40 and supposedly do an incredible job. They're the ones with the hardware interpolaters I mentioned earlier.

http://www.calypsoinc.com

They're in San Jose, I may visit their establishment sometine.

Do you prep your photos for Mpix or just send them as full size jpegs?

BillJ · Posted: Nov 02, 2004 3:06 pm Post subject:

RD, thanks for the link. If Calypso is good enough for the Mountain Light Gallery then they must do awesome work. I've stopped in their a couple of times and the prints are incredible. I'd love to make a huge print just to see how it looks, but first I need to take a shot worthy of enlarging to that size!