Print your own photographs?

I have a favorite local pro lab that is the ONLY Kodak cetified quality C 41 lab in Illinois. Thet do work from a few amateurs such as myself who brought them wedding photographer customers. Amateurs never see the business as it is tucked away in an office park.

Their specialty is wedding and event photography.

Send the files to them via a file transfer program such as file transfer explorer or use the free one provided at the bottom of the page.

Photoshop your images and duplicate the image in a folder for final printing. Drag and drop with the file transfer program. Then send them a E-mail instructing them to find that file in their server and make the prints. They need to be in JPEG format. In order to keep instructions simple, I would use one folder for 8x10, one for 5x7, one for 4x6.

Title the folders similar to Steve Studio-Johnson wedding 6-12-07 8x10

Prints will ship back UPS or mail.

If you worry about lost mail, have the package put on will call at a local UPS distribution point or or have it sent to a UPS Store locally. You need to make separate arrangements with a local UPS Store a they are independently owned. I use one for all expensive items or camera repairs as I do not want my cameras left on the porch.

In short, don`t waste your time printing. They do a fine job faster and cheaper and you get to do the fun part. Do more weddings and let someone who is set up do the photoprints.

http://www.aiprolab.com/pages/home.html

hi Stephen, I also have the R2400, but I use a pro lab for most of my printing. It is cheaper, the prints are better than my R2400 and it saves time. Just shoot sRGB and keep things simple. Almost any pro lab will do a top notch job. Most of them use some sort of ROES order entry system where you simply choose the size you want and enter the order. As for color, most labs give you a choice to print with or without color correction. If you go without color correction and have a properly calibrated monitor, what you see is what you get.

I print everything myself ... Epson 2400.

I flag the album choices first in Bridge, then start tweaking them in PS.

With enough RAM the printer works in the background as I continue correcting the images in PS ... sending each album select to the printer as I go.

When I am done correcting images, the prints are also done.

I have standard album mat sizes like 7X10, 8X10, 7X7 and use the INFO dialog box to see the crop dimensions as I'm doing them.

We don't even own a printer...Can't compete > even with the best calibration/spider setup...hard to make a 4X6 ~ for 17c.

I print emergency prints. I made a mistake and didn't order something and the client is on the way to pick up. Otherwise the cost is not very comprable to a lab. My time is worth more photographing than minding a printer. Brooke

Time = money. If you have lots of spare hours to print and print, then you should be OK. But if printer maintenance is needed, supplies are not kept current....a lab is the way to go. (Which may be quicker: 250 wedding proofs by the lab, or done one at-a-time on your printer?)

But printing is only part of the job Marc - what about cutting to size? Don't you find that slow and tedious?

And where do you get your albums?

I also thought about using my own printer. I'm a quality control freak you see ;). I found out about a Lab called HH Color (www.hhcolorlab.com) and decided to use them for effiency.

I use a free verision of labprints that you can download from their site to order online and they ship everything to your door using Fed-ex. They bake the shipping into all their prices.

To order you upload the edited but uncropped (Tiff or Jpeg) pictures from a shoot into Lapprint's software, order all sorts of sizes and crop in the program. You can set-up your studio prices there and use this program with your client beside you. Saving you the extra time of ordering after they leave. Also that way you don't have the extra step of cropping 200+ images and saving them on your harddrive.

Also you can pay to set up with lapprints to do online ordering as well as they have wedding album software. I've tried the online ordering and like it so far. Don't know much about the wedding album software.

HH color does not have a color printer profile, which is the only thing I wish they had. However, if I color correct stuff myself it comes back consistent and looking good. They will do a test run with you; so you'll be able to see how your images will look. They also offer, for a price, to do color correction for you. This also is consistent and looks good. I was impressed! Still I wish they had a printer profile. :(

They have excellent customer service too which is nice!

I also use MPIX from time to time. Thier user interface is horrible and everything takes me much longer to do there. But they offer studio color corrected color/sepia prints for .19 each and print on the same paper that I pay $1.70 for at HH color. So I'll use them for proofing to save $$$. Thier larger sizes end up costing me about the same as hh color.

Hope this helps! Michelle

I'm a quality control freak you see ;). Me too! That's why the thought of converting to jpeg and also getting incorrect colours bothers me.

Yes the lab info mentioned in this thread is helpful - keep 'em coming.