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In addition, many Costco labs (at least by me) are covered under this list of color profiles, often with specific information about the paper type and which printer was used to do the profile.

Yeah, Costo/Walmart is the way to go. The $20,000 photo printers they use are the same ones they use for film. If you get a roll of negatives developed there, they don't actually print them by shining light through them. They scan the film and send the scan to the digital film printer. The paper is the same Kodak/Fuji film print paper as they use for photos on negatives.

If you're handy with Photoshop, you can even download icc color profiles for the photo printer at your nearest Costco/Walmart. Use it to preview/tweak your photo so it'll look just the way you want once printed.

No, don't do it yourself unless you're really into it. It's a complicated pain in the ass.

Do it if you want to or have other reasons (specialty paper, look, etc).

Costco / Walmart / Snapfish whatever are fine for the vast majority of things. They mostly use Fuji Frontiers or similar and are much more sophisticated devices that you'll ever find at home.

If you have higher aspirations, want a professional job or just more input on what you're doing, I've found this list useful (at least in Colorado)

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/

This website is mostly interested in printer profiles (metadata on how the printer should print a particular color) and so is geared to more critical photographers but if you want the best results, that's the way to go.

I assume this would be useful for correcting for differences in displays?

Not just displays, cameras, scanners and printers also use ICC profiles to compensate for the fact that they all capture and reproduce colours slightly differently. This is a good place to read some basics.

Interesting. You realize that you just made a supportive position for the huge prices of CD's right? I mean, charge a substantial fee up front.

The CD is a distribution medium and costs almost nothing. The substantial fee would be in the commissioning of the performance (maybe someone's party, or a TV broadcast, or a concert). A recording made at that time could be turned into CDs and MP3s and distributed for minimal additional cost.

"Once those costs are paid, they can run off as many prints as they want for almost no cost."

Showing that you do not understand professional photography. It's not like they use WalMart.

Actually, many of them use Costco. Why pay $20,000 for a commercial-grade digital photo printer when Costco lets you print on theirs for little more than the cost of the paper? Studio and exhibition prints usually require thicker paper and more durable inks, so require a specialized photo lab (which probably uses the same machine). But the Costco prints are fine for most people just wanting to purchase a print. If it weren't, those people wouldn't be scanning and printing the photos on their own.

1) There are different printer technologies than dye that last much longer. I have an Epson 2200 pigment based ink printer and have printed many images on canvas. These have been hanging on my wall for years, plural, with absolutely no fade. Yeah, you pay more for pigment, but if you want long lasting prints, you'll pay more. Newer pigment printers print glossy as well.

2) Epson (Claria) and HP (Vivera) inks are supposed to be longer lasting, but are insanely expensive. I have the R260 and the results are fantastic. Don't print much this way due to the insane expense (just for proofing or hanging on office wall).

3) I don't see what all the fuss is about. If I want a long lasting print, I simply send my image to print on this. Same photo technology as old photo technology mentioned in the article. Looks great on my wall! Costco, et. al. also has similar photo printing.

I generally don't print much on inkjet anymore, since the inks are so outrageously expensive. Photo print shops, such as Costco, have much longer lasting results cheaper than inkjet. I just print on my local inkjets either for (a) color proofing or (b) use fancy materials such as canvas.

Any computer user would be **surprised** the difference is makes to calibrate your monitors (thus creating an ICC profile). It allows you to synchronize your monitors, scanners, printers, etc. It works better with macs, but also works with windows (I'm in the process of making it work with Debian).

Read more here:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibra tion_tools.htm
http://www.chromix.com/ColorGear/Shop/productdetai l.cxsa?toolid=1086&num=37&fnd=nfound&refcode=cmmea sure&PID=11713

and of course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile

digital images printed professionally at photo labs VERY cheap

Profesionally and very cheap is somewhat mutually exclusive. Yes, you can get printed on photographic paper cheap, such as at Walmart or Costco, but they aren't really "professional". Chances are, the person behind the counter isn't going to know or care squat about color balance, so it's a crapshoot to get it looking right.

If you're just printing snapshots of last week's party, it's a good deal though. If you have a masterpiece, then look at Dry Creek Photo for taking a stab at getting good quality out of places like Costco. Some people have good results with Costco, but depends upon the particular establishment and quality of personnel.

Then, there are professional printers, but I wouldn't classify them as "cheap"

Another overlooked aspect for home photo printers is versatility. For example, we print greeting cards from our printer instead of dragging ourselves to a Hallmarks and wasting gas.

I use my Epson 2200 for printing on canvas and other fine art papers. This is something you'll pay big wads of money for outside anyways, and you have complete control over the results.

digital images printed professionally at photo labs VERY cheap

Profesionally and very cheap is somewhat mutually exclusive. Yes, you can get printed on photographic paper cheap, such as at Walmart or Costco, but they aren't really "professional". Chances are, the person behind the counter isn't going to know or care squat about color balance, so it's a crapshoot to get it looking right.

If you're just printing snapshots of last week's party, it's a good deal though. If you have a masterpiece, then look at Dry Creek Photo for taking a stab at getting good quality out of places like Costco. Some people have good results with Costco, but depends upon the particular establishment and quality of personnel.

Then, there are professional printers, but I wouldn't classify them as "cheap"

Another overlooked aspect for home photo printers is versatility. For example, we print greeting cards from our printer instead of dragging ourselves to a Hallmarks and wasting gas.

I use my Epson 2200 for printing on canvas and other fine art papers. This is something you'll pay big wads of money for outside anyways, and you have complete control over the results.

This is certainly true for typical consumer labs. However, if you can find a (reasonably priced!) pro-oriented lab that provides you with an ICC profile for the printer and paper they use, and you have a full colour-managed workflow with a properly profiled monitor, excellent results should be possible. There's a good guide to this approach here:

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Frontier/using_printe r_profiles.htm

Most of this workflow is also applicable to home printing, but you'll need to profile your printer & papers as well (probably worth it in the long run, as it should cut down on the number of test prints).

correctly profiled home printer

Check out these profiles. Now your local one-hour lab is correctly profiled too.

has a way larger gamut

Umm, no. We were talking about Frontiers and LightJets, not monitors. I encourage you to try printing a grey tone test strip on you inkjet on your best paper and comparing it to your nearest Frontier with a profile at dry creek photo. The inkjet ink will seep into the paper, exposing white fibers on the surface, desaturating and lightening the colour. This does not happen with photochemical processing.

One advantage of your printer over a non-profiled Frontier is that you can do the profile conversion while still working in 16bit mode, losing less information. If you have a profile for your local frontier, this is not an issue. The other advantage of your home printer is that many places with Frontiers only accept JPEGs.

Even having a published ICC profile is not a guarantee for the printer being calibrated as I have found out by correcting and submitting the same image to different local shops. Costco has great print prices here but their profile appears off - what one could expect I suppose (you get what you pay for).
One way to find shops offering supposedly calibrated printers is looking at http://www.drycreekphoto.com/ although I suspect that many just publish a default profile there.

And for professionals (or wannabe pros), you can get high-quality and recent color profiles for the minilabs in almost all Costcos! This site has different .icc profiles for different paper types, and even details on what to request when you order your prints. Also, guides on how to best use the profiles. Way cool. http://drycreekphoto.com/Frontier/

I've been using CostCo for my photo printing since they opened a warehouse near me last year. They also have some features which cater to pro-sumer and pro-level photographers. Here's some of the things I like:

1) Most CostCo warehouses have ICC profiles made and updated frequently. They're available for download at http://drycreekphoto.com/Frontier/. If you do photo post-processing in an ICC-aware app (ie Photoshop) and have a profiled monitor, your colors will match from screen to print.
2) Large prints are also very reasonably priced - $2 for up to 8x12.
3) If you want to do odd sizes for matting, no problem - I can get a 5x5 image printed on an 8x10 sheet and trim and mat it however I want for a particular frame.

Also, CostCo isn't a huge PITA like Wal-Mart is when it comes to good-looking pictures. Wal-Mart will refuse to print a shot that looks "too good", and the lab worker at CostCo will say "Hey, great picture - what camera did you use?".

Also, I should mention Dry Creek Photo who has color profiles available for the Noritsu printers at almost every Costco location in the country.

Costco is more than happy to take your semi-pro or pro shots and print them. In fact, they specifically do things to cater to pro-sumers and independent professional photographers: each and every one of Costco's digital printers are profiled every six months. The profiles are made available on the web at Dry Creek Photo so you can have a completely colour-managed workflow.

The best part is the price :) Costco's largest size, 12"x18", is only $2.99 a copy, and they look stunning. I have six hanging in my office right now and people are shocked when I tell them where they were printed.

Neil

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibra tion_tools.htm

Dry Creek Photo concludes that it is better than nothing (and better than visual calibrators like Adobe Gamma) but the worst of the bunch. The newer Colorvision "Spyder2" is apparently much better and still under $200.

There are even better calibrators from Monaco and GretagMacbeth but the price tag is higher, too.

An Epson 2200 or Canon S9000 is going to set you back about $500. Good inks for the Epson (the Ultrachrome inks) cost another $90.00 (for all colors), and good paper (archive quality) goes for about $0.50 / sheet. With Epson, I get longevity at the cost of image "punch". With Canon, I get faster, quieter prints and stronger colors, but they fade faster. If I go with a cheaper Epson (say, the 2000), I have to deal with terrible metamerism, a cheaper Canon I get terrible B&W. Each print is going to cost about $1.50 a page at best. This doens't factor in the cost of the printer itself.

Or, I can custom profile my photos for specific machine output (using Dry Creek's wonderful database), take my photos to CostCo/Sam's Club/Walgreens, where they print on Fuji Frontier's, pay $0.18 for a 4x6, get better color and more longevity.

Pretty simple decision to me.