Getting Prints Made From Digital Cameras?

schussat asks: "Now that I have a digital camera, I'm looking for a good company to produce prints (I know, some say prints are obsolete, but it's nice to be able to hold a photo once in a while). Do you guys have some favorite sites that make high-quality prints? What about Linux support? I've found that PhotoWorks, which I have long used for 35mm film prints, does not yet support Linux uploading at all; Shutterfly on the other hand has a Linux GTK uploader client. Are there others that folks would recommend?"

Comments

Kodak Photonet works okay

[embobo]

I used Kodak Photonet with some success. Note that this is not the same thing as the link off Kodak's site, which is some horrible system that requires IE.

You upload your images to Kodak with either a input type="file" widget in a form or by supplying a url of the image (I did the latter). Select the print size and number of copies, give them your CC info and viola in a couple weeks you'll get your prints in the mail.

The cost is fairly low. My only complaint was that the prints were too dark, even though they looked good on my monitor (probably because I jack the gamma up for playing quake). While you are waiting for your prints they have a convenient system for status checking.

I have used OFOTO.COM

[EABinGA]

I took advantage of an offer from ofoto.com (affiliated with amazon) to receive 25 free prints.

I submitted various 640 x 480 pics taken with an old Sanyo camera.

The results were quite good.

For a 4" print, minimum resolution should be 640 x 480, higher would be better. Also the lossines of the jpg file (I send some with various levels of compression) plays a role. You can easily see artifacts on highly compressed or economy mode pictures. My 640x480 pics were about 65k in size and the quality of the pics were excellent. They print the pictures on kodak paper, so it is i.e. a photograph and will last just like one (no ink fade etc.)

I think they charge about $0.40 a print, plus S&H (2.50).

You can also preview your pictures in various frames, and order them too.

Re:I have used OFOTO.COM

[SEWilco]

Although OFOTO.Com features PC/Mac software on the main page, wading down into the Help pages shows that they do allow uploading with your browser. There's a procedure where you end up selecting the number of images to upload (up to 10) and a page with that number of "Browse" buttons opens. You then select your files and upload up to 10MB.

Re:I have used OFOTO.COM

[EABinGA]

IANAP (photographer)

This from the ofoto faq:

Ofoto delivers high-quality photographic prints from your digital and film photos. We use the latest printing technology available from Eastman Kodak.

We print your photos on KODAK PROFESSIONAL Digital III Color Paper, a resin-coated, silver-halide color paper designed for digital printers that use LED, CRT, or laser printing devices. (For details, download Kodak's Digital III Color Paper Datasheet .) A light source inside our digital printers exposes this paper pixel by pixel, by. This process mimics traditional photography, in which light from the subject exposes photographic film inside of a camera.

--- snip ---

Take it for what it's worth

Some possibilities

[SEWilco]

Many american drugstores and other places have picture scan-and-print machines. I believe I've seen some which also accept floppies.

You might browse lists of photo sharing sites, such as this one at AmateurPhoto.About.Com. I looked at two, and see that PhotoLoft.Com allows browser or email upload, and there's a "Store" for creating gifts which involve your photos.

I then looked for a similar page on Yahoo!: Yahoo! ... Photography and found that ImageStation.Com allows several upload methods and has a "Store" which can apparently make prints (based on the price list in the upper left corner). Plenty of unexplored sites there, although many are professionally oriented. And "Yahoo! Photos" requires IE so is useless.

Note that now that you have the name of several services which meet your needs, you could now search for pages which list all those sites and you might find indexes which list more. Yup, a MetaCrawler search of "Imagestation PhotoLoft" (omit the quotation marks) found several photo service index pages.

Camera Shops

[Robert S Gormley]

All the camera shops here, the ones that do digital, and actually know what they're talking about, will do prints from CF, SmartMedia, CD, whatever. Most new cameras even support DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) so you can specify the order and which prints you want done and it's done electronically (onto standard paper). Polaroid also sells a printer (for about $100) which accepts Polaroid prints (I know I know) and actually "exposes" them with whatever image you send to the "printer".

Re:Camera Shops

[Robert S Gormley]

I was impressed by how cheap the printer itself was here (about US$60), only cost is that of the Polaroid media...

The printer actually uses a bank of LEDS to display the image onto the polaroid print, somehow (I'm not an expert on Polaroid tech...)

If you want the best...

[drix]

One word: Iris. If you want the absolute best prints from a digital source that money can buy, you will have them printed on an Iris printer. I was in an art gallery just the other day looking at photographs taken by professional photographers - e.g. museum/display quality - and was simply astounded when one of the photographers walked over to me and told me that more than half of them were printed on an Iris printer. Sure enough - she was right! From a distance of more than one inch away, the prints looked indistinguishable from developed prints. I do not use this phrase lightly, either - certain cheapo dye-sub "photograph printers" that sell for a couple hundred dollars advertise "photo quality" when they really are not, however Iris prints really are. I have been into photography for awhile and I feel I have a discriminating eye... but the Iris is just gorgeous. Can't tell an Iris print from the original, period, unless you get right up close enough to see the dots. Even then, they're only visible in light areas of the picture. Anything with color is continuous-tone.

If my word is not enough, please check out this testimonial. I think it's very compelling in its own right.

As for labs, again, colorimaging.com comes very highly regarded, although I have not used them. Chances are if you are seriously looking into Iris prints and you find a lab that can actually afford one, then they are probably well-established enough that you can trust them to produce quality output.

The Netherlands..

[radja]

there's several photoshops that allow uploading of pics for printing. In a recent survey by the dutch newspaper AD what was chosen as the best place to send your pics was Foto Baron. Uses php to process everything. And has been working without problems for more than a few months. will also work with linux.

Disclaimer: I wrote the php stuff, but am not otherwise affiliated with foto baron or digitalefoto.nl. I am also NOT responsible for the content of the site, so don't whine to me about flash

//rdj

Get a photo quality printer

[Geeky]

I've just bought an Epson Stylus Photo 870, and the quality is pretty much indistinguishable from a print.

You can get 6" by 4" paper for it with tear off edges. The print bleeds onto the tear off strips, so that when they are removed you have edge to edge print.

I've printed 1100x800ish scanned photos at A4 size, and the quality still holds.