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Making Lab Quality Digital Photos?
photoFinished asks: How do most photo labs produce their digital prints? It seems to me that there should be a machine that uses an LCD to create a virtual negative to expose standard photo paper to, resulting in a standard-type photograph as the end result. However, since just about every CVS, Walgreens and other pharmacy advertises the ability to produce prints from your digital photos, I'm wondering if there's a quality difference between the various stores? I can produce a 4x6 on a $100 name-brand ink jet that appears virtually identical to a lab print when you look at it behind glass, the only difference is a light reduction in the smooth/glossiness you get from a regular print. Does anyone have information on the methods used by the various chain pharmacies produce their prints? I'd hate to think that the $0.40 I'm paying for each 4x6 is actually nothing more then the result of an expensive ink jet printer. Sorry if this is one of those 'you should try google' type of questions, but I couldn't find the answers I was looking for."
You must also be nuts (or desperate) to pay $0.40 for prints. $0.20 is typical for Costco/Sam's club/Wal-Mart Costco is $0.17 Sam's claims to be as low as $0.11
FYI: The Nortisu I usually use at my local Costco recommends preparing digital files at 320 dpi, as that is the printer's native resolution. So you might be able to do higher resolution from a home printer, but it's hard to beat the durability of standard prints.
BMost of these digital print makers do actually use a photographic process. There is no print negitive involved, because the computer can take the regular image and invert the colors easy enough.
It then takes the inverted image and uses colored LEDs to expose the piece of print paper in the size that you have picked.
The reason these machines are called "mini-labs" is they have a full photo lab inside of them. Once the film is exposed by the LEDs it is then developed, fixed, rinsed, and dried all inside that box. Then the final print emerges.
The answer to your question is 'yes'. You might get ink-jet produced pictures, or optically produced and enlarged prints. It depends on what the lab has for equipment.
And quit spending so much for prints. Try someone else. I've had great results from Clark Color Labs, but they are not the only ones that do good quality cheap prints. Clark charges 11 cents when you get 50 or more 4x6 prints, or 12 cents for less than 50 prints. There's some others that are even cheaper. Check out your local grocery store, Target, etc to see what they charge. 40 cents is too much.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The technology I hear mentioned most often with reference to authentic prints from digital is "micro light valve array".
I worked a photo shop at one point to pay the bills. Years ago they where already doing this in a Fuji photo machine. All the chemical baths are in one system about the size of a large xerox machine.
You could use a digital copy, which was rare at the time, scan a neg in, or scan a positive in. Did not matter, enlarge, reduce..etc..etc. to photo quality paper. That did and actual photo chemical bath process. It was rather revolutionary to have it in a mall at the time about 13 years ago.
Hell I did all my photo homework on it for 2 years. What took people 20 hours of lab work I could do in 45 seconds. I still think the director of photography might be confused to this day.....
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
A company called alpine makes one for about $500 (the 1300 model). This is the same technology that wal*mart and wolf/ritz camera and all the internet printing places uses. Here are some links:
m n kjet/Alps_color_inkjet_printer.htmlk ipedia.org/wiki/Dye-sublimation_printer
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question583.ht
http://www.digital-photography.org/alps_color_i
http://en.wi
moox. for a new generation.
My exposure to these technologies was on the R&D end, not the business end, and I've since left Kodak.
:-) - HD is for wimps. These systems were replaced by the LED systems.
Most modern minilabs (be they Kodak/Noritsu, Fuji, etc. (a lot of these minilab systems are actually contracted out, but that's another discussion) use digital subsystems with wet front and back ends where appropriate.
Digital images are imported directly through obvious means - bits go in the hole. Silver halide negatives are developed and then scanned and stored locally on the minilab. The digital images are then adjusted through a combination of automated improvements (such as Kodak PerfectTouch) and manual tweaking, depending on the shop you go to and the level of service they offer. Automated only = cheaper. Current systems then use rastered or scanned LEDs in an RGB configuration (Some may also use lasers, but all the ones I've seen were LEDs - they're cheap) to expose the photographic paper, which is developed using traditional wet processes.
In the past, the first digital Kodak minilabs used little 6" CRTs with 4000 lines of resolution (made in New Jersey, I think) to project the images onto the paper. There was talk of stepping that up to 6000 lines, but I don't know if that ever happened. I could be a little off on those numbers - I'm pulling them from memory from years ago. But they certainly ended the NTSC/PAL resolution debate
Note that wholesale photofinishing labs still use traditional optics - for all the grooviness of digital systems, it's hard to beat a massive spinning system of traditional optics churning out thousands of prints an hour (we're talking on the scale of a print a second - fast!)
Most walk-up kiosks use thermal/dye sublimation printing systems, which have excellent print quality and durability, though they're expensive. A mylar donor ribbon coated with CMYK+finisher dyes is heated by a pagewidth linear array of diodes at ~300dpi and pressed against the receiver paper. A separate pass is made for each color. I'm not aware of any minilabs that use dye dub printers because of the speed limitations.
Inkjet technology is starting to penetrate the kiosk market, but there's a lot of maturing to still take place.
Your immediate observations are correct: silver halide photographic paper is more durable and usually glossier, which most consumers associate with quality. Since there are a wide range of inks available on the market (every printer manufacturer has many types of inks), paper manufacturers have and optimization problem in balancing quality/durability/color reproduction/light fastness.
As for the quality between vendors, there certainly are differences - though how much of that is tied to the digital algorithms and how much is tied to the processing hardware these days I'm not sure. I suspect it's much more the former. Your best bet is to find a local shop with well-trained staff that actually knows how to use the minilab, rather than the summer job teenager who doodled pictures of Bevis and Butthead (or Spongebob, or Thundercats, or whatever the kids are into these days) during their training class.
At this stage, throughput is the big technical bottleneck remaining for inkjet technologies to penetrate the kiosk and minilab markets. Ecologically and economically it's a 'no brainer', so all the major players are trying to produce solutions. Kiosks will probably be the first to make the transition. Brother, Sony, and another company that escapes me at the moment (in the UK?) have publicly demonstrated pagewide technologies, and I think Xerox had one operating in their labs before they shut down the inkjet effort a few years back. Some of these demos have been around for years. Someone from the inside needs to write a book about the Kodak-HP joint venture ("Phogenix") in making an inkjet minlab system - but it's probably still a little early, since the technologies the two companies were bringing to the table for the joint venture will appear in future products of their own. There are some entertaining stories involved - classic corporate America.
There's quite a difference between printing your own pictures and having digital pictures developed at a professional lab. Home printed pictures, after less than a year, will start to fade. This will not happen with pics developed at a photolab. If you wish to keep those pictures for archival purposes, get them printed professionaly. As others have stated 0.40$ a picture is way too expensive. I pay 0.15$ CAN a picture at Costco.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
go to http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/search.asp?query =commercial+printing&page=1&forum=all for more info than you will ever want on printers and printing.
Oh, and I would recomend NOT getting your prints printed at wallmart, costco, sam's club, or any of the other discount places if you care at all about your photos. Use a more pro shop, or spend a couple of years to learn how to print your own...
I know a fair bit about photography, but close to diddly squat about apache.....
No - I want to whip out my high-resolution PDA and use the thumbwheel to scroll through the images.
Do you want to buy an expensive LCD virtual picture frame for every room in the house, or do you just want to stick a 10x8 print in a clip frame?
Actually, yes, I would love to have LCD frames or plasma screens instead of real pictures, all networked into my fileserver and the web with touchscreen and other capability. Unfortunately it isn't cheap to do this, but prices are dropping rapidly like rocks - someday soon it will be easily affordable.
Do you enjoy the tactile sense of flicking through an album as opposed to scrolling through thumbnails?
I would enjoy being able to call up any photo image I wanted to from any screen in my home (or at work, or at a web terminal in Fiji, wherever) via a quick and easy to use search interface, rather than having to hunt around for a particular image in a particular photo album on a particular page. Then I could forward the link or a copy to someone via email or IM...
There are as many reasons for wanting physical prints as there are for wanting paper books and magazines - although if you have a stack of photos next to the toilet, it's probably not for the same reason ;-)
If I could buy an e-ink "book", onto which I could upload and view any e-book I wanted to, all with a simple flick of button or scrollwheel, I would buy one in a heartbeat (I have given thought to a used rocketbook reader). Books have advantages for extended reading over current monitor display technology which make them easier on the eyes for extended periods of viewing time. One rarely stares at a picture for an extended period of time, which makes them a better suited for all-digital use. Even so, hopefully full color e-ink displays with high resolution and high refresh rates (and low power consumption) are created, as these types of display would be ideal for all sorts of digital media, and would eliminate a lot of eyestrain for all tasks.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon