Photography Question

Waski_the_Squirrel

Waski_the_Squirrel

Resident of the least visited state in the nation.
I know this probably belongs in the technology forum, but I noticed no one has posted to that since May...

I took some pictures for some other people. I suggested two ways they could get prints. One was through the website I use to host my photographs. (I don't make money in this case, and the prints are good.) The other suggestion was to download the pictures and print them at the local Alco -- sort of a low-rent WalMart. They chose the Alco option.

They had trouble printing my pictures because they were too large for the machine. The files in their original size run 6-7 megabytes each. No problem, they figured, they just downloaded a smaller size. The smaller size turned out to be too blurry.

So my question: when you all get prints, what limitations have you discovered in dealing with the standalone kiosks? Are large files a problem?

I have good enough results with my own printer and I get awesome results through the website. I don't see why Alco had trouble with the same files.
 
No personal experience with this, but it sounds like the files were compressed to a very low resolution when changed to the smaller size.
 
Waski_the_Squirrel said:
I know this probably belongs in the technology forum, but I noticed no one has posted to that since May...

I took some pictures for some other people. I suggested two ways they could get prints. One was through the website I use to host my photographs. (I don't make money in this case, and the prints are good.) The other suggestion was to download the pictures and print them at the local Alco -- sort of a low-rent WalMart. They chose the Alco option.

They had trouble printing my pictures because they were too large for the machine. The files in their original size run 6-7 megabytes each. No problem, they figured, they just downloaded a smaller size. The smaller size turned out to be too blurry.

So my question: when you all get prints, what limitations have you discovered in dealing with the standalone kiosks? Are large files a problem?

I have good enough results with my own printer and I get awesome results through the website. I don't see why Alco had trouble with the same files.
Click to expand...
I am not sure either. One of my bf is a photographer and when she takes our pictures she always gives me the file and I can print anywhere. I do usually do it online, but have used Walgreens too, without an issue. She takes the pictures in something called raw. (I think I had asked her about megapixles once and that is what she told me.) I have printed from 16x20 down to wallets.
I would suggest that you either offer a cd or just have them print from the website that hosts your photos. It is your pictures and name and seeing that it seems to be a small community I would not want my name associated with small blurry prints. ;) Your pictures are too good!
 
We run into this issue after we photograph fingerprints and send them to be matched in the DoD database. They want them in the raw format and not jpeg because when they enlarge them in jpeg, they distort and sometimes when they receive them in jpeg, they are fuzzy.

One way to resize them without worrying about distortion is to do it in Photoshop. That's an expensive program and you can get Photoshop Elements 10 now for $100. We download picture files from the camera straight to Photoshop.

BTW, a raw image has a .arw file extension.
 
I usually use my own printer to print as well but I have used the stand alone at Wally World in the past with no distortion issues.
 
You might want to check with your website to see how they compress the files to get them smaller. And, how small the size was that your friends chose? If they mistakenly picked a very small file size, that could explain the problem they had when printing.

I haven't had too many issues, although I have noticed Wal-Mart can be a bit tricky with the quality depending on which machine you use - the stores I've visited have both Fuji and Kodak I believe?
 
I know this is a zombie thread, but I finally went and made some prints of my own. The small sizes of the files are blurry as one would expect. However, the largest size makes a good print all the way up to 8x10. It was indistinguishable from the original file (which I also tried) despite being substantially smaller.

There are 2 places in town that do prints. The drugstore prints were awesome and well-exposed. The discount store prints were all somewhat blurry, but not overly so, and underexposed (although the skin was a slightly better color). Both places used the exact same machine (a Kodak).

In short, I got acceptable results from both, with the edge going to the drugstore. Neither gave results that compared with what I can order from my website, but I don't expect them to.

I'm thinking that there is a human error problem: they must have tried to print a smaller size picture.

That leads me to a new problem. It isn't immediately obvious from the website that one can get larger pictures. One person I know actually tried to make prints from the thumbnails! I'll need to think about how to make this more obvious, within Smugmug's constraints.

Just for reference, the public side of the website (which doesn't allow downloads or purchase and doesn't show all the sizes) is at:

http://squirrelscience.smugmug.com
 
Is the price difference substantial between the drug store and smugmug? If not I would just ask the parent to decide what size, how many they want, and have them pay your cost. Human error is an issue in some of those places and there is nothing you can do about that.
 
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