Search This Blog

Online Photo Printing Recommendation

Posted
AdormaPix - my recommendation for online print servicesIf you are a little more serious about your photographic prints these days like I am, you will want a photo printing company that is a cut above the rest. "The Rest" is a crowded group - it seems that everyone is trying to get you to use them for your online prints: Shutterfly, Snapfish, Flickr, Kodak, Costco, Target...and the list goes on.

When it comes to printing my photos, the very first thing I look for is a print service that prints from tiff files. If you're a serious photographer you won't want to be printing from jpeg files as this is a compressed file format that discards a lot of your image information. Remember that the jpeg file format was devleoped for displaying images on the web in the days of 8kb dialup modem days. Sure, its fine for your 7x5 snapshots, but when you want to go to the next level in both image quality and size, you will not be printing from jpeg files. So if you're using a service that only accepts jpeg files, move on, I say.

The next thing I look for is a print service that provides a good selection of quality archival papers. You want to be able to choose a paper type that compliments the photo you are printing. If it's an artsy image with colors that are "grungy", then you will want to print on a paper that has some texture and isn't too shiny. But if you have a colorful image that you want to pop, then you'll probably want to print it on something that has good reflective qualities.

Next, you want an online photo print service who has a user-friendly website for uploading and ordering your prints. And since you will be printing from tiff files, you will want a site that offers a reasonable amount of free storage space, and that will accept quite large files.

And last, but by no means least, you want a print service that offers exceptional service. Timely turnaround, and packaging that gets the prints to you in great shape.

Over the years I have tried several online photo printing services, and I am happy that about a year ago I found the equivalent of "Nirvana" in online photographic printing. And that's New York City's Adorama photo lab known as AdoramaPix. I use them all the time for my printing now and they are just exceptional in all the qualities I listed above.

They use Kodak papers exclusively and I recommend that you try the Kodak "metallic" paper for any prints that are colorful and which you want to really jump off the paper. I have almost all my prints done on the metallic paper. You'll be astounded by its glass-like sheen.

Use this link to the AdoramaPix website and place just one order and I'm sure you'll be hooked too. From time to time they have excellent sales too. And while you're there, be sure to check out all the great camera stuff at Adorama.com too.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

Posted
Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
Image

A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

Posted
I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
Image

Samoan Youth

Posted
This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
Image