Want to know my biggest pet peeve about being in the professional photography business? It’s when people don’t print their photos!! I’m know I’ve been super vocal about that on this blog over the past year, but I honestly can not understand why anyone would invest in custom, fine art, professional photography and then never bother displaying their images.
Of course I do offer the digital files and many of my clients choose to go that route. To be honest, sometimes I cringe when handing over digital images because I fear that those precious images that the family invested so much time, effort and money into making happen are just going to sit on a flash drive or computer and eventually will be lost to the digital abyss.
I know the main reason clients order digitals is so they can print their own images and save money, and I get it–I mean, I am all for saving moo-lah. In fact, I even visit two grocery stores every Wednesday (that’s the day that grocery stores publish their ads) and do the whole price-matching pain in the caboose thing at Wal-Mart and Aldi. Side note: if you pay over 99 cents a pound for apples you might be crazy.
Here’s the thing, I really want to give my clients the best education in what you are paying for because ALL PHOTO LABS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL!!! Even professional labs have a ton of variation, and I’ve spent the money printing samples with different pro labs so I could choose the one I felt best reflects my photography work.
Today though I’m discussing consumer grade labs so that if you do purchase digitals, you can make the best choice possible on where to print. I think when comparing these results to a professional lab it’s pretty obvious why prints cost more through me. A professional lab is going to offer superior papers, perfect color accuracy and archival quality prints. If you are going to enlarge something more than a simple 8×10 then it’s really the best way to preserve your precious memories, but if you’re just taking snapshots at a soccer game or your kids 5th birthday party then obviously it doesn’t make financial sense to go with a pro lab.
So basically, I’m saying that I get it and I’m all for saving money, but please choose wisely when printing your images. It makes me uber sad when clients spend hundreds of dollars on clothing and session fees only to checkout with their digitals and then let them die in digital no-mans-land or print a bunch of 4×6’s at the pharmacy. My bottom line is this: I want my clients to print their images, one way or another and while in my opinion enlargements are best done through a pro lab, I can understand getting 4x6s, 5x7s and gift prints for the grandparents at a consumer lab.
Now without further ado, let’s get to the test—for comparison purposes I sent the same high resolution file to the following labs (Walgreens, Wal-Mart, CVS, Snapfish) and in all cases a 4×6 print was ordered. Please keep in mind that if you print at a chain store like Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens then every single store is different–all their prints are calibrated differently, so please don’t expect these exact results to necessarily transfer to your local store. This is just a non-scientific, personal experience that I am sharing.
WAL-MART
- Exposure: Pretty close to spot on.
- Color:Bluish/magenta color cast on the skin. The blanket that should be a beige/cream color looks blue-grey. Also, the little boys lips show a lot of blue when in reality they were a delicious baby pink.
- Shadows: Fine.
- Cropping: Correct
- Sharpness: This print was the most fuzzy of all the consumer labs I tried. You can really see the lack of definition on the eyelashes, particularly when compared to the original digital file.
- Overall: The Wal-Mart is about 2 minutes away from me, so I have actually used their print lab before for a collage birthday project in December. The prints I ordered last time were ridiculously desaturated, so I was expecting miserable results this time around as well. While this print is not something that reflects my work the best, it was much better than my last attempt. The blue/magenta color cast was the biggest difference between the original file and what Wal-Mart printed out. Also, the paper that the Wal-Mart print was on was extremely flimsy and almost felt like something I could print out at home using over the counter photo paper.
CVS
- Exposure: The brightest parts of the image were a bit overexposed.
- Color: Blue color cast to blanket and skin.
- Shadows: This lab really opened up the shadows a lot and lost some detail.
- Sharpness: Good.
- Overall: Poor. There is a very obvious blue color cast, but what really got me about this print was all the banding! You can see it on the blanket really bad, and this is probably because the image got overexposed by this lab. The paper used was Kodak XtraLife and it was my second favorite paper choice amongst the consumer labs.
WALGREENS
- Exposure: Highlights are overexposed.
- Color: The skin tones have too much yellow and red.
- Shadows: This lab really brightened the shadows, making this print extremely digitally noisy.
- Sharpness: Very fuzzy…most of the details are lost.
- Overall: Walgreens had the best paper (it didn’t have a name on the back so I’m not sure what it was), but the paper was thick and felt good on my hands. However, that’s about the only positive thing I can say about this image. The colors are way off—lots of red and yellow showing up on the skin. Plus, the quality was atrocious!! The shadows were lifted so much you can see tons of digital noise and lots of banding.
SNAPFISH
- Exposure: Good
- Color: Too magenta and red.
- Shadows: Good
- Sharpness: Good.
- Overall: I wasn’t pleased with the paper quality, but overall this is probably the best of the consumer labs I tested as far as getting it close to the mark of my pro lab. The color cast was the major difference—too much red and magenta, but I could see using this place for quick 4×6’s for grandparents and such or something to hang on the fridge.
H. Parker Photography specializes in newborn, baby and child photography in Trophy Club, Texas and surrounding areas including but not limited to Dallas, Ft Worth and Roanoke.