Digital Labs

[007]

Please recommend some good digital labs and about the pricing. Be it a link or whatever information. Thanks. It is better that we can share some pricing, quality here.
I have made my digital printing at double one Clementi:
Handling charge : $3/=
$0.50 per photo.
Quality, so-so.
Remark: I didn't crop my images well and they re-cropped them for me. But they did it in a reasonable way (not too good). Some of the images they have cropped in the way I don't like it. Some of the colours appear wrongly with what I have seen on monitor. I think this is because of the different softwares being used.

By the way, what we can do if we want to send our images for printing?
How or what is the fastest way to crop our images into 3:2 ratio? Cause 4R is 4inches x 6 inches, right?
what other things we should do if we want to send our photo for printing? e.g: convert all the other formats to Jpeg ...etc. (I experience that one of the photo is in .tiff format (raw). Later when the photo came out, it turned out to be in a low quality jpeg which makes the photo looks grainy...........

Thanks.
(ps: i have done some searchs and I have found some relevant threads, but not so informative)

 

[ckiang]

Huh? I thought I posted the same recommendation so many times. Other's have done likewise.

Colour Lab Photo Finishing @ Adelphi. $0.50 per 4R, $5 handling fee.

FotoHub @ OUB Centre, Raffles Place. $0.50 per 4R, no handling fee. Has website where you can upload at www.fotohub.com

Colour Lab can print 4:3, ask for the "DI" size. So no need to worry about cropping. Don't bother sending TIFF, RAW, NEF, CRW, BMP, GIF, PNG, to the labs. Good old JPEG will do fine, don't even resize, as you can inadvertently over-resize (a friend of mine did just that).

Don't bother too much about cheap labs (I read enough bad reviews in here). If you spent so much on the camera, so much effort in taking the photos, and value your pictures, they deserve to be printed at a good lab (at slightly higher cost). Saving on processing/printing is false economy.

Regards
CK

 

[Midnight]

I can personally vouch for FotoHub. I've used their digital printing services many times, and I personally feel that their quality is pretty good (though admittedly there's quite little variation among the pro labs anyway). Excellent service with friendly staff.

Like most other digital printing labs, you can choose to let them crop the photo to the required printing dimensions for you, or specify that you want the entire photo printed with extra whitespace in the excess area. At first I did most of the cropping myself, but nowadays I tend to trust their judgment since they do seem to pay attention to the look of each individual photo after cropping (so no "heads chopped off" or whatever, unless it's really unavoidable--even then I think they will usually call you to confirm).

Cropping photos to a required aspect ratio is pretty easy. What program are you using?

 

[Midnight]

I forgot to add one thing. Regarding the colour of the prints, I would assume that all the pro labs have proper colour-calibrated equipment, so this should not be an issue with these places. If it still looks wrong, the problem is probably with your monitor's colour profile settings.

 

[007]

Originally posted by ckiang
Huh? I thought I posted the same recommendation so many times. Other's have done likewise.

Colour Lab Photo Finishing @ Adelphi. $0.50 per 4R, $5 handling fee.

FotoHub @ OUB Centre, Raffles Place. $0.50 per 4R, no handling fee. Has website where you can upload at www.fotohub.com

Colour Lab can print 4:3, ask for the "DI" size. So no need to worry about cropping. Don't bother sending TIFF, RAW, NEF, CRW, BMP, GIF, PNG, to the labs. Good old JPEG will do fine, don't even resize, as you can inadvertently over-resize (a friend of mine did just that).

Don't bother too much about cheap labs (I read enough bad reviews in here). If you spent so much on the camera, so much effort in taking the photos, and value your pictures, they deserve to be printed at a good lab (at slightly higher cost). Saving on processing/printing is false economy.

Regards
CK

Thanks. Yes! I am looking for a labs with reasonable price. I am willing to pay, but quality wise must be relatively good, isn't it? But the thing is not always that we get what we have paid. That is why I need to confirm. Furthermore, (if for fotohub, is better) we have to pay the handling charge. Therefore, I will send around 40 to 50 photos in one go for printing. I do not hope that I pay for lousy photos......(which I don't like) .... and if possible, I hope more feedbacks (from last time's threads) see what is the response from the thread (cause people have tried them). :dent:

 

[007]

Originally posted by Midnight
I forgot to add one thing. Regarding the colour of the prints, I would assume that all the pro labs have proper colour-calibrated equipment, so this should not be an issue with these places. If it still looks wrong, the problem is probably with your monitor's colour profile settings.

Yes, i experience this.....later I post the photo.

 

[ckiang]

Originally posted by 007


Thanks. Yes! I am looking for a labs with reasonable price. I am willing to pay, but quality wise must be relatively good, isn't it? But the thing is not always that we get what we have paid. That is why I need to confirm. Furthermore, (if for fotohub, is better) we have to pay the handling charge. Therefore, I will send around 40 to 50 photos in one go for printing. I do not hope that I pay for lousy photos......(which I don't like) .... and if possible, I hope more feedbacks (from last time's threads) see what is the response from the thread (cause people have tried them). :dent:

I have tried both and they never gave me problems. I use FotoHub when I don't have so many to print - just upload. No handling fees, and for $2 I can have them delivered to me. Won't go wrong with one of these.

Regards
CK