Printing digital images

[fotoshot]

Has anyone had a good experiences printing with online printers like dotphoto, ofoto or others? I have used dotphoto and like the "35 mm quality" but I am getting a heavy red tint in skin tones. Any suggestions?

[twalker294]

I have used Ofoto in the past with excellent results. The colors are always spot on. Wal-Mart also makes excellent prints, believe it or not. They are also cheaper than Ofoto (.26 for a 4x6 vs. .49.) You can have them shipped to you or you can pick them up at your local store and save the shipping charge.

Todd

[ltdedorc]

I have found that my monitor and the Fuji Frontier they use here in southern California in the matte finish they have at Walmart and the glossys available at Walgreens are not in sync. I have to adjust the cyn in Photoshop or have it adjusted by Walmart or do the adjustment at Walgreens to reduce the reddness in skin tones. It takes some trial & error to determine the right amount of adjustment...Harvey

[hanchao]

dotPhoto.com provides very bad services, I have to tell you my experience so you will not suffer like I did.

I ordered 382 pictures from dotPhoto.com on April 18 after my Italy trip. After one week wait, I finally received the photos, but there were only 130 prints (Besides that, 6 of them were in very bad quality.). I called them
and left a message in the voice mail, I also sent an email to their support, but I got no response. So I called them again after a few days, finally I talked to their support - Charlene. She asked me to order the
missing 252 photos again, she will credit them back to my account. So I spent a lot of time checking which photos were missing, then reordered them again. I also sent her email asking her to check the new order before
shipment, because I really hate to see another mistake. Of course, she never replyed my email.

Finally, I got my reordered photos on 5/10, but it was 56 photos short again !!!!

I called them today, Charlene picked up the phone, I explained the problem to her. She answered "according to the shipment weight it should contain the correct number of photos". She refused to send me the missing 56 photos, but saying the only solution is sending her back the whole order, then she will refund the money to me. This is really not a solution to me, how can I choose to ship the photos back to them? I spent many hours to upload all those photos, additional hours to do ordering and re-ordering, calling them and email them many times for their mistakes, plus my mom and my aunt were waiting for those photos to bring back to Taiwan, my friends were also asking for the Italy photos for long time. Now, after 3 weeks of waiting, I finally got most of my trip photos, and the only solution she offered me is to ship them all back for refund instead of correcting their own mistake (to give me my missing photos)....

I had a long argument with her, but her attitude was very bad. I asked to talk to her supervisor, she said she is "the" manager in support, no one else is supervising her. I asked to talk to their president, she refuse to
do it. .... I have never faced such a ridiculous customer support. My only choice is to treat this 56 photos as my own loss. I cannot believe a well known company will choose to steal my 56 photos ($15.00) !

So, my friend, my advice to you - don't deal with dotPhoto.com. I hate to see other people suffer like I have experienced.

[RichYoung]

fotoshot wrote:
Has anyone had a good experiences printing with online printers like dotphoto, ofoto or others? I have used dotphoto and like the "35 mm quality" but I am getting a heavy red tint in skin tones. Any suggestions?
Ofoto is top. No difference than a real photo plus provides a way to share and is a natural backup. Second best is printing on Epson Premium Glossy Paper on an Epson 1270 or better. Note the Epson prints will stick to each other if layed face to face where the Ofoto prints won't. ...Rich

[pvdiamon]

I was going to use Wal-Mart when I realized that many of my files are larger than 2 mb. For those using Wal-Mart, are you reducing the size of your files, or how do you keep within the 2 mb limit? Their prices are great, but that seems like a real handicap.

[fotoshot]

I have been using Wal-mart for basic printing lately. It did seem like a waste of mega-picels to shrink to fit under 2 MB but the printing is very good anyway. They are just about the cheapest. I used dotphoto only to find out that they are terrible at everything they do. If you want greater control over sizes and cropping try photoaccess.com, they have what they call digital sizes that will print full image with no cropping. Or you can select where the cropping accures. They charge more (.45 4X6) but offer greater options in printing. They print up to 20 X 30 on fuji chrystal archive paper @ $29.95. They also have free permanate albums with unlimited storage.

Good luck & let us know what you find out.

[ronitcris@msn.com]

Is it really more economical to print via dotphoto or ophoto or walmart than buying a printer? If I buy Canon s900 or s9000 the paper is $9 for 20 sheets of 4x6 right? and then the price of ink... Dotphoto (which I just realized from reading all these msgs - has a bad service) charges $69 for 400 prints which is $.17 a print- pretty good no? Thanks Ronit

[dn7elson]

ronitcris@msn.com wrote:
Is it really more economical to print via dotphoto or ophoto or walmart than buying a printer? If I buy Canon s900 or s9000 the paper is $9 for 20 sheets of 4x6 right? and then the price of ink... Dotphoto (which I just realized from reading all these msgs - has a bad service) charges $69 for 400 prints which is $.17 a print- pretty good no? Thanks Ronit

Much of this will be a result of how you intend to use the prints and printer and whether you already own the printer or intend to purchase one to do the printing.

There is no comparison for the convenience of being able to print a photo or near photo quality print within minutes 24 hours a day. How important this is to you needs to be factored into the overall equation.

If you are looking at pure economics, and would not otherwise be purchasing the printer in question, you will need to add in the cost of the printer into the equation, anticipating the number of prints to be printed over say a couple of years.

In any event, do not forget the cost of the consumables. The paper is one item, but the ink cartridges and printheads (some printers combine, others are separate) can result in sizable expenses. Some printers seem to consume ink cartridges quickly, others seem to clog the print heads if not used regularly. You will definately want to get a printer that uses a large capacity ink cartridge (large is a relative term) as the costs for the "small print quantity" ink cartridges is nearly the same as the large cartridge that can print 2-3 times the prints.

In determining ink costs, the typical 15% density for color is not applicable to photo printing which is essentially 100%. Therefore, the ink consumption will be nearly 7 times more rapid than the typical spec.

Depending upon what you will be printing, you might definately want to consider the separate cartridge per color printers (like the Canon 9000) vs. the multi-color cartridges common to the consumer and general business inkjets. You might get equivilent, or better color output from one of these, but if you print images with a lot of the same colors, you can easily exhaust one of the color chambers far ahead of the others and still have to replace the entire multi-color cartridge.

Hope that this helps you evaluation process.

[2tall]

I tried Ofoto, and I was amazed at the quality. The subjects in the photos seem to pop out more than previous 35mm film prints I've done.

Part of this may be due to the fact that I prepared the images in Photoshop including adjusting levels. Doing auto-levels, for example, could do wonders for some images..... so another benefit of going digital.