newbie needs help getting photos developed

[coeng]

Just got my first digital camera ever, Canon S230, last week. I'm new to digital photography, but very experienced in film photography, scanning, computers (i'm a software engineer), and the use of Photoshop.

I'm looking to find a method for preparing photos (taken with my camera) for development at a lab. I am using the highest resolution and lowest compression possible for the camera. This is giving me jpegs in the 1.4MB range.

I am very good with Photoshop when it comes to touching up pictures.

I have two series of questions to ask, one is for photos that need to be corrected in some way (red eye, stain in shirt, cropped, etc) and photos that are perfect just as they were taken.

For the photos that need to be corrected, what should I use for the cropping tool? fixed aspect ratio or fixed size (in pixels)?.

If no cropping required, should I resize the image anyway before burning to CD? I understand that there is a point where a photo print does not look any better (to the naked eye) when it comes to a certain threshold DPI.

For the photos that need no correction, should I resize them for printing? or does the lab know to do that?

Does anyone have a custom perfected method from start to finish? This would probably answer all my questions.

Any help would be great.

[Gibbs]

Hi'ya

I'll answer the one poser and leave some of the others to do the rest.

This is not specific to cropping, but more generally about resizing. I would use the 'fixed ratio' otherwise the moment you start to change height, width you'll get distortion - great for making people look taller, fatter etc, but not great for an accurate 'resize' of the image.

A good basic practise is always try to save an original and do your editing, cropping, resizing on a copy.

Have phun

[soft]

hey,

i go to a local camera store with cd/cf card to get great 4x6 prints. they got like a kodak picture station, or is theirs sony....either way, does a great job for the most part unless the photo paper has just been changed---then there are sometimes annoying lines, specks. great res, and the machine took care of all the resizing, etc, and had editing options that i've never tried....used it for kodak dc4800 and canon d60....

seen the same kind of deal at walmart and such places, but don't know if its the same machine/quality. definately worth a couple tries for 40-60 cents a print, depending on place/state, etc.

as far as editing, i sometimes correct stuff in photoshop before bringing it to print...still looks great, i even just go to print out digital art sometimes.

[jasenh7]

Hello,

My fiance works at one of the busiest photo labs here in the DFW area so I can shed a little light on this for you.

1. You can crop them however you like, but remember that the machine will perform a "Center Crop" to adjust the image for the ratio for the size you are printing. For example, do the math and you'll find that an 8X10 is a different ratio than a 4X6.

2. Call the local labs and look for one that prints on a Fuju Frontier. The Frontier is Fuji's latest and greatest for the one hour lab setups. I'm not sure what Kodak makes but this is what you want. This machine basically scans the film to a digital image and prints it with incredible quality. This way, by you supplying a digital image your giving it a file in the language it speaks.

Most will have the kiosks in the lobby. When you use the kiosk it sends the files to a computer attached to the Frontier for queueing purposes. The Lab Tech will then submit your job to the Frontier Printer for processing. This technique will yield much better prints than the ones that print directly in the kiosk themselves. Pay attention to where your pictures come from, if they are boxed in the lab that's good, if the clerk running the counter pulls them from a printer behind the counter it's not the best you can get, but you'll probably pay the same price.

3. Try around. The frontier has an incredible software in it for auto correcting images. I've seen it take a bad image and make phenominal corrections. You should be able to specify whether or not you want to have corrections made to the image. A good lab tech will also be able to make manual adjustments to make the picture better. However, this pride in their work is not shared by all the lab techs, some just let the machine do the work. My fiance works with a few of these unfortunately, which is why she usually does all the printing.

Sorry if I sound a bit biased and like a commercial. I've worked for the company (they didn't let me print because I sucked) and she's worked at several different stores and I've gotten a chance to see how things work and to even play with some of the equipment and have seen the results. Now I show people the prints off the Frontier from my G2 and people absolutely cannot believe that it's from a digital camera because of the clarity of the images.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

[jscher2000]

Alternative strategy for Fuji Frontier: ask that correction be turned off so the prints match your painstaking fine tuning. You can color match to your local printer. Check out Dry Creek Photo's free Frontier and Noritsu profiling service:

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Frontier/Targets/TargetPreparation.htm

[redbutt]

Check out ezprints.com. Great results.