Processing at printing stores

Hi all -

I just recently had my first paid event. My customers agreed to me providing their proofs on a CD or DVD-rom. They are going to have them printed themselves probably at a costco, walmart, cvs or something like that. Since the photos are already correctly processed by me, do they need to inform the place specifically not to do any processing of the photos and just print them as they are?

Thanks for your help. I'll post some of my results soon.

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I think it's best to advise your clients to request "no adjustments" when they order the prints. The kiosks at Wal*Mart have a checkbox for "auto enhance", which is checked by default and easy to miss.

I there is a print vendor that you deal with that produces consistent results, it wouldn't hurt to recommend them. To your clients.

Thanks Curtis!

What kind of processing do these places do to photos? Is it automatic adjustments on white balance, exposure, etc? If they forget to request no processing, could it really foul up the photos? I almost never print, so I'm very clueless about this part.

Thanks!

At places that employ thinking humans, they can adjust cyan, magenta and yellow to "fix" the color, or they can adjust the density of all four colors together (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to "fix" the brightness or exposure.

I'm not sure about the "auto enhance" software they have. It boggles my mind to think that a computer could be programmed to know what a picture is supposed to look like.

Step 18 at the bottom of this page

http://www.drycreekpho​to.com …sing_printer_pr​ofiles.htm

will give you an explanation of auto corrections and how to check that they are indeed disabled. Also information about how they re size and crop your photos to prevent white striping. You might also want to take a look at the main page as it is good primer in color management.

Markubig, You might also consider delivering the photos sized to a certian print dimension and tell your client you have done this (and the size). If you don't you run the risk of them asking Costco for an 8x10 when you setup for 4x6 and the results are poor because someones head or arms get cut off when the automated system does the resize and crops from the center. The client can deal with this if they use the kiosk and go through every image but they may not understand. Dennis

markubig:

I have no advice to add. This all seems sound to me. But here's what I have to say:

CONGRATS ON YOUR FIRST PAYING GIG!!!!!!

you can block those auto enhance settings from showing up on the back of prints. I know because our frontiers (and literally every other pro lab) has that set so that the filmbarcode is read and an ICC profile for that filmtype is applied and they are "auto enhanced" to match the film. No lab will confirm this, most dont even know it exists because the frontier scanner workstation does it in the background. You have to get a fuji password which techs dont normally give out to disable this. And why would you want to, usually the ICC portion of autoenhance works better than a human could do reasonably timewise.

As for the auto enhance kiosks, and also what most drug stores run their images through, its i2e coulour science. http://www.colour-science.com/ As far as autocorrections go, this company is awsome. But, dont use it on my images please

Don't forget to sign a letter of consent.
A friend of mine got stopped at our local WalMart for my images on a CD.

oh, good call . . . thanks for the tip!