online photo printing services...

hey guys,

i want to run about 100 4x6's off of various pictures ive taken in the past 2-3 years to decorate my new apartment with.

i have found a few online stores right now, but what i am worried about is that most of the time my picture isnt cropped exactly 4x6 or what not.

if i do send the pictures to get printed, what is going to happen? will parts of it get cut off or will it just get downsized and get a bigger border than usual?

has anybody had experience with this?

thanks!

If you're printing borderless (which most people seem to do), parts will be cropped off. In addition, a bit of the image will be cropped on all sides to assure that there is no border on the print.

so i guess ill be better off recropping these images? man i hope i have some of the originals :S

You should crop them yourself to the aspect ratio you want at 300 DPI JPEG. This is what the service I use wants (www.whcc.com). Dennis

100 4x6? Just take it to a local store. You'll be able to ask people questions, get immediate help and make adjustments. If your photo is not 2:3 ration, it needs to be cropped to 2:3 ratio in order to print a 4x6. Any money you might save by sending them to a website will be lost with paying for shipping and hassles of cropping and prints that might come out too dark or too bright because your monitor probably isn't calibrated. Things that you can adjust if you sit down in a local camera store at a Fuji kiosk - not at Walmart please.

redhot - my monitor is calibrated, and im using correct color profiles for print. i believe i can get cheaper prints online, but i may run a few off locally just to see what its like.

however like i said before, im not looking for 100% perfection in these prints as they are going to be plopped onto my wall in my apartment for decoration :P

What I've realized recently is that buying online to save $5 or even $50 isn't doing your neighbor any good. If everyone got prints from one website look at how many local places would lose a service or even shut their doors. Yes that one website would add people, but not as much to account for all the local people that already supply and suport people printing locally.

It might be a little more locally, but if you don't spend local, people in your town aren't going to have the money to spend money on what you do for a living.

I've noticed so many small street side stores that are closed in my suburb and definately in Cleveland. It's not just websites offering cheap prices, but big box stores selling for prices that are below small stores own cost to order the product.

so true, redhot.

RedHot wrote in post #3715663
It might be a little more locally, but if you don't spend local, people in your town aren't going to have the money to spend money on what you do for a living.

well... im barely paying for college so how does that factor in :P

point taken though.