Best Photo Print Service for UK?

I have been using photobox but the thing that drives me nuts about them is that the "shrink to fit" option adds huge white borders. It really sucks, other than that their print quality is pretty good.

Any suggestions?

I use www.dscolourlabs.co.uk

magwai wrote in post #9998772
I have been using photobox but the thing that drives me nuts about them is that the "shrink to fit" option adds huge white borders. It really sucks, other than that their print quality is pretty good.

Any suggestions?

Does it add borders on all 4 sides, or just 2 of them?

I use Loxley Color as my UK lab, so I can drop ship to UK customers easily. Pro's only.

+1 for Loxley, they've been excellent for me.

I use Photobox but I always ensure my images are the correct ratio for the print I am requesting, therefore not needing the "shrink to fit" option.

A guy at work got the same image printed by Photobox, Loxley, and a couple of others, and his opinion was Photobox was the best.

I would disagree with Photobox performing better than Loxley as a general rule. Over the past few years I've used them both a fair bit and everytime I've had a problem with an image it has been via Photobox...on sending the exact same source file to Loxley I get a perfectly satisfactory print back.

Having said that, in my experience Photobox are fine for most non-critical stuff - but I've come to learn that if I absolutely want a print right, I should send it to Loxley.

Everyone's mileage varies, I guess...but that's what I've found over the last few years.

JuSlaughter wrote in post #9999003
I use Photobox but I always ensure my images are the correct ratio for the print I am requesting, therefore not needing the "shrink to fit" option.

+1

Either make sure the aspect ratio is correct or use their crop function to trim the excess.

hollis_f wrote in post #9999127
+1

Either make sure the aspect ratio is correct or use their crop function to trim the excess.

i have a 7.5:1 panorama to print. they highest aspect ratio they offer is 2.5:1. i think i need to chop it into 3 prints then reassemble later.

Exactly, everyone has their own opinions of the different suppliers. The killer for me though is that Photobox integrates with my zenfolio site, which saves me time and money as the customer orders from my site, using the same functions as on photobox but still within my site, it gets dispatched directly to the customer without any photobox indentification so it looks like it came directly from me.

Magwai, try posterjack. They are in germany but they dispatch pretty quickly. I think they do custom sizes for prints and pretty reasonable too

last September as an experiment I sent some photos to be printed at Photobox, Jessops, Snapfish and Peak Imaging. The photos that came back from Photobox and Peak Imaging were the best. I personally preferred Peak Imaging my friend's wife (the photos were of her, my friend and their kids) preferred Photobox because she thought she looked better in them - I still thought Peak Imaging was better (but more expensive).

I think you can divide phot printing services into two types - those you upload, can do some additional tweaks and hope for the best (and I think Photobox is best in class here) and those which will give you an ICC profile of the paper/printer that will be used to print the photo. The latter are profesional printers and unless you can do colour management in your editing software (Photoshop can do it but Elements cannot) you'll be missing out on a big part of the added value that professional print services offer - I am assuming that the monitor is also colour callibrated.

I haven't used Loxley but will give them a go.

Try
http://www.proamimagin​g.com/
I find them very good