Printing

peterz

Does anyone do their own printing or does everyone send photos to a lab.

Any info pro-con would be greatly appreciated.

Getting back into Photography after being away for 40 years. The learning curve is unbelievable. I hope you folks don't mind getting a LOT of questions.

Thanks...

PeterZ

fredjclaus

With the advent of digital photography, it's much cheaper to send it off to a lab. I have a friend who does a lot of printing with Red River paper and an Epson printer. His work is great as well. You wouldn't even know it was an inkjet.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.992789,-78.962135

peterz

Fred,
Thank you for your reply. The reason I ask is that I am going to get a Pro account on Smug Mug and I seem to feel that if you are trying to sell photos it's better to send them to a lab especially if you have everything on Smug Mug. I have a Canon Pro 9000 printer but I just wonder if its better to do everything through Smug Mug.

PeterZ

fredjclaus

Another thing you have to look at is this.

1. Do you have the ability to accept credit card payments off Smugmug?

2. Will your orders be coming from local customers only or all over?

If you have nothing but local clients and you are not local to Bay Photo or EZ prints, I would re-think ordering through them. But then again If you don't have a local PRO lab I would say yes. The quality from Bay Photo will be far better than WalMart as well as your canon printer.



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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.992515,-78.962236

gluwater

PeterZ remember that when you accept orders through your SmugMug site we handle all the credit card processing, printing, fulfillment and customer service. You and your customers are also covered by our great print guarantee: http://www.smugmug.com/prints/our-guarantee.mg. Most Pro's use us because they do not want to have to do the printing and fulfillment themselves. They'd rather focus on new clients, shooting and marketing.

If you're concerned with print quality send Bay an order of a few different images and also print them yourself and compare them. Bay does all color correction by hand and they'll get you the best prints possible from your images. Try them out and use that to help determine if you want to use them or not.

fredjclaus

Nick, you bring up some very good points. Thanks for chiming in on this topic. I didn't know all of that.