tips on where to print your photos

i am a true believer that pictures are meant to be hung or displayed.  i love decorating my home with meaningful pictures. getting prints of images that you just invested in at your session is an important decision. whether you decide to order prints from your photographer or print them yourself, you want to make sure that you are getting the best quality possible.

i have always printed my pictures and i have printed them from may places over the years. in this guide i chose 4 printers, i know that there are many more. i will compare them all to my professional fine art quality printer, miller’s professional imaging.

i chose to show a color image and a black & white image. all were printed out as a 4X6. now lets see how they compare.

here are the prints from my preferred printer, miller's.

Walmart

The Breakdown

paper type: fujifilm paper

print quality: what i noticed first is that the focus is really soft on the image. in the original you can see that it is crisp and in focus and these are not. the second thing is that the black & white printed much darker and lost some detail in the shadow areas. the color image was pretty good over all but lost more detail in the highlights.

i can't really get over the soft focus on this. it really makes a big difference.

Target

The Breakdown

paper type: Kodak Xtralife II Paper

print quality: the focus on these images are almost hyper real. they are incredibly crisp. while it is not how the original image looked I like that they are in focus. the color photo is much brighter and the black & white is dark in the back ground and some of the background is completely lost.

i would give these a win over Walmart but i wouldn't print a black & white image from Target.

Shutterfly

The Breakdown

paper type: Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper

print quality: these prints have a nice luster to them. it gives a nice sheen without being super glossy. they are actually quite crisp and in focus. the black & white is noticeably pinker in tone than in the Miller's sample. it is also a lot brighter. the back ground is a good example of how bright it was printed. the color photo has a cooler tone to it. the Miller's sample was very warm as it was taken at sunset. It still looks like sunset but it doesn't feel as much like it.

overall I like these but would still prefer Miller's.

Amazon Prints

The Breakdown

paper type: Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper

print quality: so this paper was the same as Shutterfly. which is great because i think it is very nice paper. however i immediately see that the focus is soft on the images. the black & white images is washed out loosing some of the nice shades in the babies face. the color is also on the cooler side loosing some of that warm sunset feeling.

overall not very impressed with the printing of my images. even with the free shipping they would have to up the printing game for my business again.

this was actually an eye opening experience for me as well. i have chosen price over quality myself but now that i have seen the difference i will definitely choose the quality prints to save my special memories of my family. one thing that I especially love about miller’s is that their prints have a 100 year in home display life and a 200 year dark storage life. rest assured that my prints will have a long healthy life for my kids and their kids and so on to enjoy.

i hope that you can take away from this experiment that there are many options for printing and that each one is not the same. i hope that you will be able to print your important memories with a better understanding of how the printer stacks up against one another. i encourage you to sample test as well if i didn't test the printers in your area.