online printing

[Paul Shields]

Thought I'd just mention my experiences with using online printing (in the UK). The max I can print at home is A4, so when wanting to go bigger I had two choices - either get a bigger printer or use a third party. This is the first time I've used an online service, and my conclusion is that it was very pleasant and not that expensive for the UK (when taking into account my own labour and costs to do the same thing). They often seem to have offers so can be quite a bit cheaper if you stumble on a promotion.

I did my printing through http://www.byphotos.com, a UK company that I believe is owned by PhotoBox Ltd. Their website is very easy to use, and has useful cropping tools to ensure you get the most of your prints (as an aside, I found the aspect ratio of my E-1 prints were perfect for 16"x12" and only needed mild crops for 7"x5" and 10"x8").

Below is a quick shot of the 4 sample prints I tried - I wanted to check each print size to evaluate. Quality seems quite impressive, even for the largest print which is bigger than the native resolution of the E-1. I will probably over sharpen in future as prints can take a lot more sharpening than what appears on screen. Turnaround is about 4 working days, and the packaging was sound.

I'd recommended byphotos/PhotoBox for anyone who wants to print large now and again, but doesn't need the investment of A3 printers.

[Mr. Pickles]

It is good to know about UK online printing places, so thanks for posting it. Since Photo Camel is global, it is nice to have stuff outside of the US.

If in the US, places mentioned that are really good are White House Custom Color ( http://www.whcc.com/ ), and MPIX ( http://www.mpix.com/ ), and EZPrints ( http://www.ezprints.com/ ).

WHCC will send you files to make sure your calibrated correctly for their printers. They do a very good job.
MPIX doesn't do any of that, but they will auto color if you want. They have "metal" paper too.
EZPrints (SmugMug uses them) will do color correcting if you want too, and they shirt & printing and stuff.

I think MPIX now ships to Canada, but don't know about the others.

[Paul Shields]

Seems like my first online experience for printing was probably not the best value (although it may well be best quality). Looking around at other UK sites, there are some better deals out there. I aim to try some of them out in the course of my usual printing and I'll feedback anything of interest.

As an example (and for my own benefit as I'm interested in larger size prints), these are some of what I've found:

Pixaco
12x8 £0.98
18x12 £2.19
24x16 £8.99
30x20 £11.99

KodakGallery
8 x 6" £0.45
10 x 8" £1.20
12 x 8" £1.20


BonusPrint - lots of variations of size here, including some that fit perfectly for my 4/3rds format images.
8"x10" £1.20
10"x12" £2.99
16.5"x23.4" A2 Matt £9.99
23.4"x33.1" A1 Matt £19.99

8"x12" £1.20
12"x18" £4.99
16"x24" £9.99
20"x30" £16.99
24"x36" £17.99

8"x10.6" £1.20
12"x16" £4.99
16"x21.3" £9.99
20"x26.7" £16.99
24"x32" £19.99

There are some online reviews of these services. A useful UK one is found here.