The Problem with Printing

After spending a long time in town this afternoon, this ended up being my lunch – which was so late it might as well be relabelled as a dinner entrée! (Mind you we did a repeat performance of the pumpkin soup tonight, as requested by Jeff who clearly really enjoyed it! Yay me!)

I needed some photos printed. I took delivery of some blank cards & envelopes the other day, as now that I have a nice collection of local images, I had the grand idea to make some cards to add to my market stall

I miss film and proper photographic labs. I really do!

Back in my former life I owned a shop that (in part) developed and printed film. Of course, as digital slowly crept in and film slithered out, the industry changed and people either weren’t printing photos or were expecting super cheap jobs. (Due to some of the bigger chains installing labs and retailing their printing at under the price of what it cost for normal labs to produce a print.) We eventually closed the lab side of things and readjusted.

So, the consequence with digital and people not printing like they used to is the loss of labs with people that know what they are doing when it comes to your printing. I have to drive about 25-30 minutes to take my files to Harvey Norman which is a furniture, computer, homewares shop that happen to do printing as well. Its all booths to DIY and regardless of what you do at home to your files, their system is different and their screens show different again to the final print. There is no person who knows what they are doing attending to the fine tuning of your images.

So instead of this –

I get this –

So honestly I don’t think I got very far today. I plan to call my old lab in Canberra tomorrow to talk to them about sending them my files. At least I know when they are being printed, someone is casting a knowledgeable eye over the process.

I did manage to print some details on the cards and a number of the images will be usable

I found some excellent packs of glassine bags locally to pack the final product in too!

I guess I am quite picky when it comes to the quality of my photographs – (haha – says she while posting photos taken tonight under revolting light!!) I don’t mind paying more to get a better job done, but unless I send away to professional labs, there is no choice in this area.  Home printing is out – Paper and inks are very expensive and the life of the print compared to true photographic paper (that has to go through a wet chemical process) just doesn’t compare.

Anyway – its a little challenge to get it fine tuned and looking good… then the real test will be if people actually buy them! 🙂

I’ll leave you with a few of the images that I plan to use on my first lot of cards!

Cheers!