Erilar

In article <[email protected]>, Jeremy Henderson
<[email protected]> wrote:

    > In fact I am mystied by the idea of printing your photos at home - you
    > have to buy a printer, mess with inks, buy special paper in a variety
    > of sizes, experiment with setting up the parameters, and wait for the
    > thing to print out. Then you have a print that will probably fade
    > rapidly in sunlight.
    >
    > The alternative is to upload your photos to a photo service and next
    > day pick up your gleaming prints from their store (I recommend Photo
    > Service in Frogland - which I tried out at Mixi's suggestion).
    > Infinitely better idea.

You mean most people who have computers don't HAVE printers? And if you
have a decent printer you already have made that investment. Buying
photo paper for it is far cheaper than paying someone to make prints for
you any day. And as for different sizes of paper: use scissors if you
can't afford a paper cutter. Talk about inept!!!

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

Erilar

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] wrote:

    > As long as you have a large screen TV you can just run your slide show
    > from the DVD using a CD disk with JPEG images.

I can run one straight from my camera...

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

Erilar

In article <[email protected]>, Mxsmanic
<[email protected]> wrote:

    > The test print you make at home will cost more than the "high-priced
    > print."

How can it? Of course, if I wanted a print larger than my printer I'd
need to do that, but I have too many things for the amount of wall space
I have already.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

Mxsmanic

erilar writes:

    > How can it?

Because a quality ink-jet print requires expensive paper and expensive
ink. Both of these are sold at very high prices with very handsome
margins that make them uneconomical compared to true silver-based color
prints from a lab.

--
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Mxsmanic

randee writes:

    > Come to think of it
    > though, I am not sure how the longevity of BOW positive film compares to
    > BOW negative film.

Silver-based B&W prints and negatives have an open-ended lifetime that
can easily extend beyond a century. Metallic silver is extremely
stable.

    > And therein is the problem with digital - no slides for slideshows.

Some people might see that as an advantage.

--
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Mxsmanic

Miguel Cruz writes:

    > But it's a lot easier to come by an LCD projector than a slide projector
    > these days.

Compare LCD projection side-by-side with optical projection of slides,
and your jaw will hit the floor.

--
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Mxsmanic

PTRAVEL writes:

    > The only reason for doing digital prints at home is exactly the same reason
    > for doing chemical prints at home: you want complete control over your image
    > so that you can produce the highest quality output that looks the way you
    > want it to, i.e. cropped, color-balanced, level-adjusted, Gaussian-blurred,
    > dodged-and-burned (that is to say the digital equivalent) the way that looks
    > best to your eye, and not to the eye of some mass photofinisher (or, even,
    > worse, some machine belonging to a mass photofinisher).

Except that now, you can do this all digitally, then have the digital
file printed "as-is" at a photo lab, and all your customization will be
preserved. This is how I do it, and the results are stunning. No need
for printing at home, which introduces additional variables without
adding any additional flexibility.

    > However, it is ridiculous to say there is no reason to print at home.

If you want the best prints, you must go to a lab--unless you have the
means to prepare chemical prints at home.

--
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Mxsmanic

Frank F. Matthews writes:

    > Then again with digital you can do the processing at home and use the
    > lab to put the image on paper. All of the processing you describe can
    > be done before you sent the resulting images off for printing.

Exactly.

And if you know the parameters of the lab's printing system, and you
tell them to print the file exactly as-is, you can get prints that are
as identical to the image on your screen as technology will allow. It's
very impressive. No more unpleasant surprises when printing.

--
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Mxsmanic

erilar writes:

    > You mean most people who have computers don't HAVE printers?

Yes. This is especially true if you're talking about printers suitable
for printing photos.

    > And if you have a decent printer you already have made that
    > investment.

A photo printer is a separate and expensive investment, and it still
won't match what you can get from a lab.

    > Buying photo paper for it is far cheaper than paying someone
    > to make prints for you any day.

No, it's not.

I've been there, and I've done all this. A lab is cheaper and faster
and gives better results than a home printer, even a good home printer.

    > And as for different sizes of paper: use scissors if you
    > can't afford a paper cutter. Talk about inept!!!

With the current price of photo paper, every snip costs you a fortune.

--
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Mxsmanic

erilar writes:

    > I guess I've jsut been playing with graphics on my Mac for too long to
    > see a problem here.

How much scanning and printing do you do?

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Mxsmanic

Miguel Cruz writes:

    > Nope, that was a guess, based on the really obvious (and distracting)
    > stochastic dithering in light-toned areas which seems to be the hallmark of
    > inkjet printing.

That does sound like ink-jet. Dithering is not necessary for dye-sub or
chemical prints. If it pop right out of a small kiosk, it wasn't a
chemical print, but in theory it could still be a dye-sub prints.
Dye-sub prints do indeed rival chemical prints in quality, since they
work on similar principles. Ink-jet prints are inferior for reasons
related inevitably to the way they print.

--
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Mxsmanic

PTRAVEL writes:

    > If you want high-quality prints, the answer today is the same as it always
    > was: go to a professional lab, or do it yourself.

True if the highest quality is necessary. But today's cheapo prints
from neighborhood photo shops are dramatically superior to what was
available even a few years ago, mainly due to the advent of digital
printing systems like the Fuji Frontier. The Frontier and its software
can extract usable, attractive images from anything. I've even tested
this by deliberately almost ruining a roll of film (bad exposures), and
then asking a lab to print the roll with automatic adjustment. Every
photo came out acceptable. In the olden days of analog minilabs, most
of the prints would have been useless.

--
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Mxsmanic

erilar writes:

    > Well, that is if the newbies don't know much about computers and
    > printers either... I've had a digital camera for a few months now, I
    > get great prints, and I can fit them together to make a neat page for my
    > foto album as well rather than physically cutting and pasting. Of
    > course, I know how to use both computer and printer and I buy the right
    > paper.

When you scan film, you discover just how far digital still has to go.

--
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Frank F. Matthews

erilar wrote:
    > In article <[email protected]>,
    > [email protected] wrote:
    >
    >
    >>As long as you have a large screen TV you can just run your slide show
    >>from the DVD using a CD disk with JPEG images.
    >
    >
    > I can run one straight from my camera...
    >


You can run straight from your camera if you want to spend time
organizing the shots onto one disk and if it is easy to rename the
shorts to control the sequence. It is also very convenient to be able
to do at least some post processing. All in all I find it much easier
to work from a photo CD run in a DVD player.

Poldy

In article <201120041442112449%[email protected]>, Go Fig <[email protected]>
wrote:

    > Yes, and Sony has an app for this. Sony and Apple seem to have a close
    > relationship on hardware products.

Tell that to the iPod and Network Walkman teams at both companies.