Color me impressed

Today I just go a bunch of prints that I had ordered through iphoto. These prints came from a Kodak subsidiary, Ofoto. The prints came in the mail two days after I ordered them. They looked fantastic.

The prints were very glossy, quite thin and had a great continuos tone quality. They were cheap too: $1 for a 5”x7” and $3 for an 8”x10”. I printed them from highly manipulated photoshop images which Colin (my primary employer) shot. They nearly matched inkjet prints I made for quality, and were about the same price. What you get with the inkjet prints is quick feedback and more variety of papers you can use.

The only thing I worry about is that this is a consumer oriented service. I hope they don’t try to do any sort of automated correction. I also hope their prints are consistent. One of the great advantages of digital photography is that you can get the same print from a saved file without having to make all the alterations again.

I looked online and found other services like this one. One of the most promising looked to be printroom.com. They have a specific service for professional photographers, they won’t apply any automatic correction if you ask and their prices seem reasonable. They will even use ICC profiles, which means they are likely serious about good consistent color.

I only found a a few reviews of these services online. None are from major sources like magazines, but I think I trust an individual reviewer more. I guess I will probably have to test some of these services out. Shouldn’t be hard; they’re pretty cheap.