How to determine print quality of a photo before printing?

[denreisan]

Even after touching up a photo in software can look completely different when printed. Is there a way to see how a photo would look in software as it would when printed out? I know factors like monitor settings, software settings, and different printer models all affect the quality of a print, but I'd like to know how others / professionals get around this instead of having to spend money on actual prints, editing in software, printing, editing in software, printing again...etc.

Thanks!

[trentonmcanally]

The only true way to find out how pics look are to get a calibrated monitor and have sample prints printed up. You can also get a sample picture printed up and compare to your monitor and adjust from there. Make sure you also edit your pictures using the color profile from the print lab you use (any good lab will provide this for you.) Also any good lab will print samples for you to compare with.

I use WHCC, Mpix pro and Millers lab and all offer sample prints for fee.

[prince]

Just a quick link to what I found on mpix

Mpix.com - Help

[teaking]

The major things to check are you have calibrated your monitor to keep it simple il say the shot was taken in sRGB then opened in your editor also set to work in sRGB. You may have had some test prints and revese calbrated the monitor from the initial hardware calibration to look as close to the prints as possible. You have the printer profile from the lab set up and you enable softproofing but only to view out of gamut colours and correct from there. Usualy you would view the image at 50% and sharpen for print and this is as close as you can get you have to remember monitor technology adds colours and printer technology subtracts so it isnt always a perfect match but you can get close

[denreisan]

Thank you very much for all the help. I will look into all the links and settings on my monitor and software. I'm using Fotomoto.com for my prints and I believe they don't offer unlimited samples.