Shacks by the road

[geckojoe17]

What is the best way to have a picture printed?

I had this printed as an 8x10 at Walgreens. I got artifacts (like bright shadow smudges) around the top right side of the tallest tree. That tree also looks a little overexposed in the bright areas.

It also cropped the the long direction so that all I got was the red building and the two to the left of it.

And finally, what is the largest uncropped photo I could reasonably expect to print from a 12 MP Nikon D-90 without noticeably sacrificing picture quality?

Thanks in advance for the help. I'm a complete newbie to all of this.

[windrider86]

I am not a real good one for offering technical information. But, taking it to Walgreens is part of the problem. Thier procedures for printing images is to run it thru a machine. What the machine says is what it is.
Try using a service that will offer you "fixes" if you request it. I have used Adorama and am floored by the quality of thier prints. And the prices are very affordable as well

[geckojoe17]

Thanks. I'll give them a try.

[JFSanders]

The number of pixels has no relation to the quality of the image. The biggest print allowed will be limited not by Mpixels but by the sharpness of the image and the physical size of the sensor. A D90 is a cropped sensor camera as in it is physically smaller than a full frame sensor. And as such it will not allow as large a print theoretically than a D3.

Here are a couple of links to read. The ones for Ken Rockwell and Imaging Resource are particularly for your camera.

Imaging Resource

Ken Rockwell