Help! with printing

[whereisjohnwilson]

I took some of my pictures to walmart (I know I know) tonight to print. Two questions:

1. My prints are darker than they look on my computer and on Flickr. Is that a product of the printing (i used the Fuji machine) or do I need to lighten my pictures (in general) if I know they are going to print?

2. Do you crop your pictures 4x3 (or whatever) so they print correctly, or do you crop to taste and send them off to a pro printer who will print them exact?

I'm a n00b, but I'm super excited about this hobby, so any feedback is appreciated. Check out my pictures below.

Thanks - John

[lputman]

I've moved this to a more appropriate area.

1. You probably need to calibrate your monitor. There are various methods for this, I personally use a huey Pantone.

2. I crop for whatever print sizes I want and then send those off to print.

[BCampbell]

If all your photos are darker than your monitor, you will definitely need to lighten your monitor. Buying a calibration tool is the best solution, but in the meantime you can do an eyeball adjustment by comparing several of your shots to the image on your monitor and adjusting.

We usually set our monitors with a high brightness and contrast to make things pop, but this will definitely make it look like our photos are brighter than they really are.

I would also suggest not printing at WalMart, but if it's all you got, it's all you got. Look around for a local print lab who prints in-house. It'll be more expensive but you'll have people who know what they're talking about as a resource.

Definitely crop before you send the picture out. Why would you let someone else or, worse, a machine, make that important decision for you?

[whereisjohnwilson]

I set my screen (macbook pro) to the highest brightness level. I think that is why I think the pictures are brighter than they are when they are printed. The look fine on my computer, but dark on the prints.

I crop all my pictures to taste, but I didn't think about the fact that the printers at walmart would only print certain dimensions. I just wasn't thinking, so some of my squarish pictures were still printed 4x3.

Will pro printers print squares, off shapes, etc?

[JamHan]

This is actually a question I have as well.
I took mine to Wal-Mart (haven't found someone I trust yet in my area, not that I trust W/M) and also sent the same pictures to Qoop (I found out about them through Picnik).

The quality of the pictures from Qoop far surpass Wal-Mart and are not much more expensive, but I still had the problem of my pictures getting cut up! To explain: In Picnik, I crop as desired and resize the photo to 740x___ so it can be used here and also to allow my computer to run smoothly. Then, I do all the other editing that I like and send it to Wal-Mart or Qoop. The picture I see on my screen is not the picture I get back as they have all been edited to fit the 4x3 or 4x6 photo paper. I don't know how to resize the pictures to fit the paper I'll be printing them on as this is a problem I have never faced before and it's a prob. that both W/M and Qoop gave me.
I'm a very visual person, so.....here's a visual:

This is what I edited (and expected to get back):


This is what I actually got back:



It's not their fault, I just have never had to edit an image's size so it would print the whole picture the size and shape I edited it. How do I know what size to make the image for printing and then, how do I do that?
This is something I really need to figure out as I want to sell my photography. But if I can't print the images the way I want them how can I sell them?

Thanks for any help......(developing film was SOOOOO much easier!!!! This was never a problem for me when I was developing my own prints),

~Katie

[JamHan]

Ok, so I see from another thread where I probably am confusing "resizing" with "cropping." So, I tried to crop the above picture in Picnik to 4x6 but, of course, it will not allow me to keep the whole picture and *resize* it so it would fit on a 4x6 card. Even the other sizes up to 8x10 will not allow me to keep the image intact. I don't know what numbers I would need to enter for the "actual size" blanks (in Picnik) or how to determine what those would be. Can anyone help with that?

[provodnik]

When you take your images to Wal-Mart to be printed, you have to follow at least two steps:
1) resize your image to 6x4 or 4x6 (same thing)
2) change the canvas size to 1842x1228 or 1228x1842 depending on the orientation
Their cropping of final prints is not their stupidity. It is a function of printers they use. All you need to do is to work with their equipment.