Print at home or use Photobox or simular??

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I have been using just a canon IP4000 for quite a while now. Its coming to a time that I need to either buy a better A3 printer or use a professional printing company.

My question is those that use Photobox or simular how good are they? Have you had issues with colour matching or anything and does it work out cost effective.

For those that print at home, what kit are you using and is this cost effective for you and how?

Im not earning enough from photography to buy the latest and greatest printing kit for home and if im honest I would rather spend it on kit to enable me to take pics than to print.

But with doing more weddings and recieving orders I want to offer quality prints and the Ip4000 isnt up to the job full time.
 
For printing at home, a Canon IP4300, Canon Carts(dont trust compats), Ilford Gallerie Classic paper and the Ilford profile for an IP5200 for that paper.

Havent sent many pics of for printing. Tend to put em on Flickr.
 
On this note...was looking at getting an A3 printer for uni.........has anyone used /does anyone use continuous ink systems? They look really good value for money...sorry to hijack the thread but its along the same lines :)
 
personally, I wouldnt bother printing at home any more.

there are so many options out there now, photobox and the like, or places in town like max spielman, that offer printing that is much cheaper than you could print at home, and the quality / colour has been spot on every time i have used them.


yeah if you consider yourself to be profesional, or have a constantly calibrated monitor and a printer that is constantly calibrated to your monitor so you are defiantly getting WYSIWYG images then maybe print at home.
 
I've recently ordered a bunch of photos aswell as a 'Stylebook' from Photobox and I'm extremely pleased with the photos overall aswell as the service.

They also usually do an introductory offer of 30 free prints or so, so a good way to see for yourself.

The only problem I've noticed using Photobox is the resolutions of the original photos have to be fairly high in order to get a good looking photo result, although saying you do wedding photos I assume you shoot at fairly high resolution anyway.
 
Well its funny how things have gone. I have been asked to do 3 weddings since I took some pics of my sisters wedding last month. I created a web site in hope to become a freelance photographer at some point in the future my enjoyment was the main reason (looking for moving away from the day job!). My portfolio on the site is basic at best but I have been lucky so far, plus have a good contact at a Bridal shop. With things moving so fast I don't have the money to buy more pro kit such as a high priced printer. Plus things might slow down after these three weddings.

I looked at the stylebook and thought this was impressive too.
 
CIS systems are good - If you are printing lots. And lots. And lots.

It's the same price for a litre of ink as it is for a cartridge.

But your still looking at a few hundred to get set up + the cost of your printer. That's a lot of prints at photobox.

At around £20 a litre, for a 6 ink printer that's £120 quid + ink kit + printer.


Rough figures made up:
Say £400 to setup, and PB does prints for 10p - that's 4000 prints.

If you think you'll print less than that then go PB, if you reckon 4000 prints is nothing and you can afford the upfront payments, then get a CIS system.
 
For those who use the printing services, how do they handle colour profiles? Do you need to send them a profile to print against, or do you just send and hope that the colours match?

Persoannly, I can't see how they can accurately match colour without know how you viewed the image during processing.
 
I think they use the standard adobe colour system. So the question really is, is you monitor acurate.


If you monitor is not reasonably acurate then no matter what you do, even if you buy a £10000 laser printer, you will never get exactly what you see on the screen
 
Bolerus said:
I think they use the standard adobe colour system. So the question really is, is you monitor acurate.


If you monitor is not reasonably acurate then no matter what you do, even if you buy a £10000 laser printer, you will never get exactly what you see on the screen
Click to expand...

Not really sure what you mean there. I assume you are meaning that the colour space they are working in is Adobe RGB. This isn't really the same thing I mean.

Without knowing the ICC profile of the target printer, you won't be able to proof the image you have edited, so you have no idea what the colour will be like when printed. Colour management still makes my brain hurt :(
 
whitecrook said:
You need to match your screen to the test print that you get back with your first order. (or request one)

Or create a test print, get it printed and then adjust, and reprint.
Click to expand...

That makes more sense. Basically what I was asking was do tyou have to do this, or will they send you a profile so you can proof... (just asked it in a round about way :))
 
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