I think Mike is right about the cost-effectiveness of doing 4"x6" prints on
your inkjet. If they're just 'snapshots' it is probably more economic to
take the negatives in and get reprints from the Costco (or whoever...)
But for larger prints, I think there is a crossover point where doing them
on inkjet makes economic sense. I suspect that crossover size is probably
about 8"x10". When I have looked, an 8x10 from a negative is about $3 or so.
For that I think you can buy a couple sheets of 'photo-quality' paper and
enough ink to make the picture. If you do it yourself, you can choose to
spend time in Photoshop getting the color, contrast, cropping, and overall
appearance just the way you want it. I don't think the $3 reprint 8x10 will
have too much skilled printing lab technician time spent getting the
contrast, shadow detail, and color just right... a custom lab will do this,
but not for $3.
Bigger prints are usually even less cost-effective to get done, IIRC an
11x14 is about $10 or so, and you can buy a few sheets of paper and
sufficient ink for that much. Then when you want -really big- prints, it
again becomes logical to 'send it out' but in this case I'd be inclined to
do the Photoshop work myself, then take the file to someplace with one of
those 24" or 36" or bigger inkjet printers.
I wish I could take pictures worthy of being printed 24x36 or bigger...
<sigh> Last time I did that was a few years ago for work, and we paid ~$12
per square foot for trade-show display product shots at 36x48. I think they
were done on a 600dpi printer, but from four or five feet away the prints
looked good.
--
Jim Brokaw
OM-'s of all sorts, and no OM-oney...
on 8/15/03 8:09 AM, Mike at watershed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>
>>
>> Good Lord! Get a digital printer - for less than $250 U.S. - and you can
>> crank out 4x6s till the proverbial cows come home.=20
>>
> Cranking out 4x6's on consumer injet printers isn't cost effective and
> is time consuming. I only use one for prints mostly over 8x12 because I
> like to, not for any economic or quality reasons.
>
> mike
>
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