Don't use Tesco's... unless you like looking seasick
 

For any prints that I make for myself, I use my Espon 1290, which I've had profiled for a couple of different papers, and get good results. However, injet prints from it are not 100% lightfast and will fade over time. So when ever I do I shoot for other people I have the prints produced professionally and can strongly recommend ProAm Imaging, particularly for big enlargements as their prices are fantastac and the quality excellent.

Recently I did some portraits for a friend of mine and sent my disk off to ProAm and sure enough, I got an excellent set of prints back. When she saw them she was so pleased she wanted some extra 6x4s to send to friends & family. For small numbers of reprints, the postage cost of sending them to ProAm make it more economical to have them done locally, so... I went to Tesco's

The results were dreadful - a horrible green cast so that she looked seasick. I've attached the original, and a copy that I've adjusted to look like the prints I got back from Tesco.

Now Ok they gave me a refund, but what really anoyed me was their attitude. At first they claimed that they could only judge if the colours were wrong by seeing the original - I mean - as if anyone is that colour unless they are really ill :confused: Anyway I went home and came back with a copy from ProAm, and a copy of a test print (attached) I use for checking colour which is available full size from here. They printed the test image and looked at my originals and did agree theirs were "a little bit green" Then I was met with comments like " there's nothing we can do", the engineer calibrated it the week before last", "I'm not technically minded" & "I'm not compensating you" (for my wasted two hours visiting their store three times for no result)

Now I was not going to bother to complain. However like most of us here I’m quite passionate about my photography. So I thought I owed to all their customers who either don’t know any different and have never seen the true colours, or are thinking that the poor colour is their fault or down to their lack of skill as a photographer, to raise it with them to give them the opportunity to address the issues. So I wrote the the store manager.

And guess what their reponse was. Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Not a dicky bird. So I guess they dont care :(

Rant over - just don't say you havent been warned

I have not outsourced digital printing but your experiance is very similar to the old film days.

As a test for my camera club, I loaded 3 cameas with the same film and shot a variety of scenes with each camera with same lens, so in essence I ended up with 3 identical exposed films. Sent them off to 3 well known at the time labs, and got back three quite different results. One of which was so poor you would not believe.

Obviously not a lot has changed since then.

So links, like yours, to quality printers are well worth posting.

Don

A similar story here, I gave Tesco a whirl and all came back cropped and over exposed. I complained and received a refund but they were not happy suggesting I should have noticed on the self service screen (yeah!). I uploaded the same files to photobox and they came back properly exposed and uncropped.

Thanks for introducing ProAm as I am looking for a pro lab for prints although happy with photobox I am looking for better still, if exists.

We have another problem with Tesco as Sarah took James shopping and gave him a banana while they walked round - I know this is technically shoftlifting but it is tolerated with small children. Tesco staff were very heavy handed and could have been more friendly. Once bitten twice shy Sarah went to Sainsbury's and asked staff about giving James a banana and their attitude could not be more different - suggesting is is normal practice.

Guess where we shop now!

It amazes me that they still manage to mess it up, especially as its all electronically metered. Not like the old days where the shop in the Bull yard in Coventry did their own developing and the guy in charge was colour blind.

But mess up they do. Klicks were aweful I just had them burn the negatives to CD picked the ones I wanted and then had CoLab re do them. Green casts are pretty normal. I did try ASDA's print a tshirt service as an experiment.

Not good.

I stay with Photobox.they have very good offers(2xA3 for the price of one).This poster offer is running until the 30th Nov.also a image they sent ,of a horse,a present ,had red ink droplets on the horses mane.I phoned them and a replacement arrived the next day,free of charge,no postage etc
I even sent an image of one our dogs which was taken approx 10yrs ago,with a 1x3 pixel cam,it received a "poor" rating re quality ,not surprised,but the photo when printed in a A3 looked remarkably clear.

Am also very pleased with Photobox.

For in-house I also have the Epson 1290 and, don't laugh too much, having had all sorts of trouble keeping colour balance using matt and/or Ilford gallerie Classic pearl, I ran out today and resorted to the gloss that came in the trial pack - brilliant! OK do laugh :p

Just found this thread....yuk, the green overcast is awful!

Several reasons why this could have happened...
If your photo was done from a CD, memory card etc via an order 'kiosk' there's not normally much the lab assistant can do with most types of software installed in the lab shops.
If your photo was done by handing over a neg or slide then it would've been scanned to produce the print. most software then enables manual overriding to adjust colour balance and brightness.

Either way, the electronic file (from neg scan or kiosk) is sent to the same print processor machine....on this end of the lab nothing has changed since the advent of digital cameras. (unless you go for 'instant print' machines...that's a different story)

From that print, personally I suspect the chemicals in the print processor were either due for a change (chemical life is often 'extended' in order to cut costs with the cheaper labs), or they were having problems with lab processor PH, or the processor just needed a darn good service.

I suppose all of that is true, and you get what you pay for. For me if I want a print doing properly I'll take them into a place that has a proper quality control system, not into some high street place where the kid behind the counter can barely manage to work the till.

The worst set of prints I ever saw was from a roll of photos someone had taken on their honeymoon. Now they camera they were using was a point-n-shoot all in one snapshot camera. Nothing on any of the photos was in focus, landscape, view from balcony, sitting on the beach, not a damn thing. He was saying "I guess I messed them up", I reckon you'd really have to work at it to screw 36 photos up with one of those cameras. Reprints were fine.