The best place to print photos
This is a question I get asked a lot as a photographer.
But having only used professional print labs for the last 3 years, I genuinely couldn’t give an informative answer.
The professional print labs are only accessible by professional photographers, so where is the best place for everyone else to print their photos?
I decided enough was enough, we need to get to the bottom of this.
So I picked a photo that I felt would be a good test and sent it to 5 different photo labs to be printed as gloss 6×4 inch prints.
And you honestly won’t believe the difference between the prints I received!
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I will caveat that all of these prints did look better in person, unfortunately every form of scanning/photographing resulted in degradation.
However the difference between the standard of prints is shocking.
So now for the grand reveal…
1 = Professional print lab
I’m not being all cloak and dagger, but comparing the professional printers is a minefield in itself, so I’m just including this as a benchmark.
2 = Bonus Print (£0.14p/print, £2.99 delivery, arrived third)
In person this isn’t actually that bad, there’s a slight magenta hue but overall the colours were a good match, as was the contrast.
3 = Tesco (£0.40p/print, printed in-store)
This was terrible, really terrible. The colours are practically neon and there’s a very strong magenta and yellow hue.
4 = Boots (£0.42p/print, printed in-store)
Just awful. The colours weren’t as bad as the Tesco print, but the blacks and shadows were so deep, far too dark.
5 = Photobox (£0.19p/print, £2.99 delivery, arrived first)
Again in person this wasn’t bad. The colours had a slight magenta hue, but overall they were pretty good.
6 = Snapfish (£0.09p/print, £1.49 delivery, arrived second)
Really bad. We’ve got a neon baby where the colours have been so over saturated and lots of red and magenta – bleugh.
Conclusion
Obviously none come close to a professional print lab, but I wouldn’t expect them to.
However, I was impressed by Photobox and particularly Bonus Print.
So in conclusion I would recommend using Bonus Print and although in this test I printed gloss (this was just so it was a fair test as all the companies offer gloss) I would recommend always going for a matt or lustre finish. Bonus Print do offer a matt finish for their prints.
Matt and lustre finishes on photos have a more premium feel and don’t show finger print marks as easily.
