Ink Jet or Emulsion--Tired of Costco.

[dwdallam]

I've been using Costco warehouses for prints. With the exception of shadow areas in lanscape images being way to dark, thier automated Noritsu emulsion printers do a great job--I set mine to NO ADJUST and use their profiles. Portraits are perfect.

I have also used their online, clunky system of uploading prints and ordering, which means you don't have to drive back the next day or wait around for two hours to pink them up.

The problems I'm having cannot be resolved by Costco because no one is minding the store--it's all automated. You can't even file a complaint because the person that receives it is the person who is in charge of whatever it is you are complainging about, so nothing ever reaches upper management. It's an endless loop back and futile attempt.

Second, although the 20 x 30 prints are very good, they have paper indentations in them bordering on laughable. I've been through weeks of trying to get that resolved, and the final conclusion by CS was that there was no resolution. You jsut have to live with the indented prints, or return them.

Last, the cumberson uploading process--web browser or their own "resized before upload" applet and no way to track what images you have ordered (they only give you an order number, with no image names or dates or thumbnails of past orders) make it far to time consuming. It takes minutes to upload one poseter sized print with time outs and retries for each image. They say they are trying to appeal to the "professional" but they are FAR from a professional grade service. I guess they've never heard to FTP before.

The only thing they have going for them is price: 20x30 for 9.99 and 12 x 18 for 3.00 each.

So I'm ready to move on and save my time. I'd like to know if there are any cost effective EMLUSION printers online that do poster sized prints and 12 x 18s, or in the case that that is not possible (I've noticed most are ink jets), I'd like to know what ink-jet I should buy.

I want to print at least 12 x 18, and if the price isn't out of my budget, I'd be willing to buy a printer that will print 20 x 30s also. Are the prints from a high end ik jet as good as emulsions, such as those produced by the Noritsu printers that Costco uses? If so, which printer?

Thanks.

[Avalan]

As far as I know Noritsu 3411 -the high end Noritsu printer- is capable of printing up to 12" wide. So Which printer Costco is using for your 20x30 prints is a question. Maybe an inkjet printer and not Noritsu ?
Places like Costco are equipped with mass production printing machines and able to offer cheap or fast prints. they are meant for consumer market and we really can not expect pro service for the low price they offer.
If you are looking to inket printers these are some suggestions :
Consider reading about the topics related to inkjet printing. You can get a much better result with quality inkjet printer if you know what you are stepping in.
Probably it's better to start with a 13" printer and not wider to start. For this size it seems HP 9180 is the king at the moment. Check the reviews for this printer.

[Alaska]

Also gave Costo a try for 12 x 18 prints.  The price is right but the quality, even at the local store, is somewhat questionable.  Colors from the same image file will vary from week to week.  Looked at their online service, but you covered that well.

There are a number of commercial houses that do a good job.  However their prices will not be the same as Costco.  Here is one as an example.  http://www.whcc.com

Overall, I found the prints made on a Fuji Frontier more consistent than those made on a Noritsu.  As best I can tell the colors are juiced to make great looking flesh tones.  Something that I have no interest in.  Plus the images just did not "pop" on the Noritsu.  

To solve the issue of larger prints went to a Canon iPF 5000 and now have total control over all aspects of the print making process.  Is is cost effective in regard to Costco?  Most likely not.  It all can be summed up as to how much work do you want to do, how much control do you want to have over the process and are funds available to do something different.

Jim

[Dale_Cotton]

Another option to investigate is whether there is anyone in your vicinity with a home 13" or wider inkjet printer who is open to a little extra income.

For example, I spend two or three thousand a year on consumables for my Epson 4000 (17") printer. It costs me maybe $8 in consumables for me to do a 12x18" print (adding in the weekly ink loss from clogs and bogus auto-clean cycles). If someone here in the east-of-Toronto area offered me $15 per 12x18, that would provide a bit of financial relief.

My concern would be the almost inevitable disappointments that would arise from false expectations of the capabilities of pigment ink on paper to match a monitor. It's not just a matter of reduced gamut/blacks - that can at least be seen using Photoshop's soft proofing facility. There are all kinds of gotchas. One that reared up and bit me today is that my monitor's gamut is actually less than the 4000's in a few areas of the spectrum.

I've been on the other side of the fence too. Before I got the 4000 I had a 13" Epson 2200. Three or four times a year I used to drive a considerable distance to see a guy with a 24" printer. Even though I soft-proofed at home before burning a CD to take there to print from, at least half of all the prints I did there were wasted due to any number of issues. Very frustrating.

FWIW, the only pay-per-print arrangement I know of that seems to work is when people pay me to make prints of their own images who do not have colour-managed home systems and in most cases don't even have Photoshop or editing skills. They pay me to take their initial image file and massage it into a quality print - paying not just for consumables but for my time and experience.

As Jim/Alaska states:

There are a number of commercial houses that do a good job. However their prices will not be the same as Costco.

Perhaps the best alternative to throwing a fortune down the black hole of your own printer is spring for the commercial house print after you've worked the bugs out of an image as best you can using Costco as a source of inexpensive draft prints.

[dwdallam]

I may have solved most of my Costco problem, as far as the in house 12 x 18s go. I recalibrated my monitor and instead of leaving teh black point at the default of 100%, I lowered t to 85%. It seemes to have had an unimaginable result with COstco. Now all of the shadows are REALLY opened up and the entire image is brighter and more aligned with my monitor and what I see onscreen.

I've never really had a problem wiht their color--remeber you need to tell them, or if online, check teh mark stating that you do not want them to EDIT yoru image at all. On the back of the print if all editing is turned off, it will say N N N N N. If the N's have numbers, that means they adjusted them.

I'm still not convinced that my backing off the black point--which makes the shadows on screen darker, which means I need to lighten them, worked. I've done two test prints now that turned out remarkably well in the shadows.

I'll report back again if you all want me to.

For those hardware calibrating their monitors, especially LCD panels, I'd sugest backing off teh black point or shadow control--the one where you have to decide when you can "jsut see all shades of black." I thought 100% was the lowest I could go, but when I looked awayf from the monitor, and then looked back, I could still just barely make out all of teh blocks (from gray to black) at 80%. I turned it up to 85% just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. It seemed to pretty much correct the problem of the shaodws being too bright--and the entire monitor being too bright overall, causing me to NOT adjsut up the brightness of the processed images.

[Wolfman]

I've been using Costco warehouses for prints. With the exception of shadow areas in lanscape images being way to dark, thier automated Noritsu emulsion printers do a great job--I set mine to NO ADJUST and use their profiles. Portraits are perfect.

I have also used their online, clunky system of uploading prints and ordering, which means you don't have to drive back the next day or wait around for two hours to pink them up.

The problems I'm having cannot be resolved by Costco because no one is minding the store--it's all automated. You can't even file a complaint because the person that receives it is the person who is in charge of whatever it is you are complainging about, so nothing ever reaches upper management. It's an endless loop back and futile attempt.

Second, although the 20 x 30 prints are very good, they have paper indentations in them bordering on laughable. I've been through weeks of trying to get that resolved, and the final conclusion by CS was that there was no resolution. You jsut have to live with the indented prints, or return them.

Last, the cumberson uploading process--web browser or their own "resized before upload" applet and no way to track what images you have ordered (they only give you an order number, with no image names or dates or thumbnails of past orders) make it far to time consuming. It takes minutes to upload one poseter sized print with time outs and retries for each image. They say they are trying to appeal to the "professional" but they are FAR from a professional grade service. I guess they've never heard to FTP before.

The only thing they have going for them is price: 20x30 for 9.99 and 12 x 18 for 3.00 each.

So I'm ready to move on and save my time. I'd like to know if there are any cost effective EMLUSION printers online that do poster sized prints and 12 x 18s, or in the case that that is not possible (I've noticed most are ink jets), I'd like to know what ink-jet I should buy.

I want to print at least 12 x 18, and if the price isn't out of my budget, I'd be willing to buy a printer that will print 20 x 30s also. Are the prints from a high end ik jet as good as emulsions, such as those produced by the Noritsu printers that Costco uses? If so, which printer?

Thanks.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

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