I am looking for some recommendations as to where people send their files for processing and how they prepare them prior to sending them.
I have previously used shutterfly and am looking to try Adorama.
I use Photoshop Album to store my images and basic crop and color correction. For the better shots, I am learning to do a more detailed edit of the image in Photoshop Elements.
Can you recommend the best sequence of procedures from download from your camera to uploading for processing? I seem to be getting disorganized...not knowing what files I sent for printing, which ones I altered and which ones I didn't. I also have been duplicating work, especially cropping in photoshop and having to crop again at the service bureau's site. Most of my pictures at printed in 4x6. Any help or advice is appreciated.
Thanks
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I assume that you mean PRINTING your images. Processing in this digital age, isn't a term that is much used except for people who shoot RAW and then CONVERT or PROCESS those RAW images on their computer.
Now for a couple of your questions:
Printing......In my experience, the only way you can impact the quality you get in printing with service bureaus is to have your images in the color space in which they print and soft proof your images using their printer profile. For example, I live near a Costco in Los Angeles. They use sRGB for their color space and have a downloadable profile for a specific machine in that specific store. After I edit my image in Photoshop CS that I want to print, I convert it to sRGB and softproof it using their printer profile. I then make whatever adjustments I need. Usually need more contrast and red saturation. Then I flatten that file, save that file as a jpg in a folder titled "READY TO PRINT"send them that file and get results that match my original pretty closely. Be sure that you don't save the flattened, softproofed file in such a way that you overwrite the version that you already adjusted prior to softproofing.
Regarding cropping.....I'm not sure if Elements allows you to do this, but you should crop your READY TO PRINT images with the pre-set crop ratio of your printed image, in your case either 4x6 or 3.5x5.5. They won't need to crop again and you can control the cropping.
Hope this helped.
Brad
