Help printing older jpgs

[Justan]

I've had many images from my old Sony 3 mega pixel digi cam printed at Costco up to 12x18 and they look great. When I squirt them out of the Z3100 after a run through Photoshop they suck. What am i missing??

Many TIA

[natas]

I've had many images from my old Sony 3 mega pixel digi cam printed at Costco up to 12x18 and they look great. When I squirt them out of the Z3100 after a run through Photoshop they suck. What am i missing??

Many TIA

Explain more please. Why do they suck? Bad color, not very sharp, jagged edges?

Your answer maybe how you are scaling the photos for print. Look into OnOnesoftware's Fractals. It does an awesome job of scaling a photo for larger printing. I use it all the time when printer larger than 16x20.

[Justan]

Thanks for the reply. I'm just trying to get an 8x10 and they are fuzzy. They don’t compare to what Costco has done with the same image. I'm wondering if it might be due to the conversion to Adobe color space or??

[NikoJorj]

Sharpness shouldn't have much to do wth color management...
But are you uprezzing the file? If no, you should (Bicubic does it already quite well), and the result should be pretty decent by adding the right amount of print sharpening on the uprezzed file.

Otherwise, simply print them from Lightroom, specifying between 200 and 300dpi and the appropriate print sharpening.