High Street Printing - TIF or JPG

johnaalex · 10-04-2009, 10:19 AM

Just wondering if it is worth the effort of converting to TIF for "best quality" prints at places like Tesco etc.

dazza74 · 10-04-2009, 10:24 AM

Do They accept TIF's?

allymac123 · 10-04-2009, 10:25 AM

How big?

To be honest I've only ever printed from jpg's.

The only time I've used Tiff's is when a magazine asks for them.

dazza74 · 10-04-2009, 10:29 AM

I doubt they'd process a TIF. My TIF's comes out at about 70MB as opposed to around 5-6MB for high quality JPEG. I know recently HDR printers are appearing in the large format printing market to accomodate for the increased colour gamut of 16 bit, I tend to print in 16 bit but I don't outsource the printing, if I did I'd probably downscale to a high quality jepg.

SomeVorn · 10-04-2009, 12:29 PM

Practical photography reviewed the bigger high-street and online printing services this month.

Jessops came out joint first with BPDphototech.

Tesco however got 1/5. The review also mentions that some labs will automatically add contrast - designed for those to don't edit/process at home - but thats not great for us. The review said that the contrast from them was "so high, even the mid-tones were blown out".

Snappysnaps.co.uk got the best review at a budget price (4/5 stars) - BPDphototech.com look like the business but its very expensive. (£1.50 per print, regardless of size if I read this correctly)

dazza74 · 10-04-2009, 1:15 PM

I wouldn't pay serious money for anything unless you know it's being done on pigment ink due to fade resistance. Funnily enough I know a couple of market traders who sell images that are printed by jessops.

johnaalex · 11-04-2009, 9:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dazza74

Do They accept TIF's?

Tesco's in Gateshead do, but their machine took ages to process them! My mate who has a Nikon D80

spent some time converting some of his recent shots to TIF and took them to Tescos the other day. He is very happy with the output so I guess that is all that counts. I seldom print anything but just in case I want to know I am doing my photo's justice

dazza74 · 11-04-2009, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnaalex

Tesco's in Gateshead do, but their machine took ages to process them! My mate who has a Nikon D80

spent some time converting some of his recent shots to TIF and took them to Tescos the other day. He is very happy with the output so I guess that is all that counts. I seldom print anything but just in case I want to know I am doing my photo's justice

Hope it's going well with the D80

Nothing to lose I like keeping everything in 16 bit, the only thing I do find is I can get gamut warnings at times with certain colours where I guess the printer just isn't capable of reproducing those but even then the results are normally pretty much spot on to what's on screen.