There is a Difference in Professional Printing

The Importance of Professional Printing

Did you ever wonder why you pay several hundred dollars for a photography session and you fall in love with the images you see on your computer but when pick them up from your local lab you are underwhelmed? The answer is simple: Where you print your photos MATTERS!!!

As a photographer I began including professional prints in ALL of my photography packages (excluding mini sessions). I did this for 2 reasons:

• I wanted clients to not only get beautiful digital images to share on social media with friends and family but I wanted them to have truly beautiful images to hang in their home. Sure doing this cuts out of my total profit and most clients probably don’t care (or don’t think they care) about where their photos are printed, but I care and I want nothing but the best for my clients to hang in their home.

• It represents my work. Similar to a great hair stylist who gets most of their clients from “that girl with the beautiful hair” seen around town, referrals for photographers are the same. We get most of our clients from people that see our photos online, on a holiday card or on a wall in our clients home and I want my work to look its best. If I spend an hour shooting a session and then 12-14 hours to fine edit a session. it is hard to see that photo hanging in a home with a green hue or over sharpened and grainy looking. A friend or family member may look at it and think that is how I shot the image or how I edited the image and not realize it is the client who printed to a sub-par lab.

So now that I have told you the importance of printing at higher quality/professional lab what are your choices?

• Print your images through your photographer. They have access to professional labs and while prices are higher than consumer printing, the quality is unparalleled.

• Print you images to a high-quality consumer lab. In the US my top choice is MPix. They have both a consumer printing lab and a professional lab. The consumer prints are not as costly as the professional prints and they are beautiful. www.mpix.com

Below are some examples of a professional printing lab vs. 3 common consumer labs. The top left is printed to a professional lab called Simply Color that is for photographers and upon careful inspection you can truly see the difference in color and detail over the other prints (thank you to Paint the Moon for the image).