Where Should I Print My Photos?

I feel like a few years ago, blog posts comparing the quality of different print labs were super popular. Maybe it was just the circles I was in, but I remember seeing comparisons between 2, 3, 4, up to 10 (yes, that post was a bit overwhelming & hard to keep track of) different labs & how vastly contrasting consumer lab prints were from professional labs.

But I mean, I feel like we all inherently know that, right? Consumer labs (especially the ones that are known for super cheap prices) print less of a quality image than professional labs – that statement is a no-brainer. I could make that statement without even spending the money & running the experiment – it’s a “duh” statement. But, sometimes (okay, let’s be honest, a lot of times) money plays a huge role in the decision to get your images printed. Seriously, it isn’t hard to upload your images to a lab’s website & order prints – that part is actually very simple – but the price tag at the end can be scary (at least, it is for me)! And personally, that price tag at the end is what keeps me from printing my images on a super regular basis (just being real).

I always print images at Christmas though. I give photos as gifts, I send them in our Christmas cards, I update images in frames, and I always print a few extra “just for me”. However, this past Christmas, I ran into a huge problem – one I’d never encountered before – and so I wanted to share my experience.

It goes without saying that there is a difference between consumer labs & professional labs (we’ve already established this). Personally, I had a consumer lab that I had found (probably 8 years ago) that I was always super impressed with. I felt like they delivered a fabulous quality product for (literally) pennies. If I was printing images for myself personally, I would order from this lab. Of course, I have my favorite professional labs too – the lab I order my client albums from & whenever I’ve printed products for my clients, I always order those from a professional lab.

But, back to Christmas: these are personal photos I’m printing, so I have always used my consumer lab. This year, with our baby boy being due to be born in early December, I ordered my Christmas photos early – way earlier than I’ve ever ordered them! And, I’m so glad I did.

I received my order and upon opening up the package, I was instantly disappointed. The quality was way off. I sent photos of the photos to my sister, thinking maybe my eyes were just playing tricks on me, and she responded the same way I did: these were bad. I was so confused!! I’d been using this lab for years & never had a single problem! I’d even recommended this lab to my clients as a place to get decent quality products without the huge price tag!

Thinking maybe it was just a printing fluke, I reached out to the company. I explained that I was a professional photographer & that I was dissatisfied with the quality of my order – could something have potentially happened in the process of printing that threw off the quality of the images? I had never had this problem before & been ordering from this company for years.

They responded back, apologizing for my dissatisfaction, but assuring me that there were no errors in the printing. Further, they went on to say that it appeared that my photos were “too low-resolution” for them to be printed at a better quality. They did refund my money, which I appreciated, but honestly, I was super unhappy with their response. I wasn’t having iPhone photos printed – these were from my professional DSLR – I knew the files were high-resolution & that their excuse about the “low-resolution” was completely bogus.

So, I took the exact same files that I had sent the consumer lab, and uploaded them to the professional lab that I use for my client wedding albums. Was the price higher? Yep, I ended up paying about 3 times the amount that I had originally paid the consumer lab, but at this point, I just wanted to prove that the problem did not lie with my photos or my files.

And, big surprise: I received my images from the professional lab & they were perfect.

Let me show you what I’m talking about. I had to document the difference – it was astonishing.
All of the following duplicate images were printed from the exact same digital files – simply by different companies.
And in an effort to keep things as streamlined as possible, in the following photos, the professional lab images are always on the left & the consumer lab images are always on the right (but trust me, you’ll be able to figure that out for yourself).

So! Here is our 2018 family photo. This is the one that I put in all of my Christmas cards.
Again, professional lab first & consumer lab second:

And here’s a close-up:

See the difference?
Even before I had my images reprinted & had the comparison, I knew that the consumer lab prints were overly sharp & grainy. I don’t add grain to my images & I only add minimal sharpening – so why did we come out looking like zombies? The colors (which is what I always worry about) came out decent, but I couldn’t get past the crazy sharpening that was done by the consumer lab.

Here are some more examples:

Obviously, the above two images are from the same photoshoot – same day, same lighting, same camera. Could it just be a weird fluke with that day being bad? Well, here are some other examples from (obviously) different days & circumstances.

We look so weird! It’s almost like we were outlined with a thin black marker & then colored in (like, a cartoonist drew us) – again, this is a deal breaker for me! I’m self-conscious enough, I don’t need all of the things I dislike about my face & body outlined & sharpened so that they stand out even more!

And another scenario – this one is from our gender reveal party.
And this was the worst one. This one honestly makes me cross-eyed:

Poor Derrick – he really got the short end of the stick with the consumer lab print! What is even going on with his nose?

And last but not least – here is one that my camera did not even take. This was (obviously) taken by Derrick & I’s wedding photographer (almost 9 years ago! Whew!) and you can still see the drastic difference between the consumer lab’s print & the one printed by the professional lab.
(Disregard the crop difference – I had this one printed as an 8×10 for my Mom & had adjusted the crop slightly differently each time I uploaded it. If you don’t understand that anything outside of a 4×6 print gets cropped, you’ll want to hop on over to the post I wrote about print ratios here!)

So, long story short, I won’t ever be printing images from my old “favorite” consumer lab again (and I didn’t even mention how they changed their packaging & how my images ended up in my mailbox completely loose – not in their package at all). Their printing standards have obviously changed since the last time I trusted them to print my images, and it’s obviously changed for the worse.

If this freaks you out a bit, it should. “Low-end” consumer labs simply do not print, even high-resolution images, at the quality level they deserve to be printed. No matter if you took the photo with your iPhone, a point-and-shoot, or paid a photographer a lot of money to take photos for you – if the photo means enough to you, in today’s digital age, that you’re having it printed – you deserve the best quality. Where you choose to have your images printed matters. And obviously, there can be a massive difference.

So, the big question is: where would I recommend that you have your images printed? There is now only one lab I can heartily (and with a clear conscience) recommend, and that’s Mpix. If you ask the question, “Where should I have my photos printed?” in any Facebook group, no matter what kind of group it is in (and I can say this because I’ve seen it), about 75% of the responses will say, “Mpix”. Most people probably don’t realize it, but Mpix is simply the consumer end of a professional lab – a really awesome professional lab that I use & so do about a million other photographers. Sure, their prices might be a little bit higher than WalMart or Shutterfly (neither of which were the consumer lab I used by the way), but if you get on their email list, they do run sales & specials on a regular basis.

Where you have your precious memories printed matters!