I’m often asked “What’s the difference between the prints I get from my one-hour or online lab and the professionally made portraits from our studio and why do professional portraits cost more?”
You’ll find printing machines in drug stores, discount shops like Wal-Mart and Walgreens, even many online sources like snapfish, but there are big differences between them and the professional photo finishing labs.
1. The portraits you receive from Imbeault go through many different steps before it’s printed. First we spend hours in preparation and post-production services for your final portraits. The raw images are edited, color corrected, defogged, retouched and digitally mastered to perfection.
Before and After our post production~
2. It’s not the same paper: There are two main types of archival paper categories, the professional and the consumer types. The professional papers have twice the silver content, giving them a deeper and richer look when you print a high quality file on them. Also, the consumer papers have more contrast and tend to be glossy instead of the fine lustre finish of professional paper.
3. It’s not the same software and printer driver: In order to run the professional papers, a lab needs to move up to the premium software that drives the Frontier, or your labs’ Kodak printer. On the Fuji side, it’s a $47,000 upgrade to the pro version of the “PIC” software that is the color and “rezzing up” brains of the Frontier. There are a few major differences but if we cut to the chase we discover that the consumer level PIC printer driver is designed to take crappy files and make them better by changing color and exposure values, reducing red-eye on the fly and trying to make skin tones look “most pleasant.” These are great for snapshots but will inadvertently shift color carefully set by the pros. The PIC Pro version will take good files and make them great. It spends all its energy interpreting the sRGB input and making it smooth and rich and it does a stupendous job in rezzing up files into really great prints onto professional paper.
by Laura Imbeault
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