Importance of Printing Professionally – Megan Noll Photography

You need do your picture printing professionally. Here is why!Once, I was really in a pinch. My mom asked me last minute to donate to a fundraiser for a coworker of hers that had cancer. I gladly hopped onto my computer, and threw together a coupon for a free session. I saved the file on a USB and took off to my nearest drug store to print the coupon.

When it printed, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at! The colors looked all wrong – the coral color of my then-logo was RED. I was embarrassed, but I didn’t have time to mess with it, so I took off toward the fundraiser.

Ever since that day, I’ve paid really close attention to how many photo labs are around us every day. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I went into a store that didn’t have a photo lab. From Walgreens, to Costco, it seems like I’m constantly surrounded by businesses that are willing to print pictures at dirt cheap prices.

But how do they afford to print them so cheaply?

The answer is simple. They are of a much lesser quality than of a professional lab.

When I tell my clients I am editing their images, that means I am color correcting them. I’m spending over a full weeks worth of work combing through images, making sure that the quality is up to my standards, and that the colors look true and beautiful. I spend hundreds of dollars on equipment that calibrates my screen to make sure how I’m editing is how those pictures will print.

But, just because my screen is calibrated, doesn’t mean the printer is – and there in lies the trouble with printing your images through someone that isn’t your photographer.

Professional photographers work with labs that ONLY sell to professional photographers – seriously, it’s like a club and you have to have a legitimate photography website to join. Those labs cost extra because they spend countless hours and thousands of dollars making sure their equipment is calibrated as well. When I print through a professional lab, I know those colors are going to come out exactly as I intended them too, and if by some crazy chance they don’t, I send them back for a reprint.

When you order your prints, canvases, or other print products through the professional photographer, you are getting a guarantee that those products look the way they intended them. You are getting a guarantee that the quality of product is something they are proud to have their name associated with. If you are paying thousands of dollars to have a talented photographer come to capture your wedding day, don’t settle for mediocre (at best) prints – do your printing professionally