macintouch: "In the Digital Cameras Report King Shy inquired about online print services. I sent a set of 10 JPEG's that had been worked up in Photoshop to Ofoto, PhotoAccess and Shutterfly for 4x6 prints plus one larger JPEG of a color test file for printing at larger size. I then did blind rankings of the prints in two different ways. The first way was to rank each set of three according to how 'pleasing' it appeared. Ofoto took last place in every case. In the absence of a reference I preferred the PhotoAccess prints over the Shutterfly (7 to 3). However when ranking the prints for color accuracy by comparison to the on screen photo using a hardware calibrated monitor, the color accuracy of the Shutterfly Prints slightly edged out the PhotoAccess prints (6 to 4). Again Ofoto came in last.
Neither Shutterfly or PhotoAccess are perfect, but I think that while Shutterfly is more accurate overall, in the all important flesh tones the slightly pink cast of the flesh tones in prints from PhotoAccess is preferable to the slightly gray cast of flesh tones from Shutterfly.
Other points in favor of PhotoAccess are that they have good free OS X software for creating albums and uploading (vs. Shutterfly's web interface for uploading), and PhotoAccess will make prints in the digital camera 4:3 aspect ratio in various sizes, This is great for those cases where you want to use the entire image or a crop that is 4:3. Of course they also print standard photo sizes of 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 etc. Both places print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. If you use Shutterfly and are processing your image in something like Photoshop, be sure to turn off their image processing. It is on by default so you have to go into the effects menu and un-click the box. My Photoshop processed prints looked better with their processing turned off.
Tim Schneider
I now do all my printing at either Costco or Sams Club (in major metro areas in the United States) their prices for 4x6 prints cannot be beat .18 per print currently.
You take your photos in on whatever digital media you can find (i.e. CD-R, CD-RW, Memory Stick, Compact Flash, SmartMedia or MMC) I've finally found a use for those small sized memory cards that all the digital camera mfg.'s ship with their cameras from the factory. A 4 MB Sony Memory Stick works great to dump a few JPEGs on (after color correcting/resizing in Photoshop) and run down there and have prints made."
Neither Shutterfly or PhotoAccess are perfect, but I think that while Shutterfly is more accurate overall, in the all important flesh tones the slightly pink cast of the flesh tones in prints from PhotoAccess is preferable to the slightly gray cast of flesh tones from Shutterfly.
Other points in favor of PhotoAccess are that they have good free OS X software for creating albums and uploading (vs. Shutterfly's web interface for uploading), and PhotoAccess will make prints in the digital camera 4:3 aspect ratio in various sizes, This is great for those cases where you want to use the entire image or a crop that is 4:3. Of course they also print standard photo sizes of 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 etc. Both places print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. If you use Shutterfly and are processing your image in something like Photoshop, be sure to turn off their image processing. It is on by default so you have to go into the effects menu and un-click the box. My Photoshop processed prints looked better with their processing turned off.
Tim Schneider
I now do all my printing at either Costco or Sams Club (in major metro areas in the United States) their prices for 4x6 prints cannot be beat .18 per print currently.
You take your photos in on whatever digital media you can find (i.e. CD-R, CD-RW, Memory Stick, Compact Flash, SmartMedia or MMC) I've finally found a use for those small sized memory cards that all the digital camera mfg.'s ship with their cameras from the factory. A 4 MB Sony Memory Stick works great to dump a few JPEGs on (after color correcting/resizing in Photoshop) and run down there and have prints made."
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