Are pro printing labs really better than photobox?

[mrjames]

Ok, so I know this question has been done to death, but a lot of google searches are giving me outdated information, I'm not sure I trust a lot of what i've been reading out there, and the rest of it doesn't go into the ridiculous level of detail I want to know.

I currently use DSCL for all my 18x12 prints, and i'm over the moon with the price/quality, but me and my girlfriend each have upcoming shows and want to make some big (like 60x40) prints, including one of mine which is a 246mp 42 image composite scene. I've heard DSCL large format prints are inkjets (and supposedly not very good)

In the world of commercial printing everyone seems to be using 1 of only a handful of machines, most companies use a fuji frontier 570 mini lab to print from 6x4 18x12 because of it's speed and automation (2000 6x4's an hour I believe), but when it comes to large format printing there's inkjet or C-type (laser exposed), in the inkjet field I've heard the epson 9800 is king, and in the C-type field there's 3 major players

OCZ chromira

Lightjet 5000

Durst lambda

or the Polielettronic Laserlab which only photobox seems to use.


From what i've read:
the chromira (being the newest, and therefore having better software) prints at 300dpi using LED's, has the best interpolation software out of all the printers and has more saturated colours, and deeper blacks

the lightjet can print the biggest images, and prints at 300dpi using lasers

the lambda makes the sharpest prints (being that it can print at either 200 or 400dpi), uses a laser rather than LED's

the Polielettronic prints at 254 dpi (negliable difference) and doesn't get much talk online so I have no idea how it performs. I have seen 18x12" photobox prints and they were nice, but the original files the prints were made from weren't very good and were quite dull, at least the prints seemed faithful.




there is so much hocus, and misinformation that I can't come to a proper conclusion about which process is the best (i'm sure the differences are negliable, i'm actually just curious), and i'm too cheap/poor to get test prints from all 4.
Most places rave about the chromira, others rave about the lightjet and only metro seem to be raving about the lamdba

regardless of which printer is best ideally i'd like to make the right decision now and stick with the same lab for all my future large scale printing, so photobox might be out as they can only print 30" wide where as the others can do at least 40" or larger.

As we're at art school we get cheaper printing on campus, using an epson 9800 printer, printed on fuji (not sure what paper though) glossy paper stock, I don't really like the prints as they look too much like ink on a surface rather than having the literal depth like a C-type print has, maybe a different paper stock would give better results but as it's not our printer we can't do anything about it, and regardless printing them as C-types will make them more appealing to buyers too, so we definitely want them printed as C types, but i'm having trouble figuring out which lab to use, the student in me says 'photobox', but the perfectionist in me says 'you get what you pay for', but i've had such a positive experience with DSCL that it has skewed my experiences of price/performance- I had some 18x12" done at DSCL and photobox and they were pretty much the same, and the photobox prints were 15x more expensive

I just had some 7x5's back from jessops, which were so bad I had them reprinted at DSCL, the jessops prints weren't as sharp, were much lighter (despite not selecting auto correct), slightly blue and the paper felt thinner, 3 images were also totally out of whack (almost totally dark brown!)- the DSCL prints were better, cheaper, but of course weren't ready in 1 hour from the shop 5 minutes from my house.

I trust DSCL, they've done me about 30 18x12" prints and about 400 6x4/7x5's, they've not let me down yet and I wish they had a better large format printer, but alas I have heard good things about:
Loxley (unknown printer)
DSCL (frontier 570 up to 18x12, inkjet after that)
Digitalab (lightjet)
One vision imaging (unknown)
metro print (durst lambda, and lightjet 500Xl for big prints)
The print space (chromira)
Palm Imaging (chromira)
Peak Imaging (durst theta?)
AM Image (chromira)
and
photo box (Polielettronica laserlab for big prints, frontier 370 up to a4)


some observations:
Loxley are the most expensive printers, for no real apparent reason

photobox are the cheapest by a long shot

metro print can do a providence certificate which is very useful when selling editions. They also have one of only 10 lightjet 500XL machines, able to make 120x72" prints



for an 60x40 print the prices vary from £70 from Palm Imaging (chromira) to £141 from loxley- that is a massive difference considering they're possibly using the exact same machine, and both should be profiled to give the exact same output- where exactly is the extra money going?

With a lab like metro you're paying for someone to color correct your file by hand and then watch over your print to make sure that it comes out just right, but as a retoucher myself I want the prints to come back as I send them out- if I make the skin too light and too blue that was my intention, all my files are colour corrected and retouched on a calibrated monitor in controlled conditions, I shoot with a neutral gray card and a gretag mcbeth colour checker so I know that the capture is perfect and then when I do my creative enhancements with colour/tint I know that when it goes out to the printers it is exactly how I want it. I don't need a human to intervene in the process so i'd rather it be totally automated and for a human to never even touch or see my print- as long as it comes back to me as I sent it out I will be happy, and i'm currently not working to strict deadlines so I wouldn't mind if a print came back badly and they reprinted it.

photobox will make a 45x30 for just £25, which is the biggest they do but also about half the price of the other labs, I guess they're cheap because of the sheer volume of prints they do, the automation and the lack of dedicated customer service,
i've heard so much about their prints being 'too dark', and comments like

way better than the likes of photobox etc....

but I figure that is just because people are working on monitors that are too bright and also forget that prints don't emit their own light so will look dark unless they are specifically lit with daylight balanced bulbs, my experiences with jessops is that they lighten the prints even when using the 'do not adjust' setting to compensate for people who may have calibrated colours but still have over bright monitors- I paid an extra £200 to get colour eyes display pro on top of the cost of my 'i1 match' to be able to lower the brightness to 80cd/m. The DSCL prints match my monitor perfectly, so in theory photobox should be the same.
But there really does seem to be an opinion that photobox are inferior- is this snobbery? assumption based on price? is the the Polielettronic just not that good a printer? or are photobox lax with their use of chemicals or the way they run their printer


I guess my main question is- are photobox as good as a pro lab? In terms of quality and accuracy of original file?
If I had money I would send one to photobox and one to the print space (chromira) and compare
maybe we could all pool together and see

If I lived in London I would definitely use 'the print space', as they are a printer, an exhibition space, and a cool venue where you're likely to meet influential people and maybe get some free feedback on your work, but I don't live in London, and the closest place to me is 'AM image' who use a chromira but are still a £10 train ride away and don't seem to have that 'hip and trendy' vibe.
A plus point for jessops is that the guy who handed me back my prints was suitable impressed that he pushed some portrait clients my way and I got a job shooting for a local nightclub...

other questions are:
1- does anyone have any experience to suggest that the chromira is better/worse/the same as the lightjet/lambda
2- has anyone ever done a comparsison between different labs
3- it is suggested that photobox doesn't color manage, so erm, does that mean the printer will just print randomly every day or will it just print the files as they are sent (i.e. what you send it what you get?)


I know this is a mega question and will likely go over peoples heads, but i'd really like to be the authority on printing processes and it's detail like this that will make the girls swoon

 

[mrjames]

addition, I have just been informed that the lightjet printers are set up to perform best with Kodak Endura paper, and will give lower dmax (less contrast, less dark blacks) on fuji crystal archive paper

so I guess it's more up to the lab and how they calibrate their printer if they're using it to the best of it's abilities rather than anything inherent to the printer itself

 

[POAH]

well DSCL use a large format epson inkjet on 270gsm satin or Ultra Pearl 295 gsm paper.

personally I would see what the prints are like rather than take the word of people online that may not have a clue in the first place.

phone them up and ask about how they want the images preped for inkjet prints

 

[mrjames]

well DSCL use a large format epson inkjet on 270gsm satin or Ultra Pearl 295 gsm paper.

personally I would see what the prints are like rather than take the word of people online that may not have a clue in the first place.

phone them up and ask about how they want the images preped for inkjet prints

if DSCL's large prints were as cheap as their smaller prints i'd jump on them, but at 30x20" it's pretty much an even playing field, loxley are £18, photobox are £18, peak, and digitalab all £18, DSCL are also about £18 for an inkjet, so no cheaper, and it's inkjet, which i'm not really into, at least printing at school it only costs around £15 for a 44" wide roll sold in metre lengths

Maybe DSCL's inkjets are better than the schools, but I don't know, we both really want C types anyway.

it's only at the larger sizes where a difference really comes in with the labs, where most places charge between £70-90 for a 60x40 loxley suddenly charge £141. DSCL also charge £80 for a 52x40 so no cheaper really, so for photobox to be able to bang out a 45x30 for £25 (only marginally more than the cost of a 30x20) is very tempting. I might dive in and order a test print... 45x30 is still pretty damm big

 

[POAH]

for me my inkjet (epson R2400) gives better prints than the Loxely's large prints

an epson 9800 is a state of the art inkjet and really should be giving you dam good prints

paper choice can make a huge difference to inkjet prints - could just be cheap gloss paper which I'm not a fan of either (don't like the C-type laser prints at all in gloss). The only advantage of the C-type is that they are actually more glossy but huge prints will tend to bend and get damaged very easily.

its your cash at the end of the day and I doubt at that size you'll realy see any difference in the prints when they are on the wall

 

[Daryl]

For Exhibition work and large to Giant poster work I use Colorbase in Oxford.

Quality over price everytime... If you have to ask about the cost then you should not be doing it......

You want the best you have to pay.

 

[mrjames]

For Exhibition work and large to Giant poster work I use Colorbase in Oxford.

Quality over price everytime... If you have to ask about the cost then you should not be doing it......

You want the best you have to pay.

thanks, i'd never heard of them before, are they local to you? Useful if they are, they don't seem to do C-type prints thought, at least if they do they're not shouting it from the rooftops, which you'd expect them to do if they paid £200,000 for a lightjet printer.
for prints up to 18x12 they use the frontier 570- the exact same printer that every other lab in the country uses, and assuming they can run a gray scale calibration every morning, and replenish the chemicals regularly, the print quality should be identical across anyone that uses that machine, above that they seem to do inkjets, which i'm sure are great but when you're selling your prints to museums/curators/collectors/artists/the uninformed- being able to write 'MY ART PIECE- 60x40"- digital C-type' pushes the price up considerable, ironically it's all about branding (the exact question i'm asking about the printers themselves)- in the art world there's levels of printing that correspond to a pricing structure, at the bottom end there's 'inkjet', (which has connotations of home printing on PC world paper), then digital/large format printing (a big inkjet on quality glossy paper), giclee (a big inkjet on textured fine art paper), and then C-type, cibachrome, 'wet process print' and all the other exotic sounding methods.

As POAH says the epson 9800 may be able to give a better output than the lightjet/chromira but i've not experienced this so far, admittedly i've never used a pro lab, but the university technicians aren't clueless, anyway A) I like the c-type finish (and my question is, if photobox are the same product at half the price, where's the catch) B) they're the same price to print and you can sell a C-type for more so it just makes more sense

As we're aiming to sell our prints ideally, 95% of the quality at 50% of the price = more chance of pricing our prints at a salable price and maybe making some $$$
with this show i'm not really looking to get clients, this is a show to raise my profile in the city, some commissions would be nice, but really this is to sell prints, so if they don't sell then i'm stuck with them, and having one 30x20 for the wall is nice but I don't want 10, I don't have the space aha

and anyway, DSCL vs photobox, exact same machine (fuji frontier), same paper (crystal archive), but DSCL charge £1.27 for an 18x12, photobox charge £7, and they are the same print quality as the machine is a doddle to set up and run (maybe DSCL are even slightly better!)
So you don't always get what you pay for

i've come to the conclusion that there's 4 business models with printing labs, and every lab has a price scale which isn't linear,

e.g. many labs charge the earth for a small print (photobox) but are very reasonable for larger prints, where as others are dirt cheap for small prints but charge the earth for a large print (DSCL), I guess the lab makes a choice of

1) whether they want to sell lots of small prints with few large prints
2) lots of large prints and not bother with orders of cheap 6x4's
3) to sell less prints at a higher cost per print
4) or to sell more prints at a cheaper price per print
and then on top of that you have the option to give a more personal 'pop and pop' type of service (which obviously costs more), or to make it totally automated and robotic (which cuts down on costs)


for example if a pie maker delivers pies for 50p to 3 different shops around the city, and shop A in the shop in the city centre then charges £3 for that pie, but shop B out of town only charges £1.80 for the same pie, then clearly you're paying an extra £1.20 for the one in town, so what do you get for your extra money- do you get to sit down in a comfy seat? is it because it's in the city centre and they therefore have a higher rent? But then what about shop C, who are also in the city centre, who pay the same rent as shop A, but because they get more customers than shop A can do the pie for the same price as shop B

and what about when 2 shops next door to each other sell the same pie, but one shop is 3x as expensive because they put it on a plate rather than give it to you in a plastic bag

I just want a pie, I don't want a knife/fork and a gold plated arm chair to sit on, and I don't care that your rent is more expensive than shop B (that's not my problem), i'd rather the guy from shop B just rode around the city on a bicycle and sold me a pie for £1.50 because he has no rent to pay at all.



Anyway the real question i'm asking is, "if lab X is better than lab Y and they have the same kit, then why is that so?"
Or "if lab Y is cheaper than lab X but give them same results, then why is that so?"
I've come to the conclusion that somewhere like loxley must be extremely conservative and for example replenish their chemicals when they're 80% expired, where as photobox run them until they're 99% gone, so 1 in 100 orders comes out badly and needs a reprint, which is ok in my eyes because I could make an order, send it back and get a reprint quicker with photobox than it would take for loxley to send me 1 perfect print, and it would still be 1/3 of the cost.


I guess if 2 photographers both have a d3s they're not going to produce the same shots, but printing is hard science, keep tweaking until the calibration device says 'yes this is now correct', no aesthetic considerations required or welcomed- there's industry standard targets that are in place to maintain consistency.

I'm fairly new to printing, i've only had about 30 18x12's done, but my girlfriend has to print 18x12's all the time, and prior to the discovery of DSCL it was costing her £7.50 a go with photobox, now with DSCL it's £1.20. So if we'd known about DSCL earlier she could have saved £100's

I know this is getting into a pretty obsessive topic, but i'm actually curious, I think if I won the lottery I would rather start my own printing shop/retouching studio than build a photography studio

 

[POAH]

where is the catch - they may use the less expensive fuji paper but most of the time its just that people associate quality with price so "pro" places cost more for doing the same print. photobox probably have a higher through put too.

 

[mrjames]

where is the catch - they may use the less expensive fuji paper but most of the time its just that people associate quality with price so "pro" places cost more for doing the same print. photobox probably have a higher through put too.

i've just received confirmation from photobox that their new 'professional' poster prints (which are about £5 more) are on crystal archive supreme 250gsm, their standard prints are on 200gsm crystal archive II paper
interesting, the plot thickens

I think photobox may have just done the impossible, and started offering premium paper and an even better price- wow photobox!


I must admit the DSCL paper feels quite thin, but when you mount and frame it thickness counts for nothing, but receiving thicker/stiffer paper in the post probably gives the illusion of a higher quality product despite the actual print being identical, kind of like how coca cola tastes better out of a glass bottle...

for me my inkjet (epson R2400) gives better prints than the Loxely's large prints

an epson 9800 is a state of the art inkjet and really should be giving you dam good prints

paper choice can make a huge difference to inkjet prints - could just be cheap gloss paper which I'm not a fan of either (don't like the C-type laser prints at all in gloss). The only advantage of the C-type is that they are actually more glossy but huge prints will tend to bend and get damaged very easily.

its your cash at the end of the day and I doubt at that size you'll realy see any difference in the prints when they are on the wall

I suspect it is the schools bad paper which is to blame, I was expecting better to be honest, the paper feels very thin too

I have a fairly crummy canon ix4000 a3+ printer and the results are pretty good but prints don't last very long, I left a print on the window sil next to a fuji crystal archive print at the inkjet faded to almost nothing in 3 weeks.

With my show the prints will be framed and likely viewed from a distance, but for her show it's her final degree show, and the prints will be mounted unframed, and due to the nature of the show everyone basically gets a cubicle) people will be viewing the prints from about 1m away, so people will be too close for comfort really.

 

[Daryl]

They do C type upto certain size.. then they have huge Ink jets... Quality is superb...

Colorbase used to do the full monty but do to the digital revolution the Pro lab has downsized by 2/3 rds....

But for colobase it's mostly banner and Exhibition work for large printing...

Not many labs left now do A1 on C-type... no need no ink jets can do it all.

not heard good things about Photobox... Would only use them for holiday D&P and only then if no one else could do it. you get what you pay for.

Colobase checks every job before it leaves to the client. none of this 'That's what you sent ' attitude....

 

[mrjames]

They do C type upto certain size.. then they have huge Ink jets... Quality is superb...

Colorbase used to do the full monty but do to the digital revolution the Pro lab has downsized by 2/3 rds....

But for colobase it's mostly banner and Exhibition work for large printing...

Not many labs left now do A1 on C-type... no need no ink jets can do it all.

not heard good things about Photobox... Would only use them for holiday D&P and only then if no one else could do it. you get what you pay for.

have you had bad experiences with photobox?

colorbase do C type up to 18x12, I know that because that's the largest the fuji frontier 570 can print, and 99% of labs in the country use that printer because it's fantastic, fairly cheap, and prints extremely quick, I don't know how much they charge for an 18x12 but DSCL do them for £1.20, and I would urge you to compare a print side by side from DSCL and colorbase and see if there's any difference.
How do I even order with colorbase, I can't FTP. Also, 3-5 day turnaround is pretty slow, most labs are 2 days, some are next day before 4 (which is damm impressive)


everyone's heard bad things about photobox, they must do 10x the amount of prints a day that Loxley do in a week, and as they say the people who shout loudest are the ones who have a problem, happy people usually keep quiet, although there's plenty of people talking positively about them too.

Colobase checks every job before it leaves to the client. none of this 'That's what you sent ' attitude....

the thing with photobox is that most of the people complaining and the ones who have sent files that were too dark/slightly blue, but probably weren't aware of how the file 'really' looked on a calibrated screen, and wouldn't know a histogram and a colorimeter if it came and profiled their brain.
I understand that most labs don't want to send out duff prints, so if they make a print that's too dark they'll probably check the original file and see that the user was one of the 99.9% of folk who don't calibrate their screens and they'll reprint it so that it will match the users expectation, this concerns me a little because in an ideal world I could photograph an apple, a manchester united jersey and a can of coke, fly to brazil tomorrow and work on a calibrated screen that shows images identically to my screen at home, have some prints done then fly back and everything was still 'granny smith green' and 'manchester united red'. As a designer I work with clients for whom brand identity is very important, so I learnt the importance of color management the hard way (e.g. "that's not our red"), any printer I use should print the file exactly as I send it- no tweaking, no adjustment, if I send a bad file I expect a bad print, unfortunately 99% of people think what they see on screen is what they will get- most people will never know how dim a screen calibrated to 80cd/m is, most people will never know how their image really looks on a calibrated monitor- I think people are quick to judge photobox negatively rather than blame themselves and their own images.

 

[RicherSea]

Just to add two other companies that you might want to consider:

Sams Photo Lab I believe are now online with a large format Canon printer, and from doing a direct print to print comparison as FOCUS they appear to be just as good as the Epson machines.

Carbon Colour in Abingdon have a variety of kit, and from what I know of them their main business is large format work. I've seen a lot of their stuff round Oxford, and used them for some jobs and the quality has consistently been excellent, although they are not cheap!

 

[bigrob]

I just want a pie

No you don't just want a pie otherwise you wouldn't be doing all the research that you are doing.

I have Greggs and Ayres bakers near to me. Greggs if I just want something to fill me up it's Greggs and Ayres if I want something that actually tastes really good.

As Daryl says you have to pay for quality. If prints are always the same from the same manufacturers machines then I can see your point of why pay more for company As print than company Bs (if the service is as good from both).

Good luck in your quest. I look forward to hearing whom you go with and why.

 

[Jimmy_Lemon]

Just to sort of add to this. I ordered 2 45"x30" posters from Photobox the other day as they had a deal on. Got them for pretty much £12 each and the quality is easily on a par with DSCL (though I have only ever ordered up to A3 with DSCL). Really can not fault these prints at all

 

[roobear78]

Saying that the same brand machine should produce the same results in different labs is like saying 2 men working the same job,eating the same food,starting at the same weight should weight the same at the end of the week! it just aint gonna happen,there are variables and reasons why, includeing but not limited to -- paper manufacturer,chemical manufacturer,through put, maintenance and uptime, paper types, as so so much more. please remember that in most labs,the machine arent just banging throught the same paper all day everyday for example,machine have to do a variety of work so one lab may be putting through more metalic,or pearlised. it all has effects on the quality you get back. pro labs exist for one reason, to provide proffesionals with services, thats why we are set up to try and get the very best for you out of the products we provide, sometimes prices are higher because of this, constant negotiations over the price of paper which is a real influence on price from a lab,the more you through put,the more paper you need,the less it costs the more you order etc. places like photobox are mass production labs,geared to process by the millions each week, they simpley dont take the time to treat order individually,they cant, its a production line,if it slows down,orders go late. thats not to say photobox do bad stuff,its just that unlike pro labs they are not geared to treating photographers are individuals. ultimatley as poah says your best bet is to get stuff from places and judge for your self, if you looking for answers as to why this is more expensive or this place uses that machine but not this one,they im afraid your going to wait a long time for your answers

 

[mrjames]

should probably update this.

had some medium sized prints made at dscl, photobox and jessops for comparison.

Jessops were the worst, 80% were fine but the rest had muddy colours and some even came back completely brown, probably the end of the printing run and the chemicals running low or something. Also prints were too yellow and slightly light, more than likely by design as it makes skin tones glow nicely, although in my colour managed workflow I didn't welcome the change. Noticeably sharper than DSCL/photobox- presumably because I wasn't printing from an 'optimised upload' jpeg.
printed on crystal archive paper, thinner than dscl paper, and on a par with photobox
in terms of service, printed within one hour, I got a commission from it, and 50 free 6x4's on the rexeipt, so couldn't ask for more

photobox were the softest, but they uploaded twice as quick as DSCL, so maybe I should upload full rez files in future. Paper was much whiter than DSCL, and slightly more brilliant. Colour matching was identical to DSCL and the original digital files.
Paper slightly thinner than DSCL, feels less 'expensive because of that' but when you're mounting your prints it really doesn't matter.
Don't offer metallic paper
Supplied in a nice box, postage cheap, printing cheap-ish- came next day and I ordered around 3pm

DSCL- thicker paper gives impression of quality when held next to the photobox prints, but if blu tacked to wall I couldn't see any differences in quality. Border was slightly lobsided.
50 free 6x4's, lowest prices and next day delivery, although £4 so best to make a big order


also made some 30x20 prints on the epson 9800, and photobox- prefered the photobox prints, surface quality had more 'depth to it', the 9800 images looked too much like ink on paper (which is what they are I guess), but the input file was fairly low res so the better interpolation on the continuous tone printers may be influencing the result.

In short, photobox were fine, prints were colour/density accurate to my calibrated screen. Photobox paper might not be as nice as a thicker stock, and due to their mass production I might have a bad print every once in a while- I am willing to pay half the price on the understanding I might have to get a reprint, I have flexible deadlines.