Beginner Print dropshipping

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Hello,

I'm new to this forum, and photography as a whole. However, I have already started making sales on some of my prints. I'm looking for some advice to which service is the best recommended for printing framed images and sending them direct to the customer.

I can't afford a printer or paper/frames/shipping myself right now and don't think it's a good idea to do it myself at this stage anyway, can someone please refer me to a good printer/dropshipper?

Thanks
 
A number of labs do this - do some googling. You might have to bite the bullet on the pricing (not that doing it yourself is necessarily cheaper). I hope that your images are worthy of a decent mark-up (which you can usually choose), and that you know how to prepare them for print, and what size they can successfully print to.

It sounds to me, though, as if you have a lot to learn before you visit yourself on the paying public, who presumably will have just seen a low-res version on the internet? Have you done test prints at the intended sizes?
 
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A number of labs do this - do some googling. You might have to bite the bullet on the pricing (not that doing it yourself is necessarily cheaper). I hope that your images are worthy of a decent mark-up (which you can usually choose), and that you know how to prepare them for print, and what size they can successfully print to.

It sounds to me, though, as if you have a lot to learn before you visit yourself on the paying public, who presumably will have just seen a low-res version on the internet? Have you done test prints at the intended sizes?

Hi, thanks for that. I'm not new to the digital world, I work my main job as director for my own creative design and web hosting/services company, so I know a little bit about print size and resolution. Right now I'm making prints available to buy not for profit, but for exposure. So the price it costs me is the price the buyer will pay. They see high-res watermarked JPG's before purchase. I've done my Googling and I came up with a few decent printers, one of which (my-picture.co.uk) seems ok pricing and decent reviews but I wanted to get some real advice before ordering any prints on behalf of paying customers.

A forum sponsor / advertiser do great work and provide this service :-

https://www.tradecanvasprint.co.uk

10% off code is TP10 :)

Cheers,
Dougie.
Thanks for that, Dougie.

Have you ordered here before? What is the quality like?
 
A forum sponsor / advertiser do great work and provide this service :-
.
Well there's a double puff. They advertise here and you're advertising them again! I was carefully non-partisan in my post.
 
Apologies Ben, you made yourself sound more innocent and I had the public interest at heart.

No that's ok, you don't know me from Adam! But I do have some experience with resolutions and things but not a lot with printing, so any advice you can give me pre-printing would be appreciated.
 
A forum sponsor / advertiser do great work and provide this service :-

https://www.tradecanvasprint.co.uk

10% off code is TP10 :)


Cheers,
Dougie.

i've had several canvases and prints done. Quality has always been spot on.

They have their own thread on the forum somewhere where you can see loads of uploaded finished stuff.

Give them a PM and follow up with a chat on the phone.

They'll let you know any potential issues with stuff you send them if required.

Dougie.
 
any advice you can give me pre-printing would be appreciated
Choose a print medium (paper) from all the ranges available. Likely cheaper are conventional C-type prints (exposed onto light-sensitive papers). Probably more archival & with a bigger range of surfaces (though some of the matt papers are vulnerable to abrasion) are inkjets (commonly hyped up as giclee, or art papers), and it's worth getting some sample media packs from various labs - they don't all do the same but there'll be some overlap. Then after honing it down, look into 'soft-proofing' procedures on your screen that help to adjust the image tones of your files to a particular print medium before sending to print. Before this, essentially, your monitors will have been calibrated somehow, if not mechanically then by seat of the pants methods (which I wholly endorse). Find a lab who have clear on-line instructions about proofing and saving, or with whom you can have a productive dialogue by phone. Some, maybe cheaper, lab's printing might be good but their customer interface might be lacking.
 
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Remember, C-Types are continuous tone prints, whereas inkjet/giclee etc are not. This leads to much better rendition of subtle tones.

There are a lot more places offering inkjet because the gear is - relatively speaking - very cheap. Whereas the Noritsu, Lightjet, Chromira printers for C-Type can run to over £100,000. But the prints are normally cheaper because the consumables are cheaper.

Ag Photolab in Birmingham offer both types of print (up to 50" in C-Type) and will drop ship - but you need to speak to them.

Or the Pint space in London
 
Remember, C-Types are continuous tone prints, whereas inkjet/giclee etc are not. This leads to much better rendition of subtle tones.

+1,000,000.

Folk assume that Giclee on 'art' papers is better then C-Type, in part because it is more expensive. C Types may not last as long but the results are way better to my eye.

I now use Loxley for most things. Other labs are cheaper and nearly as good and some labs are better quality but Loxley work well for me.

They offer a white label service - they'll send stuff direct to your customers without including any pricing details or their own branding. Their free colour correction service seems to be (a) good and (b) subtle, too, so if your profile is a little bit off it won't show.

.. no connection, just a happy customer with happy customers ..
 
I only get C-type prints unless it's a rare one-off (i.e. large canvas). The place I use (USA) uses high grade professional papers with a longevity of 100+ yrs for in home display... who needs more than that?


Edit: BTW, the longevity of inkjet prints is kind of an unknown... they haven't been around long enough to really say with any certainty. The early inks/papers haven't really held up as well as advertised (IME), but they are constantly improving them. I would and do have pigment ink prints made at times w/o concern.
 
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