Recommendations on Photo Printing Services

[magomago]

I'd like to print some Panos, is there a particular website you guys recommend? I want to send out some stuff and will probably print between 1-2(max) feet in width, and 3-4(max) feet in length.



Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

For that I would just go to my nearest Costco and deal face to face.

 

[magomago]

So I took the images there, found that it couldn't auto-resize my images for me, and had to do some MAJOR cropping. I'm not terribly pleased with the results so I'm going for a round 2. I learned a good deal about the costco system, enough to know that everyone was right to say that all processing and resizing should be done ahead of time, and that Costco should simply print the final image to all the specifications I define. I learned my expensive 150 dollar lesson.

I wanted to print a couple canvases at 16x48 and 16x32.

That said, I opened up Photoshop, created a 16x48 canvas at 300ppi, and fit in the image I wanted to print. Then I uploaded it to costco, created a 16x48, and found out that my images were still too wide! I'm losing about 5%-10%, and its not acceptable because I already cropped the frames as I wanted them (including accounting for wrap around space). The height was perfect though. Any ideas/suggestions?

Edit:

I read that costco might actually be 320ppi (Depends on the actual printer costco uses) and tried to resize the 16x48 and the 32x16 for 320ppi, which would technically made the image appear on a smaller area for the same frame size, but the costco tool still wants to crop out an extra 5% on the horizontal dimension.

Any suggestion on what I need to do so the uploaded image fits the frame exactly without room to crop? Am I setting this up in Photoshop Wrong? I'm looking at guides online and I feel like I'm doing exactly what they are suggesting.

Here are the image parameters after I save them to jpg:
16x32: 300ppi at 9600x4800
16x32: 320 ppi at 10240x5120

16x48: 300ppi at 15360x5120
16x48: 320 ppi at 14400x5120

Edit:

Figured it out; you have to print the wrap around as well and include it at 300ppi. Now I'm good to go

http://www.costcophotocenter.com/Help/#/topic/product-information---canvas-prints

That took too much time to figure out. Also looks like the canvas isn't printed any higher than 150 ppi, so giving it 300ppi source material is somewhat of a waste because the canvas material itself probably has some texture that reduces the effective resolution of what I'm seeing.

 

[jaedaliu]

It's Costco, return it.

Costco has great technical information on their website on file formats and color depth for images. My buddy that edited my shots had his contrast tuned funny, so our triplicate prints from my wedding came out wrong. We returned all 200+ photos without a problem.

 

[Throckmorton]

I don't think uploading the "exact" resolution is a good idea, because I'm sure their printers expand the image and resample so that you get a full bleed print. You should upload the max resolution possible

 

[mediademon]

I would recommend that you contact Blue Cube Imaging. They are located in Oregon, and you can do everything you need through the website though I recommend you contact them first with your specifications. I trust this company and have used them several times. It is mail order but I would never use Costco for anything involving printing. If Blue Cube is unable to do what you need then contact Adorama out of New York.