Photo Lab: Kiosk Prints

Posted by thanec on December 1st, 2008 in Art Theory, Photography Blog • 1 Comment

Printing at your local drugstore can save time and money, if you are willing to make a trade-off in reliability and quality of your output. This is not to say that you should expect your prints to be screwed up - but, it is wise to accept the possibility and take precautions. A couple of easy steps you can take are researching your photo lab and its equipment, and preparing your images appropriately.

For example - I like printing at the Fred Meyer’s store near my house; it’s relatively cheap, an 8×10 or 8×12 costs only $1.99, and I can go pick it up usually within an hour or usually just hang out for a few minutes while it prints. These people are not professional photo lab technicians - so I realize there is an element of chance every single time that I go! Despite following all the best advice, you may find out that the machine has been having problems all week, is in need of service, or had the RIP software replaced, possibly resulting in a strong magenta shift or over-saturation of yellows (etc). But, then again, it was cheap. (You will likely find this true for all WalMart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Fred Meyer’s, Bi-Mart, Walgreen’s, and other stores with a convenience photo lab or print kiosk.)

Step 1: Research

If possible, look online to find out which printing services, sizes, paper types, and machines the photo lab uses. The Fuji Frontier machines are quite popular with most of the drugstores and bigBox stores - which model is available will determine the paper type and sizes available for printing. If you go into the store, the model number of the machine will typically be stamped right on the front (ie- Frontier 340, or similar).
An additional step in researching that is worthwhile is talking to the technician to see how knowledgeable they are about the machine and printing in general, as well as making a test print to see which paper(s) they use and the overall quality of printing.

Step 2: File Setup

One thing that is worthwhile is to crop and size your image correctly before starting any editing. Looking at the image with the correct proportions and only seeing elements that will be printed will help you make more effective adjustments to color, contrast, and any other editing changes. If you are planning to make different proportioned prints or sizes from the same image, set the image size to the largest print you are planning to make.
It is a good idea have your monitor reasonably calibrated before making any serious adjustments to your print. There are many tutorials regarding this subject, but addressing a few basic items will be sufficient for the majority of your work:

1. Adjust the monitor’s brightness and contrast. I recommend making a test pattern of your own with steps of white and black from 1-10%/90-100% and a gradient for catching any color casts. You should be able to see steps in the white/black color swatches at least within 2% of each end.
2. Gamma adjustment - a good default for Windows is 2.2, for Mac it is 1.8. You should adjust this setting to help eliminate any banding in the gradient of your test pattern (but it will not completely go away).
3. If the gradient shows any color cast, slightly yellow or slightly blue, you can adjust the color temperature of the screen in your display settings. Typically it should be 65k.

Step 2: Color Management

After you know what equipment you are targeting you can often easily find ICC profiles for printing to that machine by searching on the Internet. Do all of your software editing of the image in a screen profile (sRGB, AdobeRGB, proPhotoRGB) for maximum flexibility, and convert your image to the printing profile when you are done. This conversion will bring colors that are out of gamut within the range of the printing device.
At this point you may decide to make some final changes to the image, such as readjusting the black points by altering the levels or curves. Then save the image - use “save as”, rename the image with an indication of which device or color profile it is adjusted for, and uncheck the box that saves the color profile with the image.
The colors have all been brought within the gamut of the printing device, and the color profile is not necessary after it’s translation has been accomplished. In some cases, saving the ICC profile will interfere with the output device causing problems or making the file unusable.

Step 3: Printing

My recommendation is to always, always print a proof. Printing locally at the corner store makes this very easy to do. If something is out of calibration, there is a color shift or your image is being cropped unexpectedly, you have a chance to correct it before printing a million copies.
If possible, you might suggest that the tech print the files directly through the machine without any automatic settings rather than through the kiosk. This will prohibit the image being resized or having its color modified as it is RIPped to the printer. (You can expect the tech not to know what you are talking about though, and this is okay - any automatic adjustments should be negligible if you have correctly sized and color adjusted the image already.)
The image should have printed out beautifully! If there was a dramatic difference in the color you expected, ask the technician if the machine may need to be/has been serviced - you can readjust your image to correct for color shifting, just remember to save the file with notations that it was for a specific use!

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