This is a test of 8 online dig­i­tal photo print­ing ser­vices and one print made at home with a Canon IP4300 printer.

Why this test?

I mostly use my pho­tographs in dig­i­tal form and sel­dom get them printed but with the lat­est add-on to my fam­ily I had to send some pic­tures to offline fam­ily mem­bers. I read a cou­ple of test that con­cluded that almost all photo print­ing ser­vices avail­able for Danes pro­vided the same qual­ity (or bad qual­ity) so I ordered 20 pic­tures and received them a cou­ple of days later.

Then the shock hit me — the pic­tures were really bad… My girl­friend sug­gested that I should drop my beloved Nikon D200 DSLR cam­era and buy a nor­mal pocket cam­era that could pro­duce usable pho­tographs in print. In the evening the same day I checked if my Apple iMac 24″ was cor­rect cal­i­brated (using Huey by Pan­tone) and every­thing seemed fine?

I tried order­ing 10 pho­tographs from 2 other print­ing ser­vices and one of them looked like the first but the sec­ond one looked very dif­fer­ent — actu­ally quite good. I ended up with 8 orders at 8 online print­ing ser­vices and made a print on my cheap Canon IP4300 printer.

Instead of keep­ing the result to myself I will try to share my expe­ri­ence but please keep in mind what equip­ment I used, pri­mar­ily that the screen was cal­i­brated by a Huey device from Pan­tone (and if pos­si­ble please remem­ber to des­e­lect the opti­mize option some online print­ing ser­vices offer).

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