Making Prints part 1

In the digital age, it's very uncommon for us to print every image we capture, like we did in the days of film when we would have a lab develop the negatives and have prints or contact sheets made and then decide which prints we wanted in a larger format for display/sale.  With the arrival of digital, we have gained the ability to make only prints of those photos we wish to display/sell in the size we wish to have them in without having to create unwanted evaluation prints.  There are several ways to obtain finished prints.  Over the next few Mondays I will be doing a review of different print options.  These will include various online print companies, local discount/drug stores, and high quality inkjet printers. The idea for this blog came from questions that I have been asked in the past few weeks.  Several people have asked me if I print my own photos or where I get my photographic prints made.  When answering this question, it occurred to me that I don't know where to obtain the absolute best quality, and the best value/quality ratio.  So this blog post is chronicling my search for the best print method for my photographic prints. Sorry for the long post, now on to the first review...Mpix. I order various moderately sized prints for dorm room decoration, so this really isn't discussing the ability of the methods to produce truly large format prints, but instead medium sized prints. In the future, when I decide to test the resolution of my camera, I will make large format prints and report on those results. Keep in mind that these reviews are subjective and only represent my thoughts.
When I opened the package from Mpix, the first thing I noticed was how it was packed. The prints are wrapped in plastic, under a piece of soft foam material for the 13x19 prints and inside of sturdy envelopes for the smaller format prints. The only problem I had with the packaging was that my 13x19 prints were taped to a piece of cardboard. The tape didn't leave a significant amount of residue, but it still left a small amount and I wish there was another way of packaging the print so that tape didn't have to be used. Overall though I was very impressed with the packaging. While on this topic, I feel that I should also address the shipping speed. From the time I ordered, it took 2 days for me to have my prints in hand. I might have had my prints faster if I would have uploaded at an earlier time instead of waiting until the next morning to upload. Mpix advertises, "Shoot today, upload tonight, we ship tomorrow." After my order, I can say that is very true. So talking about the shipping is great, but that's not really the most important thing to consider when evaluating prints. We're really concerned about print quality. So how did the prints compare to what I was seeing on my calibrated display? They were almost exact. The main difference was the red's lacked a little bit of the saturation that I desired, but overall the colors were an exact match. The slight lack of red saturation could be attributed to allowing Mpix to make minute adjustments on the files once they were received by the lab. Overall this was an excellent print rendering.
Happy shooting. More next week on print quality.