I agree that EZPrints seems to be the only mass-production place which is
making much effort to work with more serious folks in terms of color
calibration - most if not all the others "help" you by making color etc.
adjustments, and EZPrints promises not to do that.
I agree that they could / should step up their technical information by a big
notch, and I have corresponded with them several times about that. I think at
least part of the problem is that they are, apparently, the "front end" for
several labs, with differing techniques and equipment. The results do seem to
be consistent, even if not particularly well documented - trial and error is a
royal pain, but at least it works since they've been consistent.
And I've had trouble getting them to print (with respect to size) exactly what
I send them. I send some 11x14's with a 1/4" border and got them back as
10.5x13.5's without border. I sent them a batch of 4x6's with a caption at the
bottom and got 1/2 the caption back. They apologized and offered to reprint,
but it is annoying that they can't make a print to size!
And I agree that they're the only game in town with respect to big prints.
Having said all that, I've gotten some really wonderful stuff from them, and
from what I've seen they're well worth working with to get things right.
I managed to adjust my system to match their calibration prints pretty
accurately; I'm on a PC with a Matrox G200 graphics card, and Matrox provides a
zillion adjustments through its driver, so I used that. I'm sorry, I don't
know how that translates to a Mac.
I do have a problem sometimes with brightness / darkness of prints - maybe it's
inexperience, but I find it very difficult to compare a (reflected light) print
to an (illuminated) screen and get brightness to match. That has been done so
far by trial and error, but I'm reasonably satisfied with my current results.
Incidentally, I haven't figured out how to get one set of settings for both
EZPrints and my (quite limited) HP 722c printer. I now work with the EZPrints
settings as "default" and ha've made an adjustment layer which I turn on in
Photoshop when I want to use the HP - crude but it seems to work.
Regards,
Tim
On Tue, 6 Feb 2001 13:08:19 -0800 (PST), Collin Ong wrote:
>After looking at several of the online print makers, ezprints.com seems to
>cater most to photo enthusiasts by providing large print sizes (wallet to
>20x30), matte paper, unlimited file sizes, etc.
>
>However, they are lacking in the technical data they provide so that us
>customers can prepare their files properly and have the control we
>nitpickers require. They should provide more data on: ColorSync Profile
>(ideal), colorspace format (e.g. BruceRGB, sRGB, AdobeRGB, etc), gamma
>(e.g. 1.8, 2.2, etc), red, green, blue x,y calibration, exact pixel
>dimensions and/or aspect ratios for each print size to prevent
>scaling/distortion/empty space. I've sent them an email requesting that
>they post this data. I urge others on this list interested in using their
>service to do so as well, so that our squeaking wheel gets greased.
>
<snip>
>I recall somebody on this list mentioning using the EZprints calibration
>prints successfully. I would like suggestions from the list on the best
>method of doing this. I would prefer the ColorSync or a software method
>since it is more easily switchable for use between normal apps and
>Ezprints image prep.
>
>Thanks for any help.
>
>
>Collin Ong
>
>
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