First Time Sending Out Digital Images for Prints – I needed to get some images printed out for an assignment and I wanted something other than drug store prints. I asked around and searched the forums to see who used which services.  About 80 percent of the folks I talked to who send their images out to be printed used Mpix. Having no experience of my own, I decided to go with the herd.

I needed the images no later than Wednesday mid-day so, as I sat at my PC around 11:30PM on Sunday, I was a little concerned about time. I did some light processing in Lightroom on my selected images and output the RAW files to JPEG, signed up for an Mpix account and in about five minutes had my order ready to hit send. There were several options for paper that I was unfamiliar with and I decided to try 2 of the 3 options. Fortunately, you can mix paper types in a single order. I had the color prints printed on their regular Kodak Professional Supra Endura VC Digital Paper with  matte finish and the monochrome images printed on their True B&W Paper with matte finish. I didn’t try the metallic paper, but definitely will consider for future orders. I also didn’t opt for their Lustre Coating.

I hit the send button and off they went. I chose the overnight delivery as their service says they complete most orders within 24 hours, but could take up to 48 hours. At 4PM on Monday I got the FedEx tracking number and the prints were on their way. They were waiting at home for me today and the packing is awesome. There could be almost no way these could have been bent or damaged in shipping. The prints look great and I am very happy overall.

What I learned.

Get in the habit of checking my export options in Lightroom. In my haste, I forgot to bump up  the image quality for my JPEG conversions. I usually export them at 50-75% for loading to Flickr and the web. In this case it was still at 75% from my last session so it isn’t too bad at 8×12, but I can’t help but wonder how 100% quality output would have turned out in print.

Don’t wait until the last minute to get your processing done. I could have saved $10.00.