I'm interested in using ShutterFly or one of the other sources for converting my digital photos to paper photos. My question is (revealing my ignorance of all things digital): How do I ensure the highest quality result from the photofinishers? What size file do I upload to them? To get the highest quality photo-realistic result, do I send them 12M uncompressed Tiff files or convert them to 200K jpeg files? Thanks. John

-- John Baughman (jbaugh@relia.net), June 29, 2000

Answers

JPEGs are fine, TIFFs are probably overkill. I've gotten good results from Shutterfly using 1600x1200 and 1280x960 (Canon S10). I've only used them for 4x6 prints, however.

What's your source? If the images are already compressed as JPEGs, then expanding to Tiffs won't raise the quality - it just makes a bigger file.

Best bet is to experiment a bit, which is cheap since a bunch of these online photo processors have free print offers. You can get 100 free prints from Shutterfly directly, and possibly also through Yahoo Photos. Ofoto.com is offering 50 free prints. There are others.

-- Greg Philmon (gphilmon@yahoo.com), June 29, 2000.

Thanks for your answer. Here's my situation. I am using a CoolPix 990 to take full sized "fine" quality photos. When I open these files on my Mac I find that I have 28.4 X 21.3 inch photos--just as I would expect according to the camera manual and my camera settings. The pictures are 72 pixels per inch resolution. The files are about 1 M in size. What do I need to do with these files to send them to be converted into prints? For that matter, what do I need to do with these files to get the best quality prints from my Epson 740 printer using photo quality paper? For example, if I want to print out high quality ~ 5.5 X 4 inch prints from my Epson, how do I convert the original low resolution, large image size file to get the best print results? Thanks. John

-- John Baughman (jbaugh@relia.net), June 29, 2000.

Sending the 1mb jpeg to shutterfly should be fine for prints up to at least 8x10. For local printing of my 990 files, I change the dpi rating from 72 to 300dpi (with resampling turned off in photoshop). This results in roughly the 4x5.5 size print you want when output to your printer. Not sure what image editing program you are using but most will allow you to change the dpi rating without resampling the image, thus reducing output size.

-- Dennis Pereira (dpereira@ultranet.com), June 29, 2000.

With my 990 on the Windows, using Nikon View and select 4 pictures, then select print (4 on a page), then from my Epson 3000 printer properties, set custom for Photo output on Glossy Photo paper. I normally get 4 high quality 4 x 5. Also I found no diffrences on setting quality at Fine or Normal (compress at 1/4 and 1/8) even print out at 5 x 7, thus saving space on the CF.

-- Tanasit Siriluck (tanasit@flashcom.net), June 29, 2000.