Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Just wanted to provide a quick update in case anyone ever refers back to this thread and wonders how it all turned out.

I am now happy to have 5 of my photographs printed 20x30 (19.2x29 to be exact), framed and matted.

Being an amateur, i probably have quite low standards, but in my own opinion they look great.

What i did...

- Decided that i wanted to print as large as possible within budgetary constraints.
- Found some quite reasonable frames at IKEA - suggest actually going to the store and looking as online photos don't really help. Some of their frames are crap, others are quite acceptable. I used Virserum: http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/60174785/ These have plastic instead of glass, if you want glass, $65ish / frame was the cheapest i found that would fit 20x30 prints and i believe that was without mats. (the Ikea ones are $37)
- Wrote down the two largest sizes that these frames come in - the Virserum frame came with a precut, acid-free mat, which saves time & money.
- Since the frame came with a precut mat, i decided to print in a size that would fit the exact frame / mat. In my case, i didn't particularly care about the exact size of the photo, rather that it's as large as i could get it.
- Looked at different print shops recommended above. Most have similar services offered.
- Based on what i was printing, i figured out that using the 29" wide Lambda printer would be the most optimal thing for me as i could use 100% of the width and then just pick my height to suit.
- I picked elevator digital as they have what looked like the most user-friendly Lambda printing service. they also use Fuji paper which also had been recommended to me above. finally, the had a roll printing special going (over now) that basically gave you a 33% discount on roll printing. they also didn't have a 700mb / file limitation that i had seen in some of the other shops.

The photoshop part.. being a photoshop novice, this is what i did:

- i had 12mp photos from my nikon D90. These came out to approx 150 DPI at the 20x30 size i needed.
- took original raw files, upsampled each photo to the required size and 300 DPI that was recommended by the print shop (i upsampled in 10% increments as was suggested)
- freaked out when i looked at "Actual pixels" because that view looked quite pixellated - being a newbie, i didn't exactly understand what this view meant, but forged ahead anyhow.
- saved the upsampled files in photoshop (lossless) format.
- edited the files in lightroom (i'm more comfortable in LR) for colours, noise, shapening, etc.
- saved the files back into photoshop format.
- back in photoshop - created one massive 29x108 canvas
- opened each of the individual photos and pasted onto the canvas, spacing them 5 photos with even white space between.
- saved the file in photoshop prior to flattening.
- flattened the file and saved it as a massive 900mb TIF, threw it on a USB and drove it to elevator. i suppose one can do uploading, but i wanted to see the shop.
- folks at elevator were friendly and looked at my file to ensure it was good. I didn't get any insight or feedback from them - not that i had expected any given the small job and the "self-service" nature of this particular service.
- photos were ready 3-4 days later and picked them up as a roll.

Framing...

i'm a complete idiot when it comes to arts & crafts, but once again, in pursuit of saving money, i figured "how hard can it be?"

- as mentioned my frames had come with a precut mat, but they didn't have a backing mat. I wasn't sure if one was required, but figured i might as well do it right.
- went to Currys (art supply store) near my house. bought a Mat cutter, acid-free double-sided scotch tape, a 1m metal ruler and five 30x40 acid-free matting boards which i picked out of the "discontinued" pile at 75% off ($2.50 each) - they were odd colours, but since i was using them as backing anyway, i didn't care.
- Cutting 1m long photos and mats is difficult if you have 2 left hands as i do. The good news is that my messed up cuts of the photos aren't visible since i had left plenty of white space around the photos and since the matting is only backing. I WOULD NOT do my own front mat cutting.
- Attaching photos to matting with tape was pretty straight forward.
- putting photos into the frames was as well.

So... as one of the goals was to save money, here are my totals

5 ginormous 20x30 photos, framed and matted:

Roll Prints (Elevator) - $65 inc tax
Frames (Ikea) - $208 inc tax
Additional matting & supplies - $55

Works out to ~$65 per photo.

Is it as good as getting it fully done by a professional shop? Probably not, although i doubt most people can tell the difference. The cheapest prices i had found for full service including printing/cutting of photos and framing was about $200 per frame, which is more than triple what i ended up paying. Of course if price wasn't an issue or i was selling these, i would have probably gone the full professional route and saved myself the pain. Still, I think this only gets easier with time, so I'll be more comfortable doing this on my own next time.


Thanks to everyone for their help - especially jim, whose PMs helped a lot.