Photo print quality thru iPhoto?

Call me a cheapskate, but when we had our engagement photos done I paid for a DVD of full resolution images so I didn't have to pay through the nose for prints through our photographer. So I loaded them into iPhoto and thought I could order some through there.
Question is: are they worth the trouble? Do they turn out anything close to professional, what kind of paper do they use, etc?
Thanks for the help!

In general people are happy - some have problems but usually those are caused by technical problems (incorrect color profiles, etc) or production problems and are solved easily
Apple guarantees the quality - http://www.apple.com/support/photoservices/returns/
Here is what Apple says about paper, etc - http://www.apple.com/support/photoservices/product_specs/
Order a few and see what you think before you order a bunch - no one here can tell you if you will be happy or not - only you can do that
LN

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The photo print quality from my Mac to my Epson Artisan 810 is poor. When I take the same photo files (JPEGs) to my PC to print to the same printer without even uploading them to the PC, they print brighter and crisper from my PC.

The photo print quality from my Mac to my Epson Artisan 810 is poor. I just purchased my iMac for my photography business in Jan. (this is my first Mac). When I first tried printing, I noticed the quality wasn't as good as I expected it to be. Then, I had to print 4-3.5x5s on a sheet, so I e-mailed the image to myself and opened it on my PC to print it (much easier to print that way on PC in Windows Photo Gallery - I think it's impossible to print that way in iPhoto). That's when I first noticed that when I take the same photo files (JPEGs) to my PC to print to the same printer without even uploading them to the PC, they print brighter and crisper from my PC.
I've already been on the phone and e-mail w/Applecare many times over this issue. We've tried creating a test user and printing from there, and we've tried reinstalling the OS. I've tried printing from iPhoto, ImageCapture, and Preview apps/utilities, all w/the same result - no comparison to the PC-printed versions (no enhancements have been performed on the PC).
I'm out of ideas, and so is Applecare. They say it's most likely a driver issue b/c the printer is outdated, and that the only solution is to buy a new printer. BUT it is a pain for me to purchase a new printer - it takes days of research due to the nature of my business and the fact that I need a printer that can print directly onto a disc. I love this printer and don't want to have to buy a new one if I don't have to.

englishfreak2004 wrote:
Yes. I've checked for updates, and the driver I installed is the same as the one on Epson's website. I also spoke with Epson Customer Service, which was a dead end. Apple says the problem is due to an Epson driver issue (blaming Epson), but Epson says that with the older printers, it's actually Apple who creates the driver, so the problem is actually with Apple. Typical he-said, she-said...
Maybe not. Probably worth checking here:
Epson drivers for Mavericks:
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/SupportMavericks.jsp

The photos printed in my iphoto '11 book have come out fuzzy?

The photos printed in my iphoto '11 book have come out fuzzy. they were fine the first time i had them printed, why have they come out fuzzy second time?
I printed a book for a relative a couple of years ago to celebrate his 21st. then this year his younger brother also turned 21, I printed a new photo memory book and used some of the photos in his older brothers book in this new one. Those photos that were used in both books came out fuzzy in the second one when they were fine in the first one. Why could this be and can it be rectified?

Those photos that were used in both books came out fuzzy in the second one when they were fine in the first one. Why could this be and can it be rectified?
Did you use different versions of the photos or different sizes? Have you now used a different iPhoto version? The book templates changed between the versions.
Compare the printed book to the PDF preview of your book. The printed book should look exactly as the preview, see: iPhoto, Aperture: Previewing an order in iPhoto or Aperture
If you want to return the book for a refund, use the "Report a problem" link on your email receipt.
For the return&refund policy see this page: for the US: http://store.apple.com/us/help/print_products#return
And search here for a similar page for the store in your country: The Apple Store - International Print Product
-- Léonie

Improving photo print quality

I had to delete CS3 and re-install it and now photos printed on my Epson picture mate do not look good. I had this problem before, but don't remember the exact solution. I could not find specific instructions for getting the best photo print quality by searching in the forums. I would think this would be a big topic. We all want to print the best quality pictures and once the instructions are well documented, I would think they would be easy to find. Could someone help me out? I am using Leopard.
Thanks,
Tom

If it's just a color setting, you shouldn't have to download anything.
I'm not sure if it's the same method in CS4 as in CS2, which I'm using, but you could just open Photoshop, select Edit from the top of the screen, and click on Color Settings…
In there, you can choose one of the presets from the "Settings" drop-down menu: Monitor Color, North America General Purpose 2, North America Prepress 2, etc. Or you can manually select from various CMYK, RGB, Gray, and Spot working spaces below that. Just use whichever works best for you.
Regarding not finding what you're looking for easily, I have a feeling it has something to do with lack of specifics. Your original post didn't really mention in what way your photos looked bad. If it's a color thing, are your photos too dark? Too light? Too blue/yellow? Or is it, instead, a resolution issue (too pixellated and/or blurry)? "My photos look bad" doesn't really provide enough info.

Print quality using iphoto

How can I change the print quality when printing photos through iphoto on my iMac? I am running OSX 10.7.2 I have installed my printer with the latest downloaded drivers etc. The printer is a HP photosmart 5510. I have gone into system preferences, then print and scan. From here I can see my printer but can't see anyway of changing the print quality. Similarly, if I go into print settings via iPhoto I have the same problem. I have been able to change the quality in Safari but can't see how to create a default setting for photo printing at the highest quality

Hello:
One way of assuring high quality would be to export the photo to the desktop (at highest quality) and then print from there.
In my own case, I find that when I occasionally print a photo from iPhoto, the quality is quite good.
Barry

Photo print quality from the HP EVEN 5532

I have tried a number of times to print off a photo from my Envey 5532 printer, Using 6 x 4 sizes glossy paper. The out come is what I can only call a disaster, what comes out from the printer is a total mess, it looks as if to much ink has been sprayed and the colours have all run into each other

Hey @crescent30 ,
Thank you for joining us on the HP Forums today, hope you enjoy your time with us!
I understand you are getting really poor quality on your printed photo with your HP Envy 5532.
Here is a document that deals directly with print quality issues surrounding the HP Envy 5532. Fixing Print Quality Problems for the HP ENVY 5530 e-All-in-One and Deskjet Ink Advantage 4510 e-All...
Let me know how it goes! Have a great day!
I worked for HP.

HP Officejet Pro 8500A photo print quality is terrible

If I print using the default of plain paper, change the quality to high and actually use plain paper, the quality is acceptible. However, if I use photo paper, whether I change the paper setting to HP Photo Paper, Other Photo Papers, or leave it at plain paper, the quality is just terrible. The ink is splotchy, the resolution - for lack of a better term - is gummy. There is so much ink on the photo that it smears on my hands after sitting and drying for an hour. The paper product I'm using is from Costco. It's the Kirkland Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper. It worked beautifully in our Canon inkjet printer when printing high quality and selecting glossy photo paper or photo paper pro as the paper type. What am I doing wrong? Or is this printer not designed to print on photo paper? Thanks.

The Officejet 8500 will print on photo paper, but you need photo paper designed for pigmented inks. It sounds like you are using photo paper designed for dye based inks. The Officejet 8500 uses pigmented inks which will not interact properly with the coatings on photo paper designed for dye based inks.
Bob Headrick, HP Expert
I am not an employee of HP, I am a volunteer posting here on my own time.
If your problem is solved please click the "Accept as Solution" button ------------V
If my answer was helpful please click the "Thumbs Up" to say "Thank You"--V

Un happy with the print quality of iPhoto books.

I spent a lot of time in editing my photos and find that the colour rendition in the printed book is much darker in many instancesbut not all than were on my screen
Who do I complain to?

I followed your advice. It took a couple of contacts before I was connected to the right group. They were able to look at the original downloaded file on-line to confirm the problem wasn't with my file. My order is being reprocessed and a new book will be shipped in a few days.
Another example of Apple's outstanding customer support. just call me "happy customer."

Epson Artisan 810 and Snow Leopard and Photoshop....Print quality??

I'm a little lost to be honest. I'm not sure where my problem is...Photoshop, Epson, or Snow Leopard
I'm using Photoshop CS4 to edit my photos. I've constrained my cropping to designated print sizes, thus pixelation changes as well.
For example to create an 8x10 from a jpeg file uploaded to my computer from my camera (a sony cybershot dsc-w170 if you need to know, which by default upload files as jpegs), here is the following image info:
3000 pixels x 2400 pixels
25.4 cm x 20.32 cm
with a resolution of 300 pixels/inch
I have the resolution set to BEST and when I print I've tried both document and proof quality (with printer color managment)
I'm using photo paper, gloss, but not Epson brand paper (don't know how much that might be contributing to the problem, if at all).
When I go to print my image the quality off the Epson is HORRIBLE.
Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong?? How do I get better print quality?
There is no option/method of changing the print type (document or photo) on the printer itself, which is obviously made to work best with a PC. So that leaves me with Photoshops options as far as I know.
Although I don't know if there's a way to change default print quality settings within Snow Leopard, or if I even have to.
Whatever the case may be...ultimately I need to know the following:
paper brand/quality matters?
what program should I be trying to print photos from (photoshop, iphoto, whatever)
how to manipulate the photo quality within whichever program I should be using
and anything else important that I may not have thought of
Thanks so much. I've seen great reviews of photo print quality for this printer, so I have hope that this problem can be remedied....?

Your printer is supported by the latest update supplied by Apple.
Cheap paper usually results in cheap looking results.
I'm using HP paper with a HP printer with a Canon Eos Rebel camera that outputs
something like 2592 x 1944.
CS4 handels these .jpgs quite fine.
I would first buy some premium Epson paper and see what happens.

Photo/print question

Another likely "dumb question" from a rookie ID user:
I've imported a photo and the color looks off (on my screen) -- should I be concerned about photo print quality?
The photo seems to look OK when printed off my printer, but it will eventually be printed via some type of offset printing (as I understand it)
P.S. I haven’t researched this much, so if there are answers out there and you can point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it.
ID-CS4 6.0.3
Mac OS X 10.5.7

The only way you can come close to knowing what the color will look like is to calibrate and profile the monitor (use a colorimeter), and preview using the appropriate output space as the proof setup.
You absolutely should ask to see a printed contract proof of the job from the printer -- not a PDF or JPEG proof, because they will look different on your monitor unless the calibration is done -- that they guarantee to match in the actual print run.
Peter

Anyone has print out the iPhoto album book by apple after finish editing? May I check is the quality good? I have compiled my photo album book , choosen hard cover option , 100 pages , estimated cost is US150. Not sure worth to print out or not?

Anyone has print out the iPhoto album book by apple after finish editing? May I check is the quality good? I have compiled my photo album book , choosen hard cover option , 100 pages , estimated cost is US150. Not sure worth to print out or not?

All I can say is the books I've created as gifts to my children for their children were received with absolute joy and appreciation (each book chronicled in pictures the first year of each grandchild's life). Granted the sentimental factor had a lot to do with the recipient's enjoyment of the book but they were spetacular. The book with its glossy dust cover is a very impressinve way to present your photos.
As Larry has pointed out so many have posted here that they were very satisfried with their book and Apple is very good about correcting problems.
To make sure there are no errors in the book before you order preview the book as described in this Apple document: iPhoto '11: Preview a book, card, or calendar before you order or print it. If the PDF file shows no errors, either in text typos (my biggest problem) or in missing photos, etc., the printed book will be error free.
OT

When I print out photo thru iPhoto, the result is too dark.

Hi all,
I have a problem with printing a photo via iPhoto recently.
I remember when I used iPhoto 9 to print out some of my photos but at that moment the result was pretty OK to me.
However, I don't know exatly when but I guess it could be since I upgraded to iPhoto 10...
Everytime I tried to print out some of my photos from my iPhoto library, the result is way too dark than its original color.
I am using HP Photosmart device(C410ㅁ) with fuji photo papers.
I tried to change several options like color sync or printing quality but NO use!!
Strange thing is that if I use airprint with my iPhone or iPad, color level seems to be OK.
But again, iPhone airprint doesn't give any options to manage printing quality level, it couldn't mitigate my problem, either.
Is there anyone out there who has the same or similar problem just like me?
Please share your knowledge to solve this issues.
Thanks in advance
Luke.

What is the color profile of the photo?
LN

Print quality difference between iphoto and aperture...?

when ordering books, is there a print quality difference between using iPhoto and Aperture? or are they sent to the same lab?
it's possible i may have some setting wrong, but when i order a book using iphoto, i never really feel the quality is that great. it's good, i just feel it could be a lot better. the print quality sort of reminds me of newsprint, albeit high quality newsprint. similar sized prints made at home on my basic 3-in-1 printer look better.
thanks...

Previews are what you view on your display. When you import a photo into Aperture (and I'm pretty sure iPhoto as well), your computer automatically generates a preview for quick viewing. The original images are stored in your library, but it is the preview that you see.
In Aperture, you are able to set the size and quality of these previews. When sharing photos between Aperture and iPhoto, the process is as follows:
Let's say that your images are stored in Aperture, but you also want to be able to view them in iPhoto without taking up too much room on your hard drive. Essentially, if you were to import the originals into iPhoto as well, you would be storing two exact, yet separate copies of the same image on your hard drive. As you are aware, with large images (whether JPEG's, and especially RAW) this would put quite a tax on your storage capacity after not too long.
So, you have your images in one or the other (in this case Aperture), but you want to play around with them in iPhoto. What you can do, is open iPhoto, go to the File menu and then select, Show Aperture Library. This will open a window with all of the contents of your Aperture Library. You can then drag any images you want into iPhoto . The only thing is, you are not dragging the original JPEG's, but rather, the previews of those images. If you have those previews set to a lower quality (again for capacity concerns), you will only have lower quality and lower detailed images in iPhoto. These images might not be ideal, or even suitable for printing high quality prints. The previews that you generate in Aperture though can be adjusted to be extremely high quality with no size limits.
My thinking was that since you mentioned Aperture, it sounded like you had experience with working with it and with ordering a photo book through Aperture. I guess you were saying that you ordered via iPhoto, weren't happy with the quality and were wondering if Aperture created books were better.
Anyway, if this is the case, I cannot answer that for you. I have never ordered a book through Aperture. If the quality of your images is good, you should be able to get a decent product no matter where you order it from. There is not doubt that the materials used and the print shop that does the work makes a difference, but if your images are good, you should still get a decent product through iPhoto. Perhaps iPhoto isn't the way to go though if you have had poor experiences with them.
If you haven't used Aperture yet, I would highly recommend it though aside from the photo book aspect of this thread. It is a stellar product.
I hope this helps.
Message was edited by: macorin

Controlling Photo Quality in iPhoto Calendars and Books..

As is the case with many of the processes in iPhoto, I am unclear as to what is taking place when I place and order with Apple for a Photo Book or Calendar. I use an 8 MP Olympus DSLR and shoot at max resolution so my average image is 3200x2400 and # MB+. And yet when I place an order for a calendar containing 12 full page images shot at that resolution the down upload time is nowhere near as long as you would expect for a file that size. I have also noticed that the images in the calendar appear to be of lower quality than when printed out on an ink jet printer. Does iPhoto export the photos at full resolution, or is there something taking place here behind the scenes to speed up upload times?
Thanks,
Win

Terence,
Is there a loss of quality when the photos are converted to pdf files? If so, is there any way around this? I am trying to maintain as high a quality as possible.
Thanks,
Win

Scan photo prints to iPhoto

I have a lot of photo prints taken on old-fashioned film, before the days of digital.
I have an HP Photosmart 5520 scanner/printer which has an option for Photo Preset. The default 'Resolution' setting is 200ppi. There are other options for 75,100,300,600,1200 or 2400 ppi.
My first question is, which 'Resolution' setting should I choose ?
The scanned size at 200 ppi for one print is 2.74MB. When sent to iPhoto its size is reduced to 1MB.
Another apparent anomaly is that although the prints are all 6 inches x 4 inches, their 'info' in iPhoto can vary from anything between 1184 x 791 to 2292 x 1498, and in size from 322 KB to 985 KB.
The digital photos I already have in iPhoto, nevertheless, are all 3888 x 2592 ; but the sizes vary eg from 3.4 MB to 6.1 MB.
File > 'Get Info' for the scanned photos says they are JPEG images and 'color space' is RGB, which I understand is the requisite . . . Can the foregoing re scanned and digital photos be explained ?
Thanks in anticipation

My first question is, which 'Resolution' setting should I choose ?
Depends entirely what you're going to be doing with the Photos. Jpeg is a lossy format, so as you edit each time you save some data is lost. If they require intensive editing, then the more data the better. Are you going to print them? Depending on your devices and the quality you hope to achieve, then perhaps the old 300 dpi for printing is a reasonable rule-of-thumb. If you're uploading them to the internet, say flickr or whatever, then 100 is fine. So, it depends on your proposed usage.
The scanned size at 200 ppi for one print is 2.74MB. When sent to iPhoto its size is reduced to 1MB
iPhoto doesn't reduce the size of anything on import. Where are you seeing these sizes mentioned?
Another apparent anomaly is that although the prints are all 6 inches x 4 inches, their 'info' in iPhoto can vary from anything between 1184 x 791 to 2292 x 1498, and in size from 322 KB to 985 KB.
No anomaly here. Your computer has no "inches" everything is measured in pixels. So the fact that an image is 6x4 in the real world is of no relevance. What matters is the pixel dimensions you choose to digitise (or scan) it. You can create a scan of you 6 x 4 that will be 600 x 400 pixels. (@100dpi) Or you can as easily create one the will be 14,400 x 9,600 (@2,400 dpi)... In other words, don't expect a direct correlation between what you hold in your hand and what you make on the screen. They're different worlds...
But again, iPhoto doesn't change anything on import, so I'd be looking at the scanner for explanations of these variations.
As to the file size, remember not all pixels are the same. An image that is pure white or pure black will have a smaller file size than one of a richly coloured sunset, and will also depend onn the resolution you scan at - so again, no direct correlation, it's a complex equation.

Photo print quality thru iPhoto?

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