I used to print at home on a Cannon printer. I really liked it because of the individual ink tanks. Then I found an online print company that has GREAT pricing and turnaround that is unparalleled.

There is no charge for opening an account or uploading your images, and you can store them in online albums to share with whomever you please. You can order prints from wallet sizes all the way up to a 24x30" print. They have several paper offerings in addition to regular E-Surface paper. [The metallic is sensational! This paper will absolutely blow people away.] They also have a Black and White paper printed with a black and white laser. They accept digital files and negatives.

If I upload my prints this morning, they would most likely be printed and shipping to me TONIGHT. I know I sound like a spokesperson here, but I truly believe that if you check out what they do, you will be equally impressed.

http://www.mpix.com/

For international users, go here: http://www.magix.com/select.html All prints are fulfilled for Magix by the Mpix company.

Cheers, Stacey

-----Original Message----- From: gimp-user-bounces@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu [mailto:gimp-user-bounces@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu] On Behalf Of Carol Spears
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 6:59 PM To: GIMPUser
Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] archival-quality gilmp prints (gimp prints)

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 01:02:56AM +0200, Andreas Waechter wrote:

Helen wrote:

I'm using an HP Deskjet 5550, on good-quality photo paper. My prints lose color in less than a year. Is there a way to prolong the life of a print, other than an extremely expensive giclee printer?

Just an idea - photo shops (online or real shops) can do prints on real photo paper (the stuff real photos are done with) - for these shops it doesn't matter whether the picture comes from a digital camera or from a graphic program like GIMP.

I would like to second this opinion. my friend and i were standing in an evil yet very inexpensive store comparing prices. the roll of paper that was special cut to print 4x6 inch photos, each photo printed would have costed 40 cents a piece. that number presumes that each print you make is good (not a mistake). the price they charged for single reprints was 26 cents per photograph of the same size.

more than that, the people working at the counter were intelligent, approachable and knowledgible about what the machines could do -- or at the very least, honest and able to tell me who to speak with. as cheap as i am, i have no desire to see these services or people go away. I would rather see more of them.

if you are making prints of your art via photograph printer facilities, there are a few things to watch out for. i was trying to print a poster that was mostly black and the machine they use auto fixes this. it caused the image parts to print washed out. if you are printing artwork, it is in your best interests to talk to someone who understands the machine that will be doing the printing. for this location, it was the simple task of writing on the envelope instructions to not color correct the print. the poster turned out fine, even beautiful and it was extremely (in my opinion) inexpensive.

i come from a long line of do-it-yourselfers, however, the same line seems to have a threshold for quality.

and more news from the print world, they still do not let the raw information about the color profiling out to the general public. i do not know what it takes to have access to this information yet either. for my dollar, i still remember what the manager of the print shop told me about how to handle converting images from rgb to whatever that machine would prefer it in. he said "let the machine do the conversion", the more i read about the way it is done, the more i really really believe in this suggestion.

on one hand, you can believe it is working. on the other hand, you can believe that someone who actually understands it has set up the crazy chain of events and table reading and converting to actually work. i tend to believe the other hand more than the one hand.

thanks for reading this, carol