online printing experiences

I am interested in people's experiences. I did some like for like comparison between Photobox and Snapfish, and Snapfish was markedly better. Photobox pictures were too dark, peoples hair was darkened and lacked detail. The same photos from snapfish had nice detail to the hair. Even so I am getting more picky and find that the colours in snapfish prints could be better. I'll give you an example, my daughter has a red school top which looks the right shade of red on screen but from snapfish is not quite right, maybe a bit oversaturated. I know there are places where you can send prints where you save the colour scheem for the printer that they use so you can get closer to what you have on screen. I wondered what peoples experience of that is, in printing big standard prints, I'm not talking expensive stuff.

I have had too many bad experiences with photobox in the past to trust them with anything of importance. Glad I only used them for low end personal items.

Sorry Photobox, but if you read this, you need to pull your socks up as the QC has slipped beyond a lot of users expectations.

BTW I do still use Photobox for calendars which are markedly better than the print quality, although I deliberately slightly overbrightened a few images anticipating they may come out too dark, and on the calendar they looked fine.

I have placed an order today with DS colour labs with a number of pictures that I have printed before from snapfish and photobox so I can do a like for like. I'll report back the results. Their postage is quite high at £4 but if the quality stands out it will be worth it.

I think it might help others if on this thread we compare experiences of straight forward sending of the jpg as is to a printer and thoughts on quality.

BonusPrint offer a convenient and cheap service, but they mess about with the image too much (sharpening, etc); the printing quality is not very good.

Still not used them myself yet, but ProAm Imaging get rave reviews. They are not expensive, yet apparently the quality is second to none. The catch is that you have to prepare the files entirely yourself.

A report back on DS colour labs. The results are good, about on a par with snapfish. I'd say some look better than the snapfish results, some the same, some not at good, not a great deal between them. There was a little muck up on some of the enlargements, the wrong print has been done, but I am sure they'll sort that out tomorrow.

Used to favour Photobox, but like someone else has said here, their QC has slipped alarmingly in recent years. These days I do everything at home. I tried Kodak a couple of times and the prints from them were ok, but not needed anything done recently.

Photobox photos are dark IMO, especially canvas prints (that was a mistake)
I like DSColourLabs
Not tried Snapfish
Next to try: PeakImaging (I've heard theyre the best)

thanks for responses. When I scrutinise the best pictures, the ones i like the most from snapfish/dscolourlabs it's noticable how much sharper and detailed images are compared to what i am seeing on screen. does anyone know why this would be? is this down to my screen or the development method they have used. I must say I prefer the end result to the original, the photos have more vibrancy than what I see on screen.

Although not online, I find that ProAM Imaging prints are top notch every time. The 18"x12" prints are just lovely
Can't beat their prices

(Mind you, you do have to prepare everything yourself - and that requires some knowledge of colour management and full Photoshop, unless you like messing around with command-line tools!)
Matt