Printing Options

My knowledge of printing is via photobox and nothing larger than 7" x 5" (All for my Adult Ed photography course). I would like to print something much larger for hanging on a wall but was wondering about:

1. Other companies - better than photobox
2. Higher quality materials?
3. Files are all from K5. What reasonable size could I go up to? A4, A3etc. ?
4. Any other questions I haven't thought about

Thanks in advance

I've got a photo on my wall A2 that came out of my *istD in 2005. Only 6.000.000 pixels. and I used to print at home A4 from my EI2000 only 2.250.000 pixels.
Don't think about it to much just do it!.
CHEERS Vic

The image from the K-5 is around A3 at 300ppi, perfect for printing to A3 without any resizing.

Quality will not be a problem and there are many printers to choose from. Peak Imaging and Loxley Colour are two that spring to mind.

I've been using Loxley for 15 years ever since doing a shoot for Fujifilm about their processing lab machines and never had any problems just great results. Excellent customer service if you have any queries too. I'm tending to get Giclee prints on either Hahnemuhle of Fuji fine art papers these days.

In a sense there is no maximum size. Think of billboards, the bigger the print the greater the viewing distance.

Thanks all, I shall take a look at Peak Imaging & Loxley

DSCL charge a fraction of the price Loxley do. I pay just over £1 for A3. The biggest part of the expense is postage at nearly a fiver. So, I try to get a dozen or so different prints per order.

I also get a lot of 12x12" prints from them and also B&W (using the same "colour" service).

The prints are up to competition standard.

My worry regards sending prints to a print company is, what am I sending? Sometimes I've had an image look quite good in photoshop, saved it full size and also as a pdi, and got some decent feed back on the forum ( I know they are compressed etc) but when I print the same image out it's either too dark or something so haven't had the courage to send any off.

I use ProAm Imaging and never had a problem - competative prices as well, also very quick turn-around. I found it a bit tricky sizing and preparing the images the first time I tried it, but they have pretty good help and advice on their website. Now I find it easy.

I know others who use Loxley and who speak highly of them.

Phil

This is a common 'complaint'. Usually the simple reason is that your monitors brightness may be set to high. The 'default' factory setting of many monitors is way too high for photographic work.

a few of my friends use this company and have won club competitions with the results also prices are very good :-http://www.proamimaging.com/
at the moment i print my own but as the cost rises this is looking tempting.

I usually use Color Munki to calibrate my monitors, also have a blackout curtain at the window so ambient light in the room should be constant. I'll try printing a "problematical" image by removing colormunki and turn the brightness of the monitor down and see what the result is

While this is undoubtedly true, not everyone has the luxury of space or is able to keep people away from the image. A 10 MB file can go to A2 and tolerate close inspection if it doesn't contain fine detail. So a landscape is likely to be fine, but a macro shot, or other sharp image that's dependent on resolution, will be less forgiving.
Those 4K screens in the shops have huge impressive images even 1 foot away, you couldn't do that with my 'HD' telly so with a very big file you can hang a long panorama in your hallway and people can spend ages searching it for details, whilst standing just inches away putting on their coat

I've been doing some more searching and can see there are 2 companies not too far away from where I work (city of London) - Bayeaux Ltd. & ThePrintSpace. Does anyone have experience of them?

Yup... Haven't used Bayeux myself but by reputation they're very good indeed (historically have been the official printers for the Landscape Photographer of the Year exhibition in London), so unlikely to be cheap... PrintSpace (Shoreditch) I have used for prints on fine art paper for galleries etc and they're great... Good quality and quickish turnaround... I generally use Loxley for exhibitions etc (not cheap, but very good), and DSCL the rest of the time (also very good, and very good value, slightly less flexibility on printing options)...

Best

Thanks Bill I will definitely go to one or both of the physical shops just so that I can see with my own eyes what I can expect - they're are a myriad of options and right now my brain is suffering from analysis paralysis!