Printer or online service for prints?

[tijean]

I have a pretty decent photo printer (Canon i960). I am in love with the print quality, especially on the Canon paper. While the printer does not drink ink, but it uses a substantial amount for high quality stuff. It's also $80 for a full set of cartriages. (Eek!) It is just a brilliant little machine that spits out amazing stuff and doesn't is good at using only enough ink for text/basic printing. I have a little Nikon Coolpix 4500. It's a good camera, but I don't print a huge amount from it. A few snapshots, a few for fun, some for frames on the wall, but I don't have production going or anything. The camera is capable of much more, but I just use it for fun and my film SLRs for the grunt work.

The thing is that I am about to get my very first DSLR - a Pentax *istDS. I plan to be printing a lot more since my "print" stuff will move from the film SLRs to the DSLR.

So I was wondering if anyone had experience with online print services vs. your own photo printer in terms of cost, quality, stuff like that? My only concern is that I am on dialup and uploading a full res image would take years. Also, any experience with getting them printed locally?

Sorry for all the vagueness, but I really don't have a clue on this.

[Rick Miller]

(snip...) Also, any experience with getting them printed locally?

Greetings tijean.

With respect to getting them printed locally - you can have your images printed on a Fuji Frontier or a Noritsu printer using Fuji Crystal Archival paper from one of the icc profiled printers on the database at http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Frontie...erDatabase.htm

The entire workflow - including converting to the printer profile - is also listed on Dry Creek Photo:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Frontie...r_profiles.htm

What's great about the database is that places like Costco paid to have their individual printers profiled - something which a lot of supposed "Pro" labs haven't done. You don't have to pay for the ICC profiles - the labs in the database paid for them in order to have their customers use them.

The results on a properly icc profiled printer are stunning; a lot of professional wedding and portrait photographers I know have switched to places like Costco to get their prints done because they can now soft-proof their images in Photoshop and choose the most pleasing rendering intent when converting to the printer profile - something you can't do with a lab that doesn't supply you with or offer an ICC profile for their specific printer.