Anyone Print At Home ?
Discussion
joust said:
www.pixaco.co.uk
Beats either of them
J
Have you used them and what was the quality like?
Cheers
Ian
Yes - I use them all the time and quality is excellent.
They use a Agfa Prestigue paper, and the colours are very faithful.
Couple to that that they actually print the pictures the "right" size (they fix the width at 3.5", 4" or 5", and then just print the appropiate length given the image, i.e. you loose absolutly none of the image if you have a 4:3 image rather than a 3:2), and for me, they also do panoramic pictures up to 7"x4" or 7.5"x5". If the image won't fit fully into that, they scale it so you get a top and bottom border that you can then crop off by hand.
Posters are exceptionally good through them, again because they fix the print size down the shorter side, allowing great freedom.
Finally, their upload wizard is one of the best out there.
I must have had 1000+ photos from them...
Two scans of images from them to show the effect..
The first was a panorama stiched together of "random" number images (four I think)
The second was a normal 4:3 digital camera print. The black lines show the approximate edges of the paper - you can see that they print "as long as it needs" up to the maximum, and then scale the image appropiatly.
All done on 3.5" wide paper, and all at half the price of anyone else!
J
They use a Agfa Prestigue paper, and the colours are very faithful.
Couple to that that they actually print the pictures the "right" size (they fix the width at 3.5", 4" or 5", and then just print the appropiate length given the image, i.e. you loose absolutly none of the image if you have a 4:3 image rather than a 3:2), and for me, they also do panoramic pictures up to 7"x4" or 7.5"x5". If the image won't fit fully into that, they scale it so you get a top and bottom border that you can then crop off by hand.
Posters are exceptionally good through them, again because they fix the print size down the shorter side, allowing great freedom.
Finally, their upload wizard is one of the best out there.
I must have had 1000+ photos from them...
Two scans of images from them to show the effect..
The first was a panorama stiched together of "random" number images (four I think)
The second was a normal 4:3 digital camera print. The black lines show the approximate edges of the paper - you can see that they print "as long as it needs" up to the maximum, and then scale the image appropiatly.
All done on 3.5" wide paper, and all at half the price of anyone else!
J
Ian_H said:3 days normally, 4 at the most. And yep, they come from .de on express mail (amazing therefore that they are so cheap!)
Sounds good, I think I'll upload a poster and some smaller shots and see for myself, how long do the orders normally take to get to you, am I right in saying they come from Germany.
They are even cheaper if you lived in .de, www.pixaco.de offers it at €0.08 per 9x13, about 6p!
J
simpo two said:There is a HTML one, but the activeX version is much nicer....
However I'm not keen on the fact it starts trying to uploading install software automatically (didn't get a security alert either)
If it loaded it straight away then that's the fault of your browser security settings, not the site. You should have your browser set to "ask" for activeX from the same site.....
J
In the Pixaco site it doesnt seem to offer any facility so you can see how your print will look if the upload is not a variant on the 6x4 multiple. So if you have been cropping the original image and get the co-ordinates incorrect then I suspect you will not know how the final print will look until you receive it.
In the Photobox site it does have the facility which means that if you have a 'tight' subject matter you can adjust either the uploaded image or indeed reposition Photobox's crop.
In the Photobox site it does have the facility which means that if you have a 'tight' subject matter you can adjust either the uploaded image or indeed reposition Photobox's crop.
????
Pixaco doesn't crop anything (unlike others)!
It just rescales the short side to match the short side of the print size you have ordered, and then prints the long side at whatever it has to be to print all the pixels.
If however the long side exceeds the maximum (e.g. 7" for the 6"x4" one), then it starts to downscale the whole image and centre it until the long edge fits the maximum length.
e.g.
If you have a 1200x800 image, then on a 6x4" print selected in the order form it will be
800/4 = 200dpi on the short edge.
That means that the long edge will be 1200/200 = 6"
=> So, you get a 6x4 print.
However, if your image was, say, 1600x900, then it will be
900/4 = 225dpi
That means that the long edge will be 1600/225 = 7.11"
Now, 7.11" is greater than the 7" max, so it then does it the other way around
1600/7 = 228.6dpi
That means that the short edge will be 900/228.6 = 3.9375".
Or, to put it another way, the print will be 7"x4" that you get in the post, but the image will have a (4"-3.9375")/2=0.3" white border top and bottom, but NO border left/right.
If you then cut that white border off, you would then have a 7"x3.94" print that showed the entire image.
Look at the top image I posted. That is a 3740x1182 image. You can see the original image at
www.lotus-elise.org.uk/IOW/Alum%20Bay.jpg
The bottom image is normal 1600x1200 image and is available at
www.lotus-elise.org.uk/IOW/P3180237.JPG
Do you follow? That's the beauty of pixaco, that you always get the complete image as you send it. If you want to "crop" it, just do it in PS or similar before you upload it, and regardless of what you do to the aspect ratio, they will always print as much as they can on a 4"x7" image, cutting the long side to exact size if it's <7".
J
Pixaco doesn't crop anything (unlike others)!
It just rescales the short side to match the short side of the print size you have ordered, and then prints the long side at whatever it has to be to print all the pixels.
If however the long side exceeds the maximum (e.g. 7" for the 6"x4" one), then it starts to downscale the whole image and centre it until the long edge fits the maximum length.
e.g.
If you have a 1200x800 image, then on a 6x4" print selected in the order form it will be
800/4 = 200dpi on the short edge.
That means that the long edge will be 1200/200 = 6"
=> So, you get a 6x4 print.
However, if your image was, say, 1600x900, then it will be
900/4 = 225dpi
That means that the long edge will be 1600/225 = 7.11"
Now, 7.11" is greater than the 7" max, so it then does it the other way around
1600/7 = 228.6dpi
That means that the short edge will be 900/228.6 = 3.9375".
Or, to put it another way, the print will be 7"x4" that you get in the post, but the image will have a (4"-3.9375")/2=0.3" white border top and bottom, but NO border left/right.
If you then cut that white border off, you would then have a 7"x3.94" print that showed the entire image.
Look at the top image I posted. That is a 3740x1182 image. You can see the original image at
www.lotus-elise.org.uk/IOW/Alum%20Bay.jpg
The bottom image is normal 1600x1200 image and is available at
www.lotus-elise.org.uk/IOW/P3180237.JPG
Do you follow? That's the beauty of pixaco, that you always get the complete image as you send it. If you want to "crop" it, just do it in PS or similar before you upload it, and regardless of what you do to the aspect ratio, they will always print as much as they can on a 4"x7" image, cutting the long side to exact size if it's <7".
J
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