A couple of days ago I started to have a set of 5 photos printed by more or less "professional" services. #1 was the photo shop with its own developping monster machine here, #2 was the Kodak instant photo printer in the drugstore supermarket here, #3 was Cewe, one of "the" mass developpers in Germany.
What can I say - none of the three pictures was alike, that was to be expected. Some observations:
The local photo shop applied some (IMHO, extra stupid) "automatic enhancements" to my photos that completely ruined some pictures: colors were altered, and extra-strong highlights in portraits were reduced to be more "normal" or something, the exposure was corrected to spots in the picture that I didn't expose for, making everything too dark. They were the most expensive ones, too. Good paper (Kodak), and good glossy finish, though. I should talk to them and ask them to turn all their automatic enhancements off when they print my pictures.
The pictures from Cewe were all just plain horrible. Muddy, washed out. Lacking sharpness. All colors were much too warm. Good paper (Fujifilm) and good glossy finish, too, but they were the cheapest - and it shows. Never again!
The pictures from the Kodak self-service instant printer were a surprise. Sharp, good colors, no tomfoolery with automatic enhancements (as far as I can tell, that is). The finish is a bit weak though, of course, and its impossible to get anything bigger than 20x25cm out of it.
I have to test more. Problem is that a great many of online photo services are actually all using the same developping service - Cewe. I have to find out which and then avoid them! The other problem is that ordering photos online is a pain in the brain because it takes so damn long to upload the pictures. :-}
UPDATE: part of the problem with the prints was that I edited my photos on a non-calibrated display. I added the "calibration" label to this post as a warning. :-)
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