Printing Question

Hello. I have a printing question for you. I truely love nature and photography and just recently a friend of mine, who owns a store said that he would like some of my prints to hang and maybe to sell. The problem is that he wants sizes which are larger than I am able to print. I usually do 8x12s with no problem but he wants something around 16x20 and I have no clue how I am going to do that.
Any advice? I have actually found one place near by that can make quality prints that are this large but they want a 99$ set-up fee and then around 100$ more for each print made. Is that normal?
I would appreciate any help that you can offer.
Thanks,
Dave

Dave, $100 for a 16x20 is a rip off, no matter how good they claim the prints are.

If you can do your own digital pre-flight work (ie. prepare the file for sending direct to a printer) - West Coast Imaging does really nice work. They offer you excellent prices if you do all the prep work yourself.

Their site: http://www.westcoastimaging.com

Mark,
thanks for the great info! It is so refreshing to see that quality printing of this size can actually be affordable. I have been a member of this forum for less than 12 hours and it has already been well worth it!
Thank you so much.
Dave

I have 11 X 14 photographic prints made at Costco for $ 2.99ea. Their price foe 12 x 18 is somewhere around $4.00. They are made on a Noritsu laser printer that exposes onto fuji crystal archive photographic paper. Dry Creek Photo on the web has the profiles available for particular individual printers, and there website has the names and locations of where the machines are. You can do your work in photoshop and just bring the digital file to be printed. Personally, I am surprised there has not been much fanfare over this option. I was about to buy a Epson 2200, but when I saw the quality of these prints I couldn't justify the hassles of printing myself.

There are quite a few places in maryland dry creek has profiles for...some are Noritsu printers using Fuji Paper (which I prefer) and others are frontier printers using various papers. You'll just need a decent scan / file size. Look at Dry Creek photo for the list of locations and the complete instructions on "How to".

Personally, 12 x 18 prints on the Noritsu appear stuning to me...and I can't imagine why you would need bigger than that.

Maybe someone else who has tried the Noritsu could chime in here also....I can't see any downside to this approach.

I recently sent a marginal D30 image to Ezprints.com and for around $15.00 I got an awesome 16x24 print.

Our local Costco doesn't print larger than 8x12 but the Noritsu there is also very good.

The prices you mentioned are well beyond absurd! $99.00 set-up fee?
Unbelievable!

Mark thanks for the link to the printing site. Looks good I am going to give them a try.