I joined Sams Club for their printing services because you can get large prints done in an hour for very cheap (less than $10 for prints up to 20x30, as opposed to places like Kinkos where you will pay upwards of $7 a square foot.) Sam's prints have always looked great in the past, but recently they have been coming out pixelated. Why would this be?
I am a graphic designer and I have prepared images for print professionally for years, so I am pretty confident I am doing it correctly. The images are all 300 resolution JPGs that are the exact print size. As a test, I even printed the exact same file out at Sams and at Kinkos just to compare them and make sure that it wasn't something wrong with my files. It didn't seem to be, as the Sams version was pixelated, and the Kinkos version was perfect.
I haven't changed anything about my computer, software setup, or the way I make files between the time the prints looked great and when they started looking like crap. I have even tried several different Sams Club stores. Sometimes the prints will come out better at a different store, sometimes not. I have also tried talking to the Sams staff and there has never been a group of people more inept at handling digital photos; I'm not sure how they even got the job. It's very frustrating trying to explain to them that it is my job to know how to prepare these files correctly, when they just keep telling me that I should drive all the way back home, change something on my end, wait an hour, then come back to the same crappy result (which I have done several times.)
Why would this be happening? I use Photoshop CS3 to make my files, is there a way in the JPG format options to fool-proof the files for these people? Any other file format makes the file size too large for them to use. I would love to keep using Sams so that I don't have spend a small fortune every time I have an art show.Why would high resolution pictures print out pixelated?
hey i try not to use jpegs while they are good on screen they sometimes carry problems at the printers.. I use tiffs... they are a lossy-less format... maybe this file extension change will help out...
so image is right print size at 300 dpi have you calibrated the scanner? just a thought... sometimes pple at my work change settings and i fly in and preprep my print stuff and find the changes have wrecked the image output...
Also maybe printing with a pdf... they seem to resize well enough.. though text can fuzz up if your not careful...
otherwise i'm stumped.. I will ask the printer who does our offsite work tomorrow... may have a response then..
cheers...
Puk The wizzWhy would high resolution pictures print out pixelated?
You may be preparing files at 300 dpi, but they may not be printing it at 300 dpi. That being said, have they changed printing equipment at Sam's?
Also - what was the native resolution of the images, i.e. did you change it to 300?
