Best photo prints from Google Photos
June 26, 2023 6:50 PM Subscribe
I'd like to print out some photos from my Google Photos account--actual, real deal prints to put in an album or hang in a frame. I've printed through Google's service with CVS but the quality was eh. Is there a way to get higher-quality prints?
Can you describe what about the CVS prints was "eh"? The sharpness, the color, the quality of the paper?
Knowing what the resolution is of the photos, and what they were shot on might help us troubleshoot, but it could very well be that between whatever you shot on and whatever compression Google performed on them, they're just not high quality photos and the prints are an accurate reflection.
It seems like most of the places that offer prints (CVS, Walmart, etc.) use similar equipment, so that's probably not the issue, but they might not have good quality control (and/or they might not have employees that know enough about photography to be able to know when things aren't looking good.
So, if you're sure that the photos themselves are high quality, I'd suggest trying a place that caters to photographers. I use iprintfromhome.com, and I've used mpix.com, but there are lots of others. They tend to offer a lot more paper options, so if that's what your issue is with CVS's prints, then this could be the answer.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:45 PM on June 26, 2023
Knowing what the resolution is of the photos, and what they were shot on might help us troubleshoot, but it could very well be that between whatever you shot on and whatever compression Google performed on them, they're just not high quality photos and the prints are an accurate reflection.
It seems like most of the places that offer prints (CVS, Walmart, etc.) use similar equipment, so that's probably not the issue, but they might not have good quality control (and/or they might not have employees that know enough about photography to be able to know when things aren't looking good.
So, if you're sure that the photos themselves are high quality, I'd suggest trying a place that caters to photographers. I use iprintfromhome.com, and I've used mpix.com, but there are lots of others. They tend to offer a lot more paper options, so if that's what your issue is with CVS's prints, then this could be the answer.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:45 PM on June 26, 2023
The photographic prints from https://www.iprintfromhome.com/ipfh/ are great and they can cover for low quality images in a lot of ways. I have some low res pictures (2009 era) that I’ve printed at 12x24 and up that look pretty good. They also have really good customer service if you want to reach out after uploading pictures and ask them for recommendations about which paper and size will work best for the individual pictures you have.
posted by Bottlecap at 9:40 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Bottlecap at 9:40 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
It won't be direct from Google but current AI assisted photo enlargement services can do some real magic. I recently blew up a badly compressed 1MB jpeg into good quality A4 format with PhotoAid's free online service and I was really pleased with the result. I suspect it depends on how close your photo is to the training data set, but a portrait of an elderly white person was perfectly fine.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:46 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:46 AM on June 27, 2023
I agree with all the cautions about Google, Facebook, etc processing pictures to the smallest size that looks OK to unfussy computer users.
I came in to say that plenty of film cameras have taken terrible, blurry pictures through the years. A typical inexpensive camera was designed to take tourist pictures, what I describe as "three people in front of a statue." It takes pro level equipment to crop a 35mm to say a quarter of the original size and have something you can blow up to 8x10 and still look good.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:59 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I came in to say that plenty of film cameras have taken terrible, blurry pictures through the years. A typical inexpensive camera was designed to take tourist pictures, what I describe as "three people in front of a statue." It takes pro level equipment to crop a 35mm to say a quarter of the original size and have something you can blow up to 8x10 and still look good.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:59 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: First, choose a photolab, then if it's not linked to Google, just download the highest resolution file you can from Google Photos and order prints from that lab. (Or even better, use the original file, if you have it.)
Wirecutter and PC Mag recommend Nations. Mpix has been mentioned here several times and I've used them with good results; PC Mag liked them but Wirecutter did not; they both note that Mpix tends to be more expensive than other printers.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Wirecutter and PC Mag recommend Nations. Mpix has been mentioned here several times and I've used them with good results; PC Mag liked them but Wirecutter did not; they both note that Mpix tends to be more expensive than other printers.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: Threadsitting but the problem isn't the DPI so much as the paper quality and gloss. The nicer the physical product, the better!
posted by kingdead at 7:41 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by kingdead at 7:41 AM on June 27, 2023
Best answer: In that case, you definitely want the photo lab I linked! Archival quality prints with lots of lovely paper choices.
posted by Bottlecap at 9:46 AM on June 27, 2023
posted by Bottlecap at 9:46 AM on June 27, 2023
There are a few factors at play: The simples way is to boil it down to Source Image Qualify (input) and Printing Qualify (output).
For the output quality, you may be better off downloading the image and then uploading it to a print service of your choosing. I've had good luck with ShutterFly (Costco is no longer in the photo printing business). There are also a lot of higher price boutique firms out there. Search for "giclee prints" and you will see a lot of folks offering top quality prints. (Giclee is a fancy word for "inkjet", but don't tell anybody I said that.) Most of the giclee services use a 12 ink setup rather than the standard 4 you get with a basic inkjet printer. They also use archival inks and papers which mean that the photo will survive for a much longer time. So if you care about the output quality, skip the CVS/Walgreens photolabs and look at a few of the "Fine Art" printers out there and compare their prices.
But the best printer in the world can't make up for a bad original source image (It may not be your issue per your update, but I think it needs to be covered for the other folks who may have a similar question or issues.)
You will want something that has not been downgraded from the original image that came out of the camera. Google (and Facebook, and most others) have in the past tuned down the image quality during the upload to save space and also improve loading time. This is not usually noticeable on a computer monitor, but it will show up if you print anything larger than a 4x6. The last time I uploaded to images to google photos, I had the option to upload the original or have them dump it down for viewing on the screen. Anybody trying to print an image that had been downsized for the screen is going to have bad results. You may be able to use some of the newer AI based upsizers to try and fake it, but it will still look a bit, er, off.
For a discussion of the print size vs the base image resolution, see Thom Hogan's article at https://www.dslrbodies.com/cameras/camera-articles/image-quality/how-big-can-i-print.html that indicates how large you can print given the source image size. I'm going to disagree with AugustusCrunch's response that you need a 53GB image for a 12x12" print to look good. The cited 4800 dpi exceeds the useful resolution of a Kodachrome slide. It is the typical max resolution for scanning an original slide or negative, not the photo itself. (And even that is oversampled. A Kodachrome 64 slide is equivalent to a modern 20mp camera image.) For prints, the general recommendation is to try and get to 300dpi. Thom's article goes into the gory details, but a standard 12mp from my 13 year old camera will print at 13x19" with good results. My newer 24mp camera will cover that same 13x19 with excellent results. Those images are ~15MB and 30MB in size, respectively. A larger 24x36" print will necessitate a bump to a 45mp camera and those images run around 60MB in size.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 9:54 AM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
For the output quality, you may be better off downloading the image and then uploading it to a print service of your choosing. I've had good luck with ShutterFly (Costco is no longer in the photo printing business). There are also a lot of higher price boutique firms out there. Search for "giclee prints" and you will see a lot of folks offering top quality prints. (Giclee is a fancy word for "inkjet", but don't tell anybody I said that.) Most of the giclee services use a 12 ink setup rather than the standard 4 you get with a basic inkjet printer. They also use archival inks and papers which mean that the photo will survive for a much longer time. So if you care about the output quality, skip the CVS/Walgreens photolabs and look at a few of the "Fine Art" printers out there and compare their prices.
But the best printer in the world can't make up for a bad original source image (It may not be your issue per your update, but I think it needs to be covered for the other folks who may have a similar question or issues.)
You will want something that has not been downgraded from the original image that came out of the camera. Google (and Facebook, and most others) have in the past tuned down the image quality during the upload to save space and also improve loading time. This is not usually noticeable on a computer monitor, but it will show up if you print anything larger than a 4x6. The last time I uploaded to images to google photos, I had the option to upload the original or have them dump it down for viewing on the screen. Anybody trying to print an image that had been downsized for the screen is going to have bad results. You may be able to use some of the newer AI based upsizers to try and fake it, but it will still look a bit, er, off.
For a discussion of the print size vs the base image resolution, see Thom Hogan's article at https://www.dslrbodies.com/cameras/camera-articles/image-quality/how-big-can-i-print.html that indicates how large you can print given the source image size. I'm going to disagree with AugustusCrunch's response that you need a 53GB image for a 12x12" print to look good. The cited 4800 dpi exceeds the useful resolution of a Kodachrome slide. It is the typical max resolution for scanning an original slide or negative, not the photo itself. (And even that is oversampled. A Kodachrome 64 slide is equivalent to a modern 20mp camera image.) For prints, the general recommendation is to try and get to 300dpi. Thom's article goes into the gory details, but a standard 12mp from my 13 year old camera will print at 13x19" with good results. My newer 24mp camera will cover that same 13x19 with excellent results. Those images are ~15MB and 30MB in size, respectively. A larger 24x36" print will necessitate a bump to a 45mp camera and those images run around 60MB in size.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 9:54 AM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
A friend introduced me to an old girlfriend, who scanned photos for a living. I asked, "Are we there yet?"
She said, "Not even close." She estimated that you could scan a photo at 4500 pixels per inch and have something about as good as a clear photo.
Suppose you had an image 12" on a side. That works out, at 4800 pixels to the inch, to a bit more than 3.3 billion pixels. I haven't kept up with the state of the art in raster images, but from what I can find on the web, 16 bits per pixel (dot) is pretty basic. That's 53 gigabytes for a square foot picture.
Obviously that's not going to happen, because it's fewer than 20 pictures on a 1 terabyte drive.
The question is how close you have to come to photographic quality to be acceptable.
Obviously you can't blow up the image you shot at 1 megapixel up to cover a wall, because it'll be too grainy.
I don't know where your images came from. If they're random pictures off the web, most sites reduce the size, and thus the detail, until it's acceptable on a monitor. They're too small to print bigger.
You also have to deal with file formats: bmp files aren't compressed, so what you get is what the camera saw. Jpg's are compressed, which means the camera has taken its best guess at how much detail it can get rid of in the interest of making the file smaller. I wouldn't blow one of these up as much.
My current camera shoots at 12 megapixels. I'd enlarge them within reason - maybe a foot across - and they'd probably be okay, depending on the quality of the image.
There are AI programs that can fill in detail on an image and make it look okay at larger sizes. I've seen a few examples. I've never printed one out. There's a difference between reality and a computer's idea of it.
You can also use a dye-sublimation printer. These boil the ink off into a cloud which condenses on the paper, but there are no clear pixels so the image doesn't look grainy. That doesn't mean there's more detail than there was, just that you can't see the dots. I've seen some nice stuff printed on them.
There's also rasterbator.net, which makes everything much more grainy, in some cases using pixels two or three inches across, and makes the grain into part of the work. I made a small black and white image into a five by six foot poster, printed it out one sheet at a time on my letter-size printer, and taped it to a wall, and it looked really good for several years.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 8:08 PM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]