​Contact Us: 818.784.6333
What is "True Photographic Printing"?
True Photographic Printing is a wet, chemical-based process that requires darkroom techniques and yields true silver gelatin photographs. Many places people get their photos printed at no longer use true photographic printing techniques. Often they offer inkjet or thermal prints.
Some distinct advantages of True Photo v. Inkjet:
- Continuous Tones. Inkjet Printers creat tones by applying small drops of ink on a paper's surface in multiple layers, which can lead to inconsistent results. True photo printing uses a laser light source, exposing a silver gelatin layer within the paper to produce a true continuous tone from shadows to highlights.
- No Ink Bronzing. Ink pigments reflect light, resulting in unwanted glare across your print, sometimes called bronzing. This is most noticeable in the black areas. With true photo, your image is created in the paper itself, not from layers of ink, so there are no unexpected reflections.
How should I prepare my files?
Please bring us 8-bit files that are at least 300 dpi at print size. We accept JPEGs, TIFFs, and PSD files. For accurate color, files MUST be in sRGB color profile. Please note that Adobe RGB is NOT sRGB, and will not yield accurate color.
A note about resolution: In order to produce a quality 4x6 print, we need a file resolution of 6" x 300 dpi=1800 pixels width, and 4" x 300 dpi=1200 pixels height. Therefore we prefer a file resolution of about 1800x1200 or higher for optimum 4x6 prints. A quality 8x10 print would need an image file with a resolution of 3000x2400 or higher. We can print from low resolution files, but the results will be less than optimum.