WHCC, the almost easy way

So I got my prints back from WHCC yesterday (Yay!!!). They weren't the quality I was expecting (Boo!!!). They were acceptable though (Meh...).

The blown up prints were great, I'll talk about those later. The 8x12's, not so much.

I got my account setup with the test shots and those were awesome. It was the quality I expected from them, so I was ready to order...


I sat down Friday night and opened Roes and this is were the trouble started. WHCC's directions aren't very clear in some spots. No where does it say that the quality of the photos you see in the ROES ordering software is going to be complete and utter shit. Pixelated and anomaly filled shit. I started to worry. After a post and PM on the Photography On The Net Canon DSLR forums, I received an answer I was looking for. Yes, it's just a thumbnail and they'll look that way. So after the reassurance, I placed my order of a bunch of 8x12's, four 24x36's, and one 30x45.

Waiting, waiting, waiting, Yesterday evening and off work early, I make it home about twenty minutes before the UPS guy shows up at my porch and hands off the order. I take them inside and inspect the 8x12's. They're good, but not the quality I got from the test batch. I did something differently.

So I'll go into that now. The 8x12's with the first batch where done by resizing the image in Photo Shop to 8x12 and 300ppi, like the website said. So on the second batch, I used the crop tool to set them to 8x12 and 300ppi. Apparently, this doesn't work so well. If you're ordering smaller sized prints, physically resize them using the image size box and don't just use the crop tool.

And then I was going to open the enlargements. I cracked open the cardboard tube and pulled them out...damn that would be a mess if I opened now and had to transport them. I ended up tossing everything in the car and driving over to Wise Guys tattoo studio. Travis, the client, had just left, so I put the 8x12's in his room and cracked open the enlargements. Niiiiiiiiice! They were great for the most part. I did learn some valuable lessons.

OK. Enlargements. I just used the crop tool as the website said and used the crop tool to "crop" to 24x36 and 30x45 with the ppi left blank. I actually just selected the entire image size with the crop tool so the setting would take. No other size adjustments were made. What I did learn was that 8mp is fine for enlargements of this size, but more pixels are better. One image in particular was amazingly clear. You have to make sure your picture is as sharp as you can manage on your monitor for enlargements of these size. Also, skin smoothing needs to be done very carefully. It looked like very small amounts of pixelation in some places on the 30x45 where I did some heavy skin smoothing. It was barely noticeable from close up and overall, everything turned out well.

With remembering to correctly resize my images, I believe I'm going to be very happy with WHCC's products and customer service.