Photographer’s Corner | FAQ | Professional vs. Discount Prints

A popular question: Professional vs. Discount prints.  What’s the difference?

It’s a popular method to go ahead and order digital negatives and have them printed in your local discount printer (i.e. Costco, Wal-Mart, Target, etc.).

Here, at D. Park Photography, we researched and found one of the best professional printers in the industry.  Then, we dug in and asked them the blunt question: What is the difference between these professional prints and the discount ones?  Does the difference in price justify the difference in quality?

Discount Prints

• Cheap
• Printed in 1 hour
• No advertised specifications on paper type
• No advertised specifications on archival life, how long the images last
• If you have their system automatically retouch the images, you’ll find the images tend to be printed in a much different coloring and exposure than what you may have wanted.  Some popular discount printers tend to retouch the images to be darker and duller in colors than what you’d see in the monitor.

Our Professional Prints

• Kodak professional endura paper offers state-of-the-art image stability (100 years in home display; 200 years in dark storage; 1-5 years for commercial display)
• Excellent color gamut for rich colors and exceptional tone reproduction
• Professionally color-corrected by trained technicians
• Required stringent quality assurance for remarkable quality
• Orders are placed in an archival sleeve and presentation box

We’re determined to perfect our craft and the products we give you brides and grooms.  While we understand that there are budget constraints and there are understandable places to cut costs, if you want your wedding prints to last a lifetime, invest accordingly.