[ooheadsoo]

All crit. is welcome.  I honestly don't know how to adjust things to get nice smooth even tone.  I would venture that the potential is there in some of my shots given the overcast nature of the landscapes, but...I couldn't see how to do it in a way that I found pleasing, but the high contrast/saturation route seemed natural.  I would like to be able to shoot hallmark quality shots, as well, especially when it comes to people.  Not sure at all how to achieve pleasing skin tones.

Point well taken about having a well calibrated monitor.  Again, it's why I'm dumping this laptop and I picked up a HP Envy with upgraded screen in the hopes that the screen would have more potential.  I didn't calibrate the existing laptop screen with any tool except my eyes in reference to a couple other screens I knew were more neutral (and I couldn't get it very close at all,) but the viewing angles were already so awful, I didn't much care how close it could get. 

I have noticed that my prints come out far too saturated at times, although I had always thought that was because I used a dumb Kodak machine at a CVS kiosk.  Not sure how far back I need to dial things to get them to come out right.

[JohnR]

I think these are really very very nice shots. OK I personally would probably give the pizza pic a miss but otherwise I think they are excellent and there's only matters of taste to argue about. The pictures of the surfers in particular stand out for me.

[ooheadsoo]

The pizza is so warm saturated because the laptop screen was really cool.  After viewing it on more screens, I didn't really trust myself to make any serious adjustments, so I just made some minor adjustments and left it alone.  As for the shot itself, I was much too eager to eat it to bother with trying to come up with finding a better slice or a better shot. Still, I like seeing the cheese 

I was surprised by the surfer shots, myself.  The opportunities for shots were slim and I didn't want to be blatant about shooting them, since there were so few people on the beach.

[SET Man]

.....

I have noticed that my prints come out far too saturated at times, although I had always thought that was because I used a dumb Kodak machine at a CVS kiosk.  Not sure how far back I need to dial things to get them to come out right.

Hey!

    Good photo labs are hard to find and far in between these days. Not counting chain store like CVS, Duane reade and etc. Here in NYC there are less photo labs around now than about 10-15 years ago.

    Luckily the local lab that I've been using... must have been almost 10 years now do a great job printing from my digital file. The print matched what I see on my screen nearly perfect! What I do is I usually resized the photo(s) to the size I want, put on a CD/DVD and I usually let them know that I already adjusted them.  I'm not sure if this have much to do with the result I get but they use Fuji's Frontier machine. And I print on their Fuji's Crystal Archive paper and usually on matte with a bit of white border.

    Anyway, it will take some looking around but if you find a lab that you like than just stick with it.

Take care,
Buddy

[ooheadsoo]

Yeah, I think I'll have to do some searching if I ever get serious about making prints.  How large do you guys usually make your prints for personal use?

[JohnR]

How large do you guys usually make your prints for personal use?

I've not done larger than 8x12 at home but intend to. Need to get the printer calibrated properly otherwise too much ink wasted. I buy frames as seconds from the local art gallery.

[nathanm]

As far as snapshots go, I doubt that I've ever printed one out.  But if I did that sort of thing I would put it in album\book format, so probably 5x7s or smaller.  For artistic images I like to go as big as possible, within the limits of my printer.  I recently made a 24x30" from a scanned sketch and the effective res was only 168ppi, but it still looks really good.  Results may vary, as resolution can often be oddly subjective.