Best Print Lab in America? The Ultimate Showdown of Canvas, Metal, and Acrylic Fine Art Prints!
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- Опубліковано 16 лип 2024
- I tested 8 print labs across American to find the best!
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from other photographers on my podcast is: "What print lab do you use?" I've tested quite a few over the years but I've always found myself wondering if I've found the best. I decided to contact thirteen photography print labs across the country to see if they wanted to participate and compete in the ultimate showdown, which I've also detailed out on my website:
www.mattpaynephotography.com/...
My podcast: www.mattpaynephotography.com/...
I reached out to the following labs:
Mpix, Bay Photo, Nations Photo Lab, Bumblejax, New Mexico Fine Art (NMFA), Nevada Art Printers, DuraPlaq, Artisan HD, Unique Imaging Concepts, Pure Art Printer, Metal Mouth Prints, Northwest Fine Art Printing, Whitewall, and Blazing Editions. In the end, the first eight of the listed labs participated in the competition/comparison, with Blazing Editions, Metal Mouth Prints, Northwest Fine Art Printing, and Pure Art Printer not responding to my emails, Whitewall refused to participate, and Unique Imaging Concepts dropping out and/or not responding. Some labs only sent me one or two of the three categories, while others went all out in sending more than I asked for.
I landed on comparing Canvas, White Matte ChromaLuxe Metal, and Acrylic prints as these are the most popular types of prints that are made by photographers looking to sell "ready to hang" artwork.
I evaluated each lab based on the following 11 criteria:
• Packaging / Shipping
• Production Time
• Communication
• Ease of Ordering
• Quality of Materials
• Color Fidelity
• Hanging Hardware
• Print vs. Screen Representation
• Quality Assurance
• Cost / Value
• Customization
Each lab's work was evaluated in the order in which I received them and started communication with each lab on the same date.
Here are timestamps for each section:
0:00 Introduction and Overview:
5:21 Mpix Review
8:36 Mpix Canvas Review
12:51 Mpix Metal Review
15:55 Mpix Acrylic Review
23:01 New Mexico Fine Art (NMFA) Review
27:12 NMFA Canvas Review
30:22 NMFA Metal Review
31:44 NMFA Acrylic Review
42:53 Bumblejax Review
44:33 Bumblejax Canvas Review
48:14 Bumblejax Metal Review
53:20 Bumblejax Acrylic Review
59:04 Nations Photo Lab Review
1:01:34 Nations Photo Lab Canvas Review
1:05:36 Nations Photo Lab Metal Review
1:09:48 Nations Photo Lab Acrylic Review
1:16:52 Nevada Art Printers Review
1:19:42 Nevada Art Printers Canvas Review
1:22:32 Nevada Art Printers Acrylic (Lumachrome) Review
1:36:01 DuraPlaq Review
1:38:32 DuraPlaq Canvas Review
1:41:16 DuraPlaq Metal Review
1:44:20 DuraPlaq Acrylic Review
1:50:32 Artisan HD Review
1:52:23 Artisan HD Acrylic Review
1:59:57 Bay Photo Review
2:02:17 Bay Photo Canvas Review
2:04:41 Bay Photo Metal Review
2:08:50 Bay Photo Acrylic Review
2:18:32 Conclusions and Recommendations
2:24:44 Pricing Comparison Chart
Thank you to all of the participating labs for sending these samples over and for sharing your time and expertise with me and our audience! Here are links to each of the labs:
1. Mpix: www.mpix.com/
2. NMFA: nmfa.io/
3. Bumblejax: www.bumblejax.com/
4. Nations Photo Lab: www.nationsphotolab.com/
5. Nevada Art Printers: www.nevadaartprinters.com/
6. DuraPlaq: www.duraplaq.com/
7. Artisan HD: artisanhd.com/
8. Bay Photo: bayphoto.com/
Link to white gloves: amzn.to/3MJMAY1
P.S. the above is an affiliate link - thanks for your support!
UPDATE: Artisan HD reached out and said that the pricing they sent me was for their commercial side of things, not the artist / photo lab side, and it puts them much more in line with the rest of the labs for pricing. I've updated the article to reflect this and they also have established a discount code for you - MPLP15 - that can be used on any art purchase through Artisan HD and will discount any product, site-wide, by 15%. The code will be active through June 30, 2023.
You should add an overlay in the editor on youtube to point to this comment during that section Matt
I love that Roma Print!
NMFA is the ONLY shop I trust with client purchases. 10/10
What a great asset this review is to the community!
Thanks Chandler! Glad you find it useful!
Hi Matt, what an incredible review!! I recently attended an in-person art workshop at Artisan's facilities in Scottsdale, AZ. It was organized by Artisan's President, Doug Bondon and his wife Dayna, who both attended in person, what a personal touch! I'll definitely be ordering more of my aviation art prints through Artisan! ❤
That sounds awesome! I’m glad you had a great experience!
Excellent reviews and video Matt!
Wow, you put so much time and effort into this. Nice job! Thank you for taking this on and sharing!
Thanks for all that detailed work Matt. I do my own printing on Chromaluxe aluminum and it was nice to see the differences between all the labs.
Matt, this was really well done! Thank you for this service to all of us!
Thanks Erik glad you liked it!
Excellent reviews Matt. Thank you.
Glad you like them!
I'm looking for an art printer now and glad your video came up. This was so helpful, thank you very much!
Glad it was helpful!
Dude. I can’t thank you enough for this thoughtful and thorough review. I have my first solo photo exhibit coming up this spring and this has been a great review. Thank you so much.
🤜🤛 That's what its all about man! Best of luck with your exhibit!
fantastic video on printing choices, much appreciated!
You are welcome
very helpful, thank you !
Love the folks at NMFA.
Matt you did a fantastic job with this review, thank you so much for doing it! I'll be placing some orders soon and it seems like I'll be giving NMFA a look. They set up my pro account the same day I sent the request! I've been using HD aluminum and have been very happy with them so far so I might do some comparisons there, one of the things I like with them is they have a downloadable color profile so you can proof your images yourself. I've used Bay in the past and stopped because the results were coming out very dark as you noted and I was only happy with around 60% of my prints. You said in the video that the color was consistent for all the bay images that you got but it didn't appear that way in the video, going back and forth to check the lighting on the fixed piece confirmed no changes(nice touch btw), but the metal print appeared less saturated, almost like clarity had been increased, which was odd because other vendors did look the same. I've also had the "color correcting" add on applied to prints from bay before hoping it would fix the darkness and results i was getting and it didn't seem to help either.
Thanks Kyle! Appreciate the feedback and lengthy comment my man! I do think out of the three "big" labs, Bay was the most consistent but as you noted, it wasn't necessarily "great." I am not sure why they always print everything so dark. I hope they watch and take note, it seems to be a very consistent complaint / challenge that people using their metal print service are experiencing. To more closely compare across the prints, I recommend looking at the photos on my website, and I have a gallery where they are all together on one page:
www.mattpaynephotography.com/gallery/print-lab-review/
Thank you for your in-depth review. One question though. Why don't you like the Gorilla hooks? I use the Hercules hooks to hang all my artwork and they do a fantastic job. Just a small hole in the wall is all that's required to hold up to 150#. They do require re-leveling from time to time but no big deal. They also allow for very easy changing of art throughout the house which I do, unlike the French cleats. You're pretty much dedicated once you hang art with these which is fine for commercial/permanent installations. A wire is my preferred hanging system which easily works with the hooks.
Thanks Doug. I think for that kind of application it’s fine but most end-users will see that as cheap, and for offices and hospitals etc. it’s probably not a great solution.
Hi Matt.
Wonderful article! Great job on a lot of work and testing. I’ve read the article and there is a lot of great stuff in it. It is definitely representative of what the average person is will to run into. Very big kudos for that!
Agreed, and in 17 years of making the very highest quality fine art prints for top end gallery clients around the world, full time, I have not seen any company, fine-tune (optimize) images specifically for their particular product, except (or anything like) Nevada Art Printers (Robert Park). There used to be a lab or two in the United States that could do that (to some extent) but I do not find it anymore. And it makes a massive difference in quality representation!
But a key point of fact worth mentioning (for whoever reads us ) is that every print medium has very specific, VERY different, unique processing needs to get the most out of them, to be optimized, for the potential output quality, to be maximized and then evaluated.
As a good analogy, to put the same fuel into a Dragster, a NASCAR (Stock Car), a Formula One (F1) car, a Hypercar (like maybe a Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, or Bugatti Chiron Sport), a Go Kart (Shifter Kart or Go Cart) and a top Muscle car, to compare and evaluate their respective potential performance cannot yield an accurate test, because none of those cars are designed to use the same fuel.
For accurate performance comparison testing, for quality of prints or enlargements, sending the same file (processed the same way) to many different types of labs/outputs, when nearly all companies (except Nevada Art Printers) do not, at all, optimize the files specifically for their unique and specific medium characteristics (in fact almost no labs do astute custom touching of the files) is a faulty test for sheer performance.
Few know this, but one cannot size and sharpen various metal prints, a 300 PPI laser print, a 600ppi laser print, a 300ppi inkjet, a 600ppi inkjet, a 1200 PPI inkjet, a Lumachrome HD, an acrylic print, or a canvas print… anywhere near the same way. Each medium has very unique and very radically different needs, to be truly optimized and tested for performance comparison. What makes it even more challenging is that there is likely less than a handful of people in the world that have this file handling/processing specialty/expertise.
But like I said, above, this article is definitely representative of what the average person will run into.
Thank you very much for getting word out and sharing such a big body of information with the photo community. For instance, I had never heard about New Mexico Fine Art. I will test them out, and if they are as good as you say, I may refer some of my clients to them for those particular types of prints. I am curious how they compare to “Shiny Prints” (Florida).
A full and sincere thank you for putting all of the time you did into this quite comprehensive evaluation, and helping to educate the photo public on some pluses and minuses to some of the labs out there today.
All the very best to you and yours.
Mark Metternich
It may be a faulty test but it’s what 99% of photographers will do. I’m not sure I would say average, I would say the majority. In fact, almost no one tweaks their files to the extent you’re describing because we simply can’t realistically know what a printer’s processes are for printing. Therefore, to your point, if you want to get the most out of each file, having a high end lab look at the file for customization is ideal. Only Bumblejax and Nevada offer this to my knowledge. Thanks Mark for chiming in and your kind words.
@@MattPayne Thank you Matt! And I forgot to thank you for the reference to Bumblejax as well! 🙏🏼
I don’t think I had heard of them before, and I’ll take the much appreciated recommendation and look into them.
Based on the photographers I have interacted, or worked with over the last 20 years, I would not put the percentage quite as high as 99%, but I very much agree with you it is much too high, which to me seriously highlights the huge need for much more, and much better fine art print making education! I really wish it was much more abundant for photographers. But I also have to admit that I have had massive gratitude for almost 20 years now (more today than ever) of being able to really help so many people in this area! This is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done in my career. It seems that there is no end of people who need, want and appreciate the help.
I love Wall Buddies! They are in South Dakota-my home state. I have a bunch of photos that were my uncle's, those frames all use Wall Buddies. I might have to order prints from NMFA just because of the Wall Buddies. :)
They are pretty awesome and they have the advantage of making it easy to swap prints around should you have the same sizes and hardware on the back.
TWO AND A HALF HOURS. What is this, directed my Martin Scorsese?!
Hahahahahahahaah - dude I had to cut so much out too.
Why use MPIX and not the Miller's professional imaging side?
When I reached out to Miller / Mpix they recommended Mpix since it is what most Zenfolio users have enabled for fulfillment. The labs are virtually the same though, even per their team.
Does the duraplaq canvas have a solid backing? Or do any of them?
Define solid. My memory of these (I'm not home to look) is that a few of the brands add a backer that isn't "solid" but there's a felt or cloth backing.
Solid, like if you took a square picture frame, and added a 1/8" sheet of hdf (masonite) or something cheap and similar) on top of that wooden picture frame, and then wrapped the canvas on top of that. In other words if you were to press in on the canvas surface it would not flex.@@MattPayne
Hey@@trippyvortex - no, nothing like that - almost all of the canvas prints I've ever seen are wrapped around a wooden frame but the canvas itself is over a hollow area.
Nevada Art Printers is the real deal... you see $30,000+ prints coming from well known artists like Mario Basner who use them
They do solid work for sure! I just think that you can get a nearly-equally good product for less money and faster turn-around time from other labs. It's up to you of course. I've tried them all ;)
Any opinion on the BayPhoto Epic prints?
No experience with those but as with all prints from BayPhoto YMMV due to a lack of quality control. Get lots of test prints done before offering them to your customers.