SmugMug owns no printers. We focus on great photo sharing and do our best to make sure our customers can buy prints from a top print provider.

The problem

Authoritative comparisons are hard to find. We see comparisons in popular magazines and wonder, what test shots were used? Who did the judging and what were their tastes? Under what light did they view the photos? Why are opinions so varied?

We decided to dig deeper.

The test

Over a three-month period ending November, 2003, we sent 26 test shots repeatedly to 10 print providers. 16 of our customers quickly narrowed their favorites to 4 sets of prints, with little disagreement.

Then an expanded group of 30 customers independently chose their favorite and least favorite results in a blind test from the final four.

Test details.

The final 4

The final shootout came down to Shutterfly, Ofoto, and two sets of prints from a popular professional lab named EZprints. One set was processed with "autoenhance" turned on, and one with it off.

Scan of prints from Shutterfly (top left), Ofoto (top right), WalMart (lower left) and EZprints (lower right).

Results

It depends on the shot, and to a lesser extent on your taste.

It's not possible to scan the prints so accurately that you can see on your monitor exactly what our testers saw. However, we scanned them together to show the relative differences between them, and — more importantly — how our customers voted and why. Red bars indicate votes for worst, green for best.

Across all prints, testers, and lighting conditions, here are the total votes for best and worst:

The enhance option

Ofoto and Shutterfly use special software that adjusts your prints to enhance them (called VividPics® at Shutterfly). You can turn it off at Shutterfly, but you have to know where to look. EZprints provides an easy way to order either way, with enhance on (EZprints 2) or off (EZprints 1). The problem is, how do you know if it's for you?

Since prints from EZprints were ordered both ways, we were able to test customer preference for their particular enhance software.

The bottom line is unenhanced renders your print the way you shot it. Enhanced makes little difference if the shot is well exposed and color balanced. But it can make a very significant difference on some shots, for better or worse.

Half our testers, including two pro photographers who dislike the idea, preferred prints with enhance turned on in blind tests. However, it made two of the 26 prints score low. The rule of thumb is it will improve or only slightly change 90% of prints, and degrade 10% of them. In general the people who preferred it liked their colors more saturated.

Making sense of it

The results show how a lab can score high on one print and low on another. For example, Ofoto was frequently described as lighter, so they were the favorite for an under-exposed shot, but they fared very poorly over most of the rest, especially for over-exposed shots.

Shutterfly was often described as "yellow," presumably in an effort to provide added warmth to skin tones. The warmth made them the favorite on some shots, but they were frequently scored low for making a baby look "jaundiced" or grass look "not like the green I see at my golf course".

The testers overwhelmingly chose EZprints, as many pro photographers on dpreview.com had told us they would, but it was not the answer we at smugmug had hoped for. It meant that we had to undertake quite a lot of programming to integrate with them. These results, however, along the with the discussion of a color-managed workflow (below), gave us little choice.

Influences

We asked our 30 testers what influenced them. Some cared most about sharpness and detail, some about skin tones (the most important factor for most testers), and some cared most about color saturation.

No tester chose Ofoto as their top pick, but four chose Shutterfly. We postulated that people with reddish complexions who like to be flattered would show a preference for Shutterfly and two testers said that, but a man from the continent of India and a tanned woman also chose them. Interestingly, no one chose them under warm household lighting — only under daylight.

Color managed workflow

It's one thing to produce pleasing 4x6 prints, but another to produce large-format prints that look exactly like small ones. Or to make your 4x6 prints look the same no matter which printer they were made on.

For example, if you take your photos to 4 WalMart stores, all of whom use Fuji equipment, chemicals, and paper, you may see 4 different results.

EZprints publishes their ICC profiles and SmugMug produces calibration prints. We have an authoritative help section explaining how to obtain and use them.

Consistency

Some labs have strict calibration procedures that allow them to produce consistent results over time. In our repeat tests, we saw significant shifts in lightness/darkness with Ofoto but didn't with Shutterfly or EZprints.

Equipment

EZprints and Shutterfly use Fuji Frontier printers and Fuji chemicals on Crystal Archive paper. We're told Ofoto uses Fuji printers with Kodak chemicals and paper, but we couldn't confirm.

Equipment didn't appear to be the deciding factor, however, because industry experts tell us that WalMart uses the same equipment, chemicals and paper as Shutterfly and EZprints, and yet their prints were far from making the final four.

Conclusion

We were prepared to use any of the three printers (and have used Shutterfly in the past). In fact all three produced good results to our eyes. But strong preference for EZprints by our test customers — coupled with the power of ICC profiles and calibration prints for pro and serious amateur photographers — caused us to standardize on EZprints.