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I've played a few months with my Olympus mju/stylus 300. I only have an
ancient B&W DeskWriter so I have printed a few test images as glossy
15x10cm (6x4") images at a shop with surprisingly good results. I'd like
to do very basic editing to the images to get the best possible output
from the shop. Some questions:

- Just what type of printer do the shops use to print their glossy 6x4"
images from digital cameras (and color negatives)? Is is some kind of a
continuos tone printer so no halftoning is used?? What is the minimum
acceptable resolution for a 6x4" print for those devices: 150 ppi, 300
ppi?? Is there any benefit in bicubic upsampling of a severely cropped
image (some guides suggest that scanned images suffer from upsampling
but images from digital cameras may benefit from upsampling)?

- With such a printer service, is it necessary to limit the output
levels so that no shadows or (non-specular) highlights are at the very
end of the tonal range, like is advised for halftoned images, to avoid
paper-white whites, for example?

- Is it necessary to sharpen images from a digital camera if they are
printed in such a shop? The books seem to advocate much less sharpening
than in halftone prints.

- AFAIK the monitor must be calibrated using the printer's ICC profile
but sadly many shops don't yet provide them. I guess gamma 2.2 would be
OK for such shops but what about the white point: should it be 6500 or
9300 or something else??

thanks for any input,

--
Matti Haveri <> <http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/>