Quality advice

Printing to be proud of

At PhotoBox we always aim to give our customers the highest print quality. That’s why we’ve invested in state-of-the-art printers and always use FujiFilm’s finest paper.

We pride ourselves on our fast turnaround times. Orders placed before 4pm Monday to Friday are usually posted out the same day. While our sturdy packaging ensures all your goods arrive in pristine condition.

Being such sticklers for quality has helped us win more awards than any other online photo site. So if you’re having problems with your prints, or any of our other products, it’s likely to be down to one of the following common problems. The good news is they’re easily remedied. You can also contact our helpful customer support staff for advice.

Careful cropping

If you’re ending up with borders you didn’t want, or bits cut off the edges, it’s all to do with the cropping. Different print sizes have different aspect ratios. So for example, an image that fits perfectly on a 6"x4" print can’t just be enlarged to fit a 10"x8" print. The best solution is to use some form of image editing software that allows you to crop your image to the precise dimensions you require. That way you’ll know exactly how your final print or product will appear. Alternatively, we will just crop an image to give the correct measurements. You can then move the crop around by double clicking on the image. Or if you don’t want to lose any of your image simply select shrink-to-fit. This will give you the entire image with some white space around the edges.

The right resolution

If it’s the overall sharpness and detail of your images that’s poor, it’s probably because of the resolution. Unless you’re taking lots of out of focus pictures! Generally the bigger the original image file the better it will look when printed. So enlarge a relatively small image file and you’ll soon notice the quality deteriorate.

To avoid inferior print quality we’ll warn you at the time of ordering if there’s a quality issue. When any item is placed in your basket you’ll see our traffic light quality rating. That’s green for great quality and red for poor.

Roll your cursor over this and you’ll also find a quality rating out of ten. In addition, we accompany images we believe to have insufficient quality for printing with a warning message. You can then remove the item from your basket, or select a smaller print size.

For a useful file size guide for all our products, take a look at our recommended resolution guide.

Colour calibration

An image that looks great on your computer screen should look equally wonderful in print. If you’re finding this isn’t the case it could be down to the colour calibration of your monitor. This can cause overly bright or dark prints, or unrealistic colours compared to your original. Even if you’re not aware of this, properly calibrating your monitor is still a good way of ensuring impressive results.

For more in-depth quality information please check out our technical page.

I got all 400+ pictures printed beautifully, delivered by registered post in just a few days - and for a great price. I have never used a service like yours before and you came recommended. Now I know why. Thanks!

L Tatchell

I uploaded photo's yesterday afternoon, as a trial, and i would like to say what an excellent service you provide, I received the prints this morning midday, and the reproduction, is as they are on my computer. I'm delighted.

B Moss

I just wanted to say I'm amazed and pleased by the speed and quality of your service. Congratulations - there are so many photo services available now and PhotoBox stands head and shoulders above the rest. Keep it up!

J Potts