Bay Photo provides photographers with cutting-edge online services, wide product selection, excellent customer service and quality printing on Kodak Professional photo papers. Founded in 1974 by Larry Abitbol (he personally answers all e-mails addressed to him), Bay Photo combines extensive photo knowledge with state-of-the-art technology.
Over the past 16 years, Patrick Jagger has become the cornerstone of Bay Photo's production department. His 25-year passion for photography enables him to judge output from a photographer's perspective. Patrick works closely with Customer Service to elevate the standard of quality provided to Bay Photo customers.
Send your lab-related questions to Patrick Jagger.
Check back frequently--page updated daily.
Readers Letter
How great it was to open up an e-mail and see that Bay Photo is "Lab of the Month" in Digital Photo Pro advertisement. So I thought I would definitely put my two cents in and say, Bay Photo, I love ya guys.
First let's talk about the customer service there. I cannot say enough how Justin, Mat, Josh, Brandon, Yohan (sorry for the spelling), Jennifer and Donald are all so very helpful. Every time I am in a crisis, I call Bay, and someone is always there to help me—problem solved! These people at Bay are so helpful and knowledgeable, it's unbelievable.
Now for the service. Oh boy, so many times have I put in a order, whether large or small, and do you know, most times, that order is delivered the very next day! Russell and I are completely shocked by this! How wonderful is that? Talk about service. Bay Photo is the only lab we use, and will continue to be the only lab we use! I cannot for see going anywhere else, with service like this. Larry whatever it is your doing? Don't Stop! Bay is the Bomb!!! Hats off to all of you.
Sincerely,
Carmen Cruz, Office Manager
Russell Foote Photography
A: Hi Rich, If you calibrate your monitor and then, using your original files, simply use sRGB or Adobe RGB 1998 as your working space, you should be in good shape. In our Bay ROES Economy No Color Correction Version, you are allowed five free Evaluation prints to test your settings. When you get those back, evaluate the results and get back to us. Thanks.
A: Hi Judith, That should make a fine 24x36 print. No need to resize your file, just save a JPEG at the highest quality, and the file should be ready to go. Shipping is about $5.00.
A: Hi Gary, We run high end film processors for C-41 (color negative), E-6 (slide) and black-and-white films in 35mm, 120 and sheet film. Please e-mail support@bayphoto for shipping details.
A: RAW files can be easily converted to JPEG and ordered online through our Bay ROES System with excellent results. If you shoot RAW, you�ll find that converting to JPEG or TIFF will be a necessity.
Your digital camera is supplied with software and connection cables that allow you to transfer the photos from the camera to your computer. Refer to your camera's manual for instructions on how to download images to your computer.
A scanner can be an excellent way to digitize your images. The only thing you should keep in mind is to scan with enough resolution to yield a good-quality print. You should be careful, however, not to send in a scan with too much resolution. A file that is too large will take too much time to upload. A good rule of thumb is to try to scan a file with a resolution between 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 for standard-size prints. This will give you a better trade-off between quality, disk space and modem transmission time. Select JPEG as the file format to save the scanned image as.
Due to its limited color palette and good image compression, the GIF file format is widely used for certain types of graphics on the Web. The main limitation for images that will be printed onto photo paper, however, is that GIF images are limited to a maximum of 256 colors. This makes them unsuitable for the subtle tones and gradations that are found in continuous-tone photographic images.
A histogram is a powerful measuring tool that graphically represents the data within an image file. Having an understanding of a histogram will enhance your camera's exposure, which determines the pixel values of your image. Having properly exposed images is the #1 thing to improve color management.
The main thing is that images you upload should have a sufficient number of pixels and color depth. The number of pixels in a digital image is the primary factor that determines the final quality once it is printed.
