Years ago when I lived in Fredericton and worked in architecture, the firm I worked for used Kwik…read moreKopy Printing quite a bit for large drawing sets. Fast forward 7 years and I'm back in Fredericton still working in architecture but also pursuing professional photography. So when I needed 4 large photo prints done very quickly for a gallery show, did I go to KKP? No.
I went to a different print shop, one perhaps more associated with photography and fine art. The result? Terrible regret. The competitor's prints clearly didn't match the intent of my image at all. Instead of bright, vibrant, saturated colours, their prints turned out looking like they had been faded by 50 years of sunlight. They explained that screens are backlit and as such give a brightness and contrast that printers can't automatically replicate, so they lightened the images a bit. The result? Still terrible, now just terrible and slightly lighter. I've been led down this road by other print shops before - spending weeks playing with profiles and export options at their direction, only to make no progress with the actual issue.
So I phoned KKP and Brendan - who leads the large format print division - understood my concerns immediately, was able to quickly give me a time estimate and price estimate, and seemed much more capable than the "I'm going to hit print and that's as far as my job goes" attitude found elsewhere. He told me he could turn them around very quickly. He lied. It wasn't very quick, it was unbelievably quick. He was so fast that when I received the email about my prints being ready to pick up, I wondered if he understood the full extent of the job. How could he possibly be that fast? Their competitor was impressively fast, but KKP was 8x faster! But what about the quality? I sent Brendan the very same files that their competitor was unable to print correctly. Could it be my fault after all? Would these photos look like near colourless colour prints like the others?
I walked in, saw my photo from across the room, and instantly recognized it as my photo (something I couldn't say about most of the competitor's prints). The vibrant, super saturated colours came out... vibrant and super saturated! It was my photo, printed exactly as I envisioned it when I created the image. Brendan explained their large format printer is a 10 cartridge ink jet whereas a lot of printers use fewer cartridges. He explained the settings he uses to get the gradients to really pop. He explained the details of printing my particular job, and I ate it up.
The icing on the cake? Not only was KKP able to turn around my rush job in an almost unreal timeframe, not only was KKP able to print my images as I intended them, and not only did Brendan obviously care about his job and sweat the details: KKP did all this and charged me 1/3rd (33%) of what their competitor charged me!
That's right, for 33% of the cost of the garbage prints from their competitor, I got a vastly superior product that matched my intention and was delivered with an astonishingly fast turnaround time by people who obviously care about their work. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY AT OTHER PRINT SHOPS - go to KKP and let them impress you.
