Spend just 1% of your total wedding budget on something you'll cherish forever.

  Reap the benefits of your photographers skills and set aside 5-10% of your wedding photography budget (i.e. up to 1% of your total wedding budget) for after the wedding day to print your photos the right way. It may seem like putting as much money into your wedding photography budget as you can afford is a wise investment, after all, the wedding photos are one of the only tangible mementos left after all is said and done. Even when your memories of the day start to fade, you'll always have the photos to remind you and because you allocated 10% of your whole wedding budget to your photography, they're all exceptional quality. Or are they? How and where you choose to print your photos are decisions you should give meaningful consideration. Photographs by an excellent photographer when printed badly, will always look bad. If you've got an album, great - our albums are the best available and they'll last a lifetime in there. If you're printing your photos, you've already got our licence to print and are free to get them done at your leisure, but the question is, where to print your wedding photos? There are so many options available, canvas has been a strong favourite for a decade now; simple prints have been in favour for even longer; acrylic, metallic and other wall displays are new and exciting. Many print labs and highstreet stores offer a huge range of printing options - even on a mug if you really want it - but not all labs are created equal. James managed a photo lab for over 3 years before becoming a wedding photographer so he knows about quality from the inside out and together we've refined our choice of labs and album companies to just two who we believe are the absolute best and that we provide everything through to our couples. We know a lot of couples simply like to have prints rather than an album (and we thank you for actually printing your wedding photos and not letting them rot in the annals of Facebook). So we compared a few of the most popular highstreet and online labs to show you that spending just £100-200 on prints after your wedding with the right labs will make a huge difference to your wedding memories. For this test we used 11 of our digital photos ranging in content type - portraits to film to sun to shade to bright colours to pastel to give a realistic test of what's available to you as a customer. For all highstreet and online labs we used we aimed to keep the cost at £10 or under for our 11 6x4" prints. All the images on this post are straight out of the camera with no editing (we didn't photoshop the scratches on our table) and are as truly representative of the prints as possible. In our analysis, we're looking for real-world tests that anyone can notice and not just professional photographers: i.e. saturation, contrast, colour accuracy etc. We're also paying close attention to skin tone (how realistic skin looks in print) which is a real defining factor as to how good a print is. BOOTS - An incredibly popular place to get photos printed and yet came the clear worst in our test. We used the instant print service in Boots to get our photos. Despite the speed of the prints, which was great, the quality was shocking! Everything was oversaturated and too dark, skin was orange, colour bled into other areas, and quality seemed to have been reduced and compressed - somehow!!? We were also unsurprised to see that the black and white image we'd included in our print test had come out black and blue due to poor calibration. If you've paid us to take good photos, Boots will certainly do a terrible job by undoing all our hard work! JESSOPS - Another very popular high street lab which fared better than Boots but still well below expectations. Colours were simultaneously over saturated, yet muddy. The blacks were brown and highlights were often blown out. Skin tones are orangey/red and too contrasty - way too contrasty. They also seem to struggle with pastel colours the most making them dirty coloured rather than light and summery. If you've got a blush and country garden colour theme, probably don't print them at Jessops. Between Boots and Jessops, we'd say go for the latter (notice we didn't say we'd recommend the latter), but there's more choice out there so let's see what else is available. PHOTOBOX (Online) - One of the most popular online print labs was worthy of us testing them out. Despite the rather difficult and confusing online ordering system and having to get past the relentless ads and popups to get us to buy more stuff the prints are actually considerably better than the highstreet labs but still not without some obvious flaws. Shadow areas are still too dark but colour accuracy although not great was acceptable. Coincidentally, this was the only lab we actually added a border to the prints (accidentally) and they're not even straight - one side is wider than the other and there's a definite wonk to them! There's still a bit too much saturation and skin tones aren't representative of how we shot them. And finally, they're the least sharply printed of all our labs. This is only a minor difference but noticeable to the point where they look just a tad blurry compared to all the other labs. So, that's what roughly £1 a print will get you. Not really worth it if you ask us! Increasing that budget you open yourselves up to professionally printed photos - professionally colour corrected for every paper type, inspected individually and once printed, inspected again for quality. Surely this is what your wedding photos deserve. You pay for professionals to do their jobs on your wedding day, so pay for a professional to follow up all that good work. JAMES & LIANNE (Online Gallery) At around £7 a print, we're talking investment quality - photos that will last a lifetime and be beautiful quality during that time. We're obviously biased here, but with good reason, these prints are much better. The oversaturation we've seen in all the other print labs is non-existent here. These prints look the way we shot them. Contrast is spot on, there's detail in both the highlights and shadows and our black and white image has the right grey tones in it so it isn't simply black and white but with all the other bits in between - something all of the other labs were missing to varying degrees. The colour accuracy is perfect from our bright and sunny shots right through to our pastel colours and skin tones are all perfect regardless of the lighting in the images. And just for quick comparisons: Our 'Saturation Test' - All labs struggled to balance the strong yellow background with the cooler foreground. Check out the bright blue shirt of the groom compared to the acid yellow in the Boots example. Jessops and James & Lianne did the best with this but Jessops had really dark shadows resulting in dirty looking faces whereas our didn't. The 'Black & White Test'. Getting black and white prints that don't have colour in is 1) something you'd expect and 2) easy to calibrate for in the labs so there's no reason why your black and white should have any other colour in them. All except our lab failed at this varying from brown to blue highlights. Ours was the only one to not have colour in. Jessops came somewhat close but the muddiness of the print as a whole is a real let down. Photobox came a little bit closer but still no cigar. Also, note the contrast in these prints, only ours has the detail in the shadows and highlights whilst still looking natural. Onto our 'Contrast Test'. This image has strong sidelighting, something we might use to add drama to your wedding portraits. The difficulty for the labs here is balancing the dark and the light areas of the print. Jessops and Photobox manged to plunge our bride's face into darkness! Boots kinda rescued the blacks but only by destroying the highlights... so no one came close to the even tones on our print at James & Lianne. Also, note the colour difference in all these images on the blank wall on the left. Some printed blue when it was supposed to be just as our print comes out. The 'Pastel Test'. If you've got pastel colours in your wedding colour scheme then you'll want them printing out properly. All the colours in this photo are muted but still have some contrast. Boots definitely thought they should use as much contrast as possible and made everything red - including skin - and blew out the highlights (again). Photobox was too muted and Jessops printed with far too much contrast. Only our print has the correct skin tones and delicacy that is in the original shot we took. So those are our real world tests and reviews of highstreet labs. We hope you can see how important it is to spend just a little bit more or keep a little bit back from your wedding budget. We recommend you budget just 10% of your whole wedding budget on photography. If you're spending £20,000 on your wedding, spend £2,000 on photography. Then spend just 10% of that photography budget on printing your photos. £20,000 wedding, £2,000 on wedding photography including £200 for printing. That's just 1% of your entire wedding budget but it has the most lasting impact. If we've shot your wedding- go print your photos properly. 🙂