Mobile phone printing of photos

[Crybert]

So as it’s the time of year for photos we have been printing a load of photos from our iPhones. Really quite disappointed in them. They seem dark and dull compared to how they look on the phone. I understand this is because the phone is backlit.

the camera on my iPhone 11 is apparently 12mp or something. Now looking at old photos (90s and older) the developed photos just seem much better and nicer to look at. Some of which were even on a disposable camera!

Is there any way to improve digital images prior to printing them? So many of my photos are of my son who is less than 3 months old.

should I just use my dslr or will this be the same

 

[botfch]

Difficult to sort on a phone because you need to calibrate the screen to show true colours.
I would try matching the screen brightness to your printed photo as close as you can then you can edit the photos to make them brighter etc.

Or ideally use a computer to edit them.

 

[Crybert]

That’s interesting. Makes sense actually. The quality of the photo is good, just feels as though they are quite dull and look a bit crappy

 

[TheEvilGiraffe]

Printing how ?

 

[Crybert]

Boots. Would you recommend somewhere different?

 

[TheEvilGiraffe]

@Iain C does printing but not sure to what extent....

 

[Ay Ay Ron]

You ideally need to put them into something like Lightroom and edit them. Anything straight from the phone will look absolutely terrible, especially when printed at somewhere like Boots.
Nothing will be better than printing from film, even a £5k Canon won't produce anything as good as a 20 year old 35mm film camera if the conditions are right.

I use DS colour labs in Stockport for competition photos. You choose what size you want, which paper etc and they give you a colour profile to load into Photoshop (maybe others, not sure). You then import the photo to this and edit as you want. It'll print as you see it on the screen or there about. I've printed hundreds of images this way only had one bad one back which they rectified.

Send them all to your computer and edit them or use your DSLR. Either way, if you want decent prints, they will need editing.

 

[Crybert]

Cheers mate. Will look into this then. It’s one of the few things that actually matters for memories etc so want them to be as good as possible