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Recently, a customer for whom we had made several picture frames approached us with a question. She wanted to reproduce a dozen copies of a family portrait to give as a Christmas present. Like many in these difficult economic times, the budget was a big factor. Our customer challenged us: if the Picture Frame Guys could find an economic way to reproduce 12 copies of the family portrait, they she would buy the accompanying 12 wood frames from us. Needless to day, this was a challenge we were definitely up for.
After some investigation, we discovered that a professional photography store would reproduce the 8 x 10 portraits for $30 per copy*, which came to a total price of $360 (for 12 copies); we didn’t have to ask to know that this was way out of the customer’s budget. So, we set out to find a less expensive do-it-yourself way. After trying a number of approaches, including scanning the picture with a $10,000 scanner, it turned out that the best solution was also the least costly. The answer was Kinko’s**.
Following a tip from one of our other local picture framing customers and amateur photographer, we headed down to Kinko’s armed with the following materials:
• A number of photographs courtesy of Kristy Batie (kbatie.zenfolio.com). We purposefully took photos with lots of colors, as well as a black and white photograph.
• HP 10.5mil (60 lbs.) glossy Inkjet photo paper (about $0.30 per sheet)
• A debit card with $10 left on it.
Moment of Truth
Once at Kinko’s, we headed right for the color copy machines and inserted our debit card. The first picture we worked with was a nature autumn scene. We specifically choose it because of its vibrant and rich colors, which we figured would put the high-performance Cannon copy machine to the test. We inserted the first original (figure 1.a) and simply made a copy with the settings set on “auto”. As can be seen in figure 1.b, the result was not that bad; pretty good in fact. From this point, we manipulated the various settings (contrast, sharpness, shading, etc…) to observe how various setting changes would affect the final product. As an example, figure 1.c shows the result with the contrast set to <>. While we found this setting to be the best result, overall, we find that for purposes of picture framing, the “auto” setting would have worked just as well.
In addition to the autumn scene, we also brought along a picture with a metallic finish. Figure 2.a shows the crisp blue sky (it may not come out well on your web browser). Here again, we simply made a color copy with the “auto” settings and were quite pleased with the results, although they were not as good as with the autumn photo. Specifically, the color in this one was a little on the dark side (no doubt due to the reflective metallic ink), but this was quickly fixed by adjusting the shading settings. Within 5 minutes, we had reproduced the picture in 1.2a. 
Impressed, but still not finished with our work, we replaced the metallic finish photograph for a small black and white image (figure 3a). Instead of using a simple portrait photo which we though would generally have little contrast, we dug one up that we thought had a lot of shading in it. The picture shows Seattle King Dome as it was being demolished in March 2000 (you can see the dynamite going off on the roof). Again we manipulated the settings and found that the “auto” setting produced results that were quite acceptable. In fact, there was some discussion, whether or not the photocopy was better looking than the original photograph! Figure 3.b shows the photograph photocopied as a black and white picture and figure 3.c shows the same one with the color settings. As we can see, the “color” option looks better.
Results
The bottom line is that we spent $5.75 testing and making copies and found that the auto settings to be quite adequate. If you were particularly ambitious, a number of copies could be run before deciding on a final setting. We would recommend making the trial copies on regular paper as it is free. Once a good setting is found, it can be printed onto glossy paper. The best part is that once the optimal setting is found, each additional print costs less than $1.00, which sure beats the $30 dollars per print at other stores.
A few handy tips for anyone doing this:
• Make sure that the photocopier glass is clean. Any dirt or fingerprints will show up on the copy and glossy paper only highlights them. You may want to ask the store’s staff to clean it.
• We used both a Xerox and a Cannon photocopier. The Cannon produced slightly better results, but this is probably because it was a newer printer. Although we have no scientific proof, we recommend using a relatively new (less than 3 years old) piece of equipment.
• The HP photo paper costs $20 at Kinko’s ($14 at Wal-Mart) for a pack of 50, so you might want to pick it up ahead of time to save a few dollars.
Notes
* We contacted 3 stores in the Seattle, WA area and $30 was the approximate average number, which ranged from $27 to $32 per print. A 15% would have been offered of prints of 4 or more.
** We are not preferential to Kinko’s. Any other copy shop with high quality printer will do the trick.
Share Your Experience
Do you have any experience reproducing copies yourself? We’d love to hear about it and feature the article on our web site. Get in touch with us by calling 206-154-9871 or emailing us at peter@pictureframeguys.com.