Photofinishing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As photofinishing (of English. Photofinishing , "photographic finishing / finishing") are in the photo industry , all services combined, which in commercial mass production, quality control, order processing and delivery of photographic commissions, particularly in the technical photographic reproducing equipment (industrial large-scale laboratories ) are incurred.

Core business

As a rule, customers give their films or digital storage media in photo shops or z. B. drugstores. These are then usually forwarded to a large laboratory that - if necessary - develops the films and produces the required prints, copies, CDs / DVDs, etc. After a quality control and price labeling, the work is then returned to the delivery point, where it can be picked up by the customer.

In recent years, numerous shops have sprung up that also offer photo finishing services on site: The necessary equipment (including fully automated minilabs and computers for post-processing digital photos) are located here in the sales rooms so that the customer can make his prints etc. in often less than an hour.

For a decade there have also been an increasing number of photo service providers who operate exclusively via the Internet. Here, the customer uploads digital recordings, which are sent by post after processing (image production). Most online photo service providers offer photo prints as well as a variety of other products that the customer can design themselves online. These include, for example, photo calendars, posters , mugs, the photo book , puzzles or T-shirts.

Change through digitization

While the competition was already considerable in the past, the boom in digital photography also put the industry under considerable pressure, because many photographers no longer commission image development. They often do the final processing digitally at home and save their recordings digitally for further use or convenient viewing on the screen. Pictures are - if requested at all - often printed out themselves and only rarely sent to a photo laboratory in order to get better quality prints. However, since the early 2000s, modern photo printers have achieved a print quality that, despite high printing costs, can hardly be distinguished from a print from a photo laboratory for laypeople.

Favored by this development, computer workstations installed in shops that can be operated by customers themselves are also gaining ground. He brings the source material with him on CD, DVD, memory cards, etc., and can do the photofinishing himself - e.g. B. with post-processing steps such as cropping, sharpening, color balancing, etc. - and have your images immediately printed on photo paper in the desired format using a digital printer. These devices do not deliver exactly the same quality as a photo laboratory, but thanks to their size of a drinks machine they can be set up almost anywhere and by any provider (supermarkets, drugstores, train stations, Internet cafés, coffee roaster branches, etc.). It is not difficult to see that this development will ultimately replace an entire chain of intermediaries . Providers of such systems include a. Fujifilm and Sony .

Market leader

Europe's market leader in photofinishing is, according to its own admission, the photo service provider CeWe, which was founded in 1961 and has twelve companies and 3400 employees in 24 European countries. In second place is the traditional Japanese company Fujicolor , with six large- scale photo laboratories located under the umbrella of Fujicolor Central Europe Photofinishing . Fujicolor also supplies neighboring European countries from these locations.

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