If you plan to send your digital photos to a commercial printer (like Costco, for instance), there are a few things that you need to do:
1) You need to know exactly what printer it uses. For example, the Costco Photo Center in NE San Jose uses the Noritsu QSS-3411 Photo Printer.
2) You need to know what print resolution it has. For example, the Noritsu QSS-3411 has a print resolution of 320 pixels per inch.
3) [Ideally] You should have that printer's color profile installed on your computer. This ensures that the image will look like what you think it should look.
4) You need to send to the printer TIFF files (not JPEG files) processed with Adobe RGB color space and embedded with ICC color profiles. This will ensure that you exploit all the colors that the printer has to offer, and that you will see what you expect to see.
5) Determine what print size you need to print, and resize your image before you send it to the printer. For example, your original digital image was taken by a 15-megapixel camera, and you want a 4"x6" from Costco in NE San Jose. Based on the Noritsu QSS-3411's print resolution of 320 ppi, you need a file that is (4 x 320 = ) 1,280p in width and (6 x 320 = ) 1,920p in length, which is roughly 2.5 megapixels. So, resize your image to 1280 x 1920.
6) Tell the print operator that he needs to "disable color correction" on your photo. The best way to do this is to rename the image file to something like "DoNotCorrectColor-XXX.TIFF". (You can specify "disable color correction" on the order, but many operators will forget to turn it off, and you'll get awful photos.) Then send the TIFF file (with Adobe RGB and ICC profiles) to the printer.
Question: But but... butt, my camera outputs JPEG files, not TIFF or Raw files, what can I do?
Answer: Get another camera. Just kidding. You don't have much of a choice now. Just use JPEG in sRGB color space, and, if possible, embed the ICC color profiles into your JPEG. All the other steps should be the same.
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