Saal Digital Photo Lab Product Review
I was recently invited by Saal Digital to try a sample of their products, and to post an honest review of my findings.
Saal Digital are a professional photo lab based in Siegen, near Bonn in Germany, and their website for the UK market is www.saaldigital.co.uk
The website is very clean and easy to navigate, and they have a very comprehensive range of products, from prints, photo books and photo gifts, through to a wide selection of wall art in canvas, aluminium, acrylic and PVC Foamboard styles, all at very competitive prices.
As I'd been meaning to print some photos from our trip to Australia and New Zealand for our walls at home I thought this was a great opportunity to try them out.
I decided to try the PVC Foamboard, which gives a modern and minimal look, standing proud of the wall surface.
I've used Foamboard for samples for exhibitions and wedding fairs in the past, and it's very durable and lightweight, and easy to hang. There are two options - 5mm or 10mm thickness, I chose the standard 5mm.
I chose a panoramic photo taken along the Abel Tasman track on New Zealand's South Island, one of the absolute highlights of our trip, and somewhere we'd wanted to go to since our first visit to New Zealand back in 2002 when we couldn't fit it in our tight schedule.
The photo is actually made up of 3 photos I stitched together in Adobe Lightroom, and after adjusting the crop slightly my final print size was 30x90 cm, or 12x36 inches for those of us still working in real measurements 😉
After downloading the design software from the Saal website, it's simply a case of selecting your desired product and size and then placing your image and adding it to your shopping basket.
After checking out I received an email confirmation and delivery period of 10 days, which I assumed meant 10 business days.
The package was duly delivered by dhl 10 days later, which I was pleasantly surprised by, as I'd placed the order on a Friday, so there were two weekends in that period.
The foamboard was very well packaged and protected for transit, and I was very impressed with both the quality and colour accuracy of the printing, which these quick phone photos don't do justice to.
I'd opted for the aluminium subframe mounting option, which is pre-mounted, so all I had to do was drill a couple of holes in the wall for screws and hang the photo. The subframe leaves a 1cm gap to the wall, so the photo floats proud of the wall surface with no mounting visible.
This is the first order I've placed with Saal Digital, but I've been very impressed with the service and quality, and I will definitely be using them again, and look forward to trying some of their other products.
