Liverpool Joins the Digital Revolution

MPS Imaging has been servicing a wide range of commercial and social photographers in the Greater Merseyside area for almost 25 years from its 3,500 sq ft lab one mile from the M62.

However, over recent years they have noticed a worrying trend developing - although customers were continuing to bring their analogue processing to MPS, all the digital work was being taken outside Liverpool as, believe it or not, no pro-labs within the city had digital capability.

Keen to plug this gap and reverse the tide of work flowing from the city, MPS decided to invest in a Fujifilm digital minilab and became the only pro-lab in Liverpool with digital capability. Harry Lea, MPS Imaging’s proprietor explains: “In late spring this year we purchased a Fujifilm Frontier 355, Frontier Image Manager and a Fujifilm Film Processor and became the first prolab in the North West to have this system installed. We’d researched a number of
digital processing systems but chose the Fujifilm Frontier digital minilab as we felt it produced outstanding quality prints.

“With digital capability added to our existing services of RA4 printing, E6 and C41 processing, we’re now able to produce prints from transparencies, negatives and digital media, we can make enlargements up to 60 inches wide and we also offer a full range of finishing services including encapsulation. As a result, we’ve greatly increased our customer base and our workload has doubled over the last three months!”

But the benefits of being Liverpool’s only digitally enabled pro-lab don’t stop at an increase in business. Harry believes his service offering has improved too.

“As well as offering all these new services, we’re now able to turn jobs around very quickly and are better equipped to meet tight customer deadlines and process larger, more complex orders,” comments Harry.

“We’re also planning to have an email order system up and running soon - something that just wouldn’t have been possible as an analogue lab. This will make it even easier for our busy customers to place orders and we’re expecting it to increase our workload further still.” Overall, Harry concludes that the move to digital processing has been a positive one.

“I have to admit that I thought our lives would be easier once we’d bought the Frontier, but becoming Liverpool’s only digital pro-lab has meant we’re busier than ever!”

For more information, contact MPS Imaging on 0151 228 4801.