My digital photographs look sharp and quite good on the computer, but the prints are a little fuzzy and grainy

You need less dpi to get a good picture on the screen than on a printout - probably the only way to increase the quality is to decrease the size of the photograph that you are printing - can you up the pixels on your camera?

Images need sharpening !

You need to sharpen your image at various stages.

1. After RAW file conversion.

2. After manipulation of the image.

3. At the point you print. Choose the appropriate for your printer.

If they look grainy, or pixellated, you may need more megapixels. If they're sharp on your computer but not when printed, you need to find a new lab.

You need to tell us how big the prints are. It's quite possible that you're trying to have them print the picture larger than it reasonably should be. Try having them print it smaller.

fuzzy pictures could be caused by:

poor paper especially if the paper absorbs your ink it can cause the inks to run into one another and make the photo look fuzzy. buy a good quality photo paper

poor ink especially if your refill your ink cartridges, buy your printer manufacture printer recommended cartridges

grain could be cause by the dpi that your printer produces, crap ink and by ink jet/bubble jet printers. if your using an ink jet printer then it will need to be a photo quality one, unfortunatly unless you can afford a good quality one (£300+) you will still get more grain than from a film processed photo

You say your pics look 'quite good' but are they really that good ???

Why not upload them to a flickr account etc, and put a link to the pic on YA, so we can all have a look as to see exactly how 'quite good' they are.

Also, was the pics taken with a camera, or a phone ???

it's the resolution of the photos .... you need to convert them to at least 300dpi for photolab quality ... either that or you have the actual size (megapixels) set low in the camera .. always take pics at the best and biggest size your camera can take ... you can alway reduce a pic but it's difficult to enlarge ... I still think your dpi needs adjusting

It sounds to me like they are using a low quality printer, you may be better off to get your own photo printer, this would give you more control over the quality.

if its not htier printer's fault then its probably the quality of the paper they used. go to another photo lab then or try printing it out yourself.

Rbel, it could be the printer at the lab. Why not get started in doing it yourself, or change where you get them done now?