Many stores still have photo labs and kiosks that let you print your photos from an SD card or USB drive. We have to wonder though: Who does that anymore?
Photo by Infrogmation
With everyone sharing photos online, whether it’s via Facebook, Google+’s expanded photo features or the newly-overhauled Flickr, we’re not sure people still print out photos and put them in photo albums that often these days. Sure, there’s always a place for a printed photo in a frame on the wall, on your desk, or as a gift. Do you use still regularly print photos, and if so, why?
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19 responses to “Do You Print Photos Anymore?”
Yes
I didn’t for the longest time, but I thought I’d give it a go, and WOW, it’s amazing how much we forget how the physical photo looks so much better than a virtual one.
I don’t. I prefer to put them into a DVD slide show along with some appropriate music. It really make syou cull the many duplicates you have and only select the good photos for the show. The music really makes it enjoyable for others to watch as well.
No, no it doesn’t.
Trust me.
Logged in just to +1 this.
Thanks 🙂
I take average 2k of photos a year, pick best and print them. Rest upload online for backup.
Print is a backup and diversion for when power is out!
Once per year I sort through my photos and print my favourites for a physical album.
Very rarely, but when I do it’s usually printed on canvas and much larger than your postcard size standard. Also they make a great talking point mounted up all over the walls.
ditto
Absolutely! Scrapbooking is alive and well and a new form called Project Life means daily/weekly/monthly capturing of life! Unfortunately though, there is great frustration involved with printing: most stores offer online ordering but the upload software is slow and clunky and you then wait 10 DAYS for them to be mailed or available for instore pick up! So a perfect solution to going in with a memory stick or SD card becomes annoying. I mostly print as I go at home for this reason. Much better services are available in the US and Australia needs to lift its game to match them.
I don’t even take photos at all unless it’s for something like an application
Haven’t printed them out in years. All my photo sharing is now online. Even my 67 year old father puts our photos on his laptop’s rotating wallpaper instead of printing them out! In fact, these days the only things I print out and stick to the wall are memes 🙂
I’d print to send to an older relative. Or if I have a really good shot that I want to hang on the wall. That’s it.
I’m in the business of selling landscape photos (http://grayda.smugmug.com — shameless plug!) and I print a number of photos to sell at markets and art shows. I agree with some of the people here — a photo looks alright on your average computer, but print one out, and WOW!
The last art show I did, I printed most photos on Kodak metallic photo paper. Gave the pictures some more depth and they sold early on during the first day, and had several requests of reprints. Never disregard printed photos!
A close friend of mine prints photos of holidays she has with children that she cares for and uses these prints as part of creating “scrapbook albums” of thes holidays. Here, the children receive these albums as a keepsake of the fun times.
What I see of printing is more as a tool to create keepsake material of events, whether as something you can pore over on the coffee table or as something that hangs up on the wall.
Every now and then I get some smaller prints, to put up on my desk …
Not often, but regularly yes. I love to travel but I don’t actually travel a lot, so when I get back and have had a chance to relax I’ll print out a little album, or photobook, to commemorate the trip. Having a physical artifact around is enough to remind me of the fond memories, and having a bit of a squiz every now and again – or being able to just pick up the object and show somebody – is really valuable to me.
I gave up after I couldn’t find anywhere that could produce consistent, good quality prints at a reasonable price (i.e. not aimed at pro photographers with pro pricing).
Biggest problems have been forced post processing leading to compression artefacts and/or resized images, inconsistent tone and colour (i.e. print the same photo on two different days and get wildly different results), poor printer setup/calibration, etc.
Even the big online services seem to suffer these problems, not just the printer kiosks in shops.
Just this past week I had to print some to send to a cousin who refuses to have a computer :-). Other than those, it has been some time since I printed any. I did some last year to frame (when I got a good deal on a set of frames :-). Early this year, I put a colour film into Big W and requested DEVELOP ONLY but when I went to collect, they had printed them all. Prior to that, it has been a couple of years or more since I have had colour prints made. I do all my own B&W processing (35mm, 110, and 120) and have the rare colour film I take, processed now, at Photo Continental. My album collection from years gone by, numbers around 15 I think, plus I have hundreds of slides of mixed formats taken over a period of some 55 years. My Lightroom database on my Mac is well over 24,000 images. That would chew up some printer cartridges if I ever printed every single one – LOL!
I prefer to put my pics on digital photo frames but my wife loves getting her favourite photos printed into photo books.
I have recently had to scan roughly 7000 family photos. We had 5 big plastic tubs full of photos and as we are planning on moving house it was simply too much. Most of those photos had not been looked at for years and years either. Honestly how many people sit and flip through photo albums every week? My advice would be to keep the prints very limited or dont be scared to throw them out if the time comes (knowing you have the digital backup). Stay digital friends!