Cheaper ways to print your digital photos

Originally published in GP magazine .

Written for GP magazine around 2005. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.

Many people have a photo printer for printing photos from their digital camera, though there are problems with DIY. Good printers can be pricey and use lots of ink. Photo-quality ink can be very expensive, as can specialist photo paper, which dramatically improves picture quality. Printing your own photos can cost anything from 5p to £1 a sheet depending on printer, ink and paper. It is also difficult to print larger than A4 as, although some A3 printers do exist, they can be serious money. The other problem with home printing is the time it can take. A friend recently spent more time printing his holiday photos of a safari than he did on safari.

One alternative is to go to your local high street photo shop. They will print onto good quality photo paper, which produces nice pictures that last and don’t fade. They usually have a digital photo point that will accept any make or size of card or memory stick. It can work out much cheaper, especially in bulk, and you don’t have the hassle of doing it yourself. You don’t have to worry about printing photos you don’t want, as you can still select which images to print in the shop, and there are usually tools to crop images and even remove red eye. My local shop does a bulk deal of 100 photos for £5. Small shops are about to launch a website where you can do all the work at home and just collect the photos from the branch.

Several big companies already do online photo printing, including Jessops and Truprint. Currently most of these are offering 10 or 20 free photos with your first order. It is worth comparing companies as prices do differ and they occasionally have special offers. The sizes at which they print can also differ. Don’t forget, with clever printing technology you can now print on almost anything, including mugs, mouse mats, t-shirts and jigsaws. Again prices can vary a lot and some companies specialise in one thing, e.g. www.mymousemat.com, making them cheaper.

With the online retailers you upload your photos onto their website and choose how many prints of what size you want. Some let you send them images on CD. Most sites make you download their software, which also allows you to edit your images. Some offer online albums where you can have friends viewing your images over the internet, and they can order copies if they want. It is worth reading the instructions carefully, as they will guide you as to how big certain file types can be printed without looking too grainy.

There is a great temptation to use image processing software to alter an image and make it look better on screen; however, remember that how things appear on screen may not be how they print on paper. It might be best to send a couple of test images with different settings and see what happens before sending a bulk number and being unhappy.