Digital pictures vs. prints

[JDgreen227]

For the past hour I have been printing off 4X6 vacation pictures to give to my in laws, who have zero interest in digipics, as they have no digicam or computer. I probably have close to 3500 images stored on the laptop I am using, and half that many on my Blackberry alone. Yet over the past two years, I have probably printed off less than 200 photos total, half of which I have given away to my in laws, meaning I have printed off 100 out of 3500 to actually put into an album for myself.

I am curious as to what percentage of their digipics the rest of the members here actually print off, and what is your preferred method? Going to a store and using their machines and your memory card? Using a conventional multifunction printer? Or using a dedicated photo printer such as an Epson Picturemate, which is how I make the majority of my prints?

 

[dusty3030]

Send them over the net to walgreens and pick them up later. Wife does it when she has a coupon and it's cheap. Does it a lot for giving pictures to the grandparents. We take all of our pictures with the iPhones anymore.

 

[jinman]

Most newer flat-screen TVs have a USB port. We download onto a USB thumbdrive and take it with us. I've used the port at my inlaw's and my daughter's house with great success; no computer required. My wife prints a few pictures to send to people, but most all of our family do not require prints and we don't do them for ourselves unless we want a photo to put into a frame. So our solution is to simply not do prints.

 

[dmccarty]

We print very few photos. When we do I send them to a professional lab in Richmond, VA. If I upload the images on the weekend and the order is just prints, the prints will be at our house on Tuesday.

I have used Walmart as well. Print quality depends greatly on the print operator and maintenance of the printer. Walmart is nice because I can upload the photos to a given store for relatives to pick up. I have done this twice when my mother was traveling and wanted to see the photos. We just figured out where she would be the next day, found the nearest Walmart, and had them printed at that store. Very nice. Very convenient.

I think most images today are shown on smartphone, computers, TVs, Facebook, TBN.

For XMAS I bought my parents a Sony 10 inch digital photo frame. I meant to buy one for me to take to work but I waited too long and the prices went up. Anywho, the photo frame can holds a huge number of images and cycles through them which is very nice.

We bought a BD player two XMASes back and I made sure I bought one with a USB port on the front. There are now USB thumb drives that are small and made to fit almost flush with equipment. I put a bunch of the kids photos on the thumb drive and it sits in the BD player. The BD player will rotate through the photos just like the Sony digital photo frame but the Sony is only 10 inches while the TV is 65 inches. It makes a slightly larger impact. :laughing:

Later,
Dan

 

[TripleR]

We rarely print as my mother is the only one without a computer. We bought her the digital frame, but she still likes prints. Some we print off and some are done commercially.

 

[beppington]

I almost never print digital pics any more.

I either email them to the recipient(s), post them on a webpage & send the recipient the link to them ... or post them on a forum

In my world actual prints are only useful any more for people with no computer (usually very young or old people) or to hang on the wall or the fridge.

 

[k0ua]

I cannot remember the last time we printed a pix.. For all the reasons given above. With all the computers we have and the usb ports on TV's now..

James K0UA

 

[JDgreen227]

I cannot remember the last time we printed a pix.. For all the reasons given above. With all the computers we have and the usb ports on TV's now..

James K0UA

I have had a 50 inch Panasonic plasma for five years now but have never even bothered to display photos on it, although it is capable of doing that. Makes me wonder how the image I just took on my 2.4 inch screen handheld would appear on 50 inches...:laughing:

 

[Western]

JD, we also have a 50 or 52" " Plasma and digital photos look great on it, I have used the SD slot for my game camera pics and those also look good, not as good as ones taken with a good camera though.

I'm like most of you guy's, digital unless I really want "one for the wall"

 

[RobertN]

We still print/enlarge for framing, but it is very selective. Otherwise, we show stuff on the PC or TV/DVD. Especially sine we have a couple mobile/laptop pc's.

We are also much more discerning about what we have in our "slide shows" too. A photo class we took some years back, really taught us to sort thru pictures, and pick out the really good ones. We still keep the others(unless out of focus etc). But, dont display them so much.

The other thing we learned, was to minimize mixing pictures that are portrait layout vs landscape, ie vertical orientation vs horizontal. Mixing them together is very distracting.

Also, limit the number of photo's in a "slide show". If you are getting up to 90 or 100, you are losing your audience...

 

[Pixguy]

Another reason my pro lab and Kodak is hurting these days.

One hour labs are few and far between now.

 

[dmccarty]

...
We are also much more discerning about what we have in our "slide shows" too. A photo class we took some years back, really taught us to sort thru pictures, and pick out the really good ones. We still keep the others(unless out of focus etc). But, dont display them so much.
...

I took 300 photo at one of the kids soccer games last week. I did not see the whole game so this was a bit more photos than I would normally shoot but I have never taken photos at the field before so I tried some things just in case it would work.

Of those 300 images I had 50 that are acceptable. Acceptable meaning they were worth 20-30 seconds of editing time and worth the cost of printing.

One thing we are buying are magnet prints. The lab attaches the print, say a 5x7 to a 5x7 magnet. Our fridge and family fridges are covered with these things. :thumbsup: The lab also makes all sorts of doo dads out of the images. Jigsaw puzzles and coffee mugs have been popular in the family.

I just bought a decent film scanner to digitize the kids photos on film. When I get this done we plan to create some photo books for the family.

Most images are just seen in email and photo galleries.

Later,
Dan

 

[flyerdan]

I used to work at a large wholesale photofinisher here in Salem; we'd do overnight service to places as far away as Boise and Seattle. At our peak we could do 30000 rolls a night without breaking a sweat. It's all gone now, killed by the digital revolution. I think the whole time I was there I only ran two rolls of film through. Wasn't much of a picture taker and so many shots don't look as great as you thought they did at the time. Plus the expense, now there is no buying film or developing it. Software does an excellent job of color correcting, density, etc., and you can tell at once if your shot came out via the onboard screen rather than waiting for the prints to come back, which by then is too late to retake the shot.
I haven't had any digital images printed, but I have scanned a bunch of my old prints to have forum fodder.

 

[greasemonkeyok]

Photo paper and print media do not last forever. Computers and storage devices do not last forever, but the images are easy to duplicate and store in multiple locations. Pick your poison.

 

[buck12]

We print what we really like through snap fish. The cost is reasonable and the quality seems to be good.