Day 4 of our week-long look at digital photography (see overview story here) provides tips for printing digital pictures.
I print almost all of my pictures using snapfish.com. It’s free, easy to use, offers unlimited storage for my pictures, and the prints look great. Here’s how it works: go to snapfish.com, create an account, upload your pictures into online web albums, and you’re ready to print. Snapfish offers basic editing tools too, but I edit my pictures as necessary before uploading.
Once you’ve loaded your pictures, you select the ones you want to print, specify the size and quantity, and choose a delivery option. You can have your pictures printed and mailed directly to your home, or you can pick them up in an hour at your local Walgreens store.
Snapfish isn’t the only online option. If you want to print pictures at Walgreens or CVS, you can work directly through their online stores. Mac users can order prints directly through iPhoto, and Kodak offers a popular online service as well. In my experience, print quality is excellent with all of these services.
If you have a photo-quality inkjet printer, you can print pictures yourself. Quality can be excellent, though varies widely by printer. See the note below about cost, too.
Printing Costs
Snapfish charges 12¢ and Kodak Gallery 15¢ for 4×6 prints (not including shipping costs). Walgreens, CVS, and iPhoto each charge 19¢ for 4×6 prints. Larger pictures cost quite a bit more through all services, with 5×7 around $1 per print, and 8×10 around $4 per print. As I mentioned above, with Snapfish you can have pictures printed at Walgreens, but the price jumps to 19¢ per print; you only get the 12¢ price when prints are mailed to your house.
For 4×6 snapshots, printing on your own inkjet printer will almost certainly be more expensive than the other options, unless you’re making low quality prints. Amazon.com sells HP Premium Photo Paper for $14.99/100 sheets, or 15¢ per sheet. Ink costs vary widely based on printer model, but PC World found ink costs for their top five photo printers ranged from 27¢ to 50¢ per print for best quality. So printing on an inkjet printer will typically cost 40¢ or more per print, or more than twice as much as mail order or in-store pickup, even without factoring in the cost of the printer itself.
Beyond Standard Prints
The on-line print world offers many possibilities for your pictures other than standard 4×6 or 8×10 photos. One great option is a bound photo book, available through iPhoto or Snapfish. I’ve printed books through Snapfish and seen books made by others with iPhoto, and the quality in both cases is impressive. Other fun print options include calendars, greeting cards, posters, and even shirts or coffee mugs.
Panorama Prints
Finally, if you stitch together pictures to make panorama photographs, the best place I’ve found for printing these is www.ezprints.com. They offer two sizes: 6” or 12” tall, with the length as long as necessary based on your photo size. You pay by the inch and while this can be expensive for large prints, the quality is quite good.
