Printing Your Digital Pictures

TIP OF THE DAY

Printing Your Digital Pictures

So you have taken a bunch of beautiful pictures with your Digicam.....how do you get them on paper?

1. Print yourself
        Inkjet PhotoPrinter - Prints flawless photos.  I highly recommend the Canon i950 (8 1/2 x 11)  http://froogle.google.com/froogle?price1=125&price2=&btnP=Go&sourceid=navclient&q=canon+i950&tiled=1&price=between&scoring=p
or the Canon i9100 (13 x 19-inch) http://froogle.google.com/froogle?price1=250&price2=&btnP=Go&sourceid=navclient&q=Canon+i9100&scoring=p&price=between
I guarantee you that if you use Canon's Photo Quality paper with this printer, you will not be able to tell the difference between an Eckerd's print and a print from a Canon 950 or 9100.  If you use paper by any other company, the print will look lousy.  I have been using the Canon i850 and even two years (and two printer generations) later it produces incredible prints.  You cannot go wrong with this printer.

        SubDye - Most small print (4x6 and smaller) printers are sub dye printers.  They produce high quality pictures, but are very expensive on a per print basis.  I recommend the Canon i950 and i9100 over the sub dyes.  Moreover, the Canons allow you to print text not just pictures, so it has all around use.

        Laser - Expensive, and the pictures are not as sharp as those produced by Inkjets and SubDye printers.

Here's a good article on photo printers: http://www.techworthy.com/PCUpgrade/NovDec2003/Photo-Printers.htm


Inkjet Advantages

• Lowest cost of entry of the major digital printer types, at least for printers that offer up to about 13-by-19-inch print sizes
• A wide variety of models enable prints of every size, from wallet to poster
• Pigmented ink printers offer long-life prints
• An endless array of paper types, as well as choice of special-purpose inks
• Reasonable ink and media costs
• Print quality very good to excellent

Disadvantages

• Most inkjet printers are slow compared to dye-sublimation
• Prints are less durable than prints from other printer types
• Prints from pigmented ink printers are subject to metamerism, where colors appears to shift noticeably under different light sources
• Some inkjets struggle when printing open shadow detail
• Prints on glossy paper from some printers may take several minutes, or even several hours, to dry and take on their final color appearance

Dye-sublimation Advantages

• Better dye-sublimation printers produce smooth, rich prints
• Extremely fast
• Better models are designed to be printing workhorses
• Some papers offer long life
• Reasonable cost of consumables

Disadvantages

• Prints sometimes lack critical sharpness
• Printers are more expensive, than an equivalent inkjet (though the price gap has narrowed considerably)
• Limited paper selection
• Limited print sizes

2.  Print Online
        Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com) - This is the service I use when printing large numbers of pictures.  I also use their free software for uploading the pixs to Shutterfly's website, viewing pictures, cropping, eliminating red-eye, and showing pictures in a slideshow.  The key is to buy their prepaid prints.  You get 400 4׶ prints at just 25? ea. ($99). 

        Ofoto - Similar to Shutterfly, but slightly more expensive.

        Walmart - slightly cheaper than Shutterfly, but forces you to load each picture separately which is ridiculous.