Retail Photo Printer? Home Photo Printer? How About No Photo Printer?
from the why-print-at-all? dept
At the beginning of the year, buying out online photo sites was all the rage. Yahoo bought Flickr and HP bought Snapfish. With the online photo battles underway some were wondering if people would still have photos professionally printed or if they'd just print them at home. A new article suggests that people are having photos printed professionally rather than printing them at home... but there are some problems with this article. It's correct in saying that the cost of ink for self-printing is ridiculously expensive, though the stats claiming that home photo printing (on a percentage basis) is down comes from an extremely biased tradegroup representing photo retail shops. However, the glaring missing point in this discussion is whether or not any printing still makes sense. With the rise of web storage in many cases people are realizing that they don't need to print out photos at all. The web is their photo album. And, as we get more internet connected digital photo frames, digital photos can be used in even more places, as well. Obviously, photo prints aren't going away overnight -- and they are still great for many people, but it will be interesting to see if the younger generation still keeps printing photos as they get older.
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Phot printing
Bottom line: if you want only 4x6 or 5x7 prints, don't bother with home printing. Get them done at Costco or online. If you want larger sizes are are serious about photography, then a photo printer should be on your list.
Not all manufacturers are like Lexmark or HP, who overcharge for their inks while trying to prevent third party ink cartridges from working with their printers.
Canon is going in the right direction. Their printers, notably the Pixma line are some of the least expensive inkjets to operate. While the printers may not be the cheapest, the inks are reasonable and can be easily refilled.
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Only enlargements
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Havn't you heard of Scrapbooking!
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Very little reason for me to print
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Why I print some pictures
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Re: Why I print some pictures
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