[anthony_b]

For years I've been printing my photos from my trusty Canon i850. I was buying the canon 4x6 paper plus the individual ink tanks. One day I decided to take my memory card to Sam's Club and try out their one hour service. WOW !!...they look much more natural and the quality is outstanding !! not to mention the top notch paper they use.

They've really come a long way. From now on I'm using my home printer for guests who want a quick picture to take home.

My question is, have home printers become better since I purchased mine three years ago ? or have retail stores have always been better ?

[Patrick Sun]

I use a Canon iP6000d, and it does fine for me. Canon's latest line has 1 picoliter droplets (last year's line had 2 picoliter droplets).

[Cameron Yee]

I've given up printing my own - at least for now. I either go to CostCo or submit files to a professional printing service.

[nolesrule]

I go to Sam's Club. At $0.18 per print, you can't really beat that with the price of photo ink cartridges.

[Steve Ridges]

I print all my own pictures at home. First, I can maintain quality but mostly it's because I never print a bunch of 4x6 etc. What I do is load a sheet of 13x19 into my printer and then use QImage to print multiple pictures in multiple sizes. QImage then arranges and lays them out on the 13x19 paper. This makes it easy to print pics for the wifes scapebooks.

[anthony_b]

Now that I've upgraded my camera from an old 2mp to a 5mp I've noticed a big improvement in the " at home" printouts, but I still feel that taking them to Sam's Club the quality is better and I wouldn't have to worry about the pictures fading after 10 or 15 years.

[Rob Gillespie]

I used to print everything at home, including Super B size, but I'm just starting now to get them printed at pro labs using a proper photographic process. I'll be selling my A3 printer soon and look forward to not having the running costs and to having nicer prints (and having my desk space back!). The cost per print is a bit more than if I were just paying for ink and paper at home, but not that much more. When you take into consideration the cost of the printer and the colour profiling, the pro lab is better value and a lot less hassle.

For trips away where I've got a nice collection of photos, I'll use Shutterfly or MyPublisher to make a proper book. I hate shifting through a pile of prints, but leafing through a book is much more satisfactory!

[Dennis*G]

Another Sams club user here. Great pictures, just upload them and within an hour I can drive the minutes or catch them on the way home from work and be done.

The savings in a printer/paper/ink is, I'm sure great

I gave up on printing at home a while ago. Its just easier for me to outsource it.

[Andrew W]

The ink mfgs have this figured out. You have to print a lot or else your print heads dry out. So you buy ink if you print a lot and you have to buy new catridges if the head drys out. either way, you lose.