Do you print your photos at home do you take them elsewhere ? (1 Viewer)

[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).

 

[Citizen87645]

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

 

[Andrew Pratt]

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.

 

[Sam Posten]

100% Costco

 

[Ken Chui]

I use Walgreens.com (based on a recommendation by Consumer Reports). I could print at home, but when you need 100+ photos in a jiffy, I turn to the professionals (cheaper too).

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I have been printing at home for 4x6 photos, but have sent out a couple of enlargements, since my printer will only print up to 8.5x11. I recently purchased a Canon Rebel XT dSLR, though, so I may start sending out those "keeper" photos from trips, etc. Right now, as I experiment with the new camera, it is still more convenient to print at home, since I want to be able to review some test shots immediately.

 

[Marty M]

I also use Walgreens.com. I upload the files and can pick up my prints in about an hour at the Walgreens that is just about 6 blocks away I can't print this at home at the price of Walgreens and I have been impressed with their quality.

 

[SethH]

My wife and I are about 50/50 home-print and "pro"-print. Something we've recently discovered is Mpix. For certain pictures we use the metallic paper printing service. If you've never tried it, I highly recommend it. It's a little more expensive, but for certain pictures it's definitely worth it. The metallic prints really come out great.

 

[Alf S]

Part Ofoto, part new Selphy photo printer we bought to use with my Canon A620.

 

[Adam Bluhm]

I like my Canon prints at home, but I've seen prints from Walmart's Kodak center and they look wonderful. The only drawback is you're limited with versatility. I think they do 4x6's and that's it. If you don't post process them/crop them if you want, you have what you have.

The only other thing is I think they really, REALLY increase saturation. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, because to the casual user the pictures really POP and it looks marvelous, but I've seen prints that don't look quite natural because of a lot of seeming color enhancement.

Regardless, it's worth the price and I was impressed with the photos in general. I just sold my 2mp Canon A40 to a co-worker. He took some shots of he and his buddy out fishing in the boat and had them done at Walmart. He showed me the results and I was impressed, so I'm sure he's more than happy.

In the end I enjoy doing them at home for three reasons. I like the results, I like the versatility and I like getting them printed when I was them printed (right away, if I want, or at midnight, if I can't sleep).

 

[Holadem]

I have a couple of hundred pix to print, so uploading is out of the question. I am limited to B&M or online services which accept disks by regular mail. Almost exclusively 4 x 6, glossy prints.

1- Is the quality consistent between stores of the same name? Is a Walgreens a Walgreens a Walgreens?

2- Has anyone compared the quality of prints between stores? I guess I could do a test run otherwise myself, take a sample of pictures to Walmart, Walgreens and a couple of others to see which comes out best. But is whatever difference might exist between their processes worth the time and expense of a trial run?

4- I am guessing it is best to send the full resolution files?

3- Are the internet services better? Which ones?

Thanks.

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H

 

[Elizabeth S]

On a somewhat related note, I have a Pentax Optio and a Panasonic Lumix camera. In all this time, I have never been able to figure out how to make the date print on the photo from either camera, whether I take it to Costco, WalMart, etc. or print it at home. I have the date set correctly, and I go into the camera settings to select DPOF data for the photos. It has never printed a date for me. Is there a step I'm missing, or more to it? If I do it correctly, would I see the date show up when viewing the photos on the computer?

My last few pictures, I had to play with the Paint program to individually add the dates on the corners of each picture. It took a long time for me to figure out placement, font size, etc.

 

[Holadem]

*Gotta subscribe to a photography forum. Too dang slow in here*

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H