What is the best way to print out pictures on a digital camera? (1 Viewer)

[Josh Wolfman]

I purchased the canon S45 today and the wife asked me how she will develop the pictures. I don't want to buy another printer if I don't have to...can I take the memory card someplace? Do you email the pics to a website AND will the quality be there? I want the same quality as my 35mm on a 3X5 or 4X6 print. What is the best way to achieve this? Thx

 

[Richard Travale]

yeah, you can take your memory card into most places and they will just copy the files that you want to print.
There are also a few email services but I'm not sure about them as I have never used any.
As for getting the quality of a 35mm print, you may be a little disappointed if you want to make really big prints. I think with the 4mp camera you should be able to get pretty good prints(still won't be 35mm quality) up to 8x10 but any bigger you will see a pretty big difference.
ps, congrats on the new camera

 

[Tim Morton]

Check out ophoto.com they are fast cheap and excellent quality. As for the guy above saying you will be dissapointed,.,,,don't worry about it...your camera will make 16x20 prints if you need them. How do you like it so far? I am in the market for a new digital camera for my wife.

 

[Josh Wolfman]

The camera comes tomorrow...I ordered it from onecall. They have it for $437 shipping included- I added overnight delivery for approx. $15 so I can snap some pics this weekend. I also bought an additional flash card from amazon.com. The have pretty good prices for 128 and 256...I got a viking 256mb for $50 after mail in rebate.

 

[Max Leung]

Some people go to Walmart, and quite a few Costco stores have the new Noritsu printers, which accept CDR, compact flash, or other digital media. Plug it into the machine, press a few buttons to select the size and number of copies for each picture, and come back in an hour or a couple of days, depending on how much you want to spend for the shorter wait.

 

[Richard Travale]

As for the guy above saying you will be disappointed,.,,,don't worry about it

Maybe I wasn't clear. You will get good prints with this camera. It's just that if you are wanting 35mm quality prints, a 4mp camera will probably not do it at larger sizes.

 

[Jon_Are]

Also consider going to Snapfish . It's easy as pie, the quality is good, and the first ten are free.

I haven't tried Costco or Walmart yet, but I will soon.

Jon

 

[Cees Alons]

Josh,

You could also try to do it yourself. Which printer do you have?

Most color printers do a terrific job already, nowadays. But there are two "secrets": have a good photo processing program (Adobe, Corel Photo-Paint, Paint Shop Pro - the last one is very good, relatively inexpensive and can be downloaded for a free trial period) and print on glossy paper (expensive, but so much better). If you use glossy paper, you should also choose the "best" setting of your printer for it.

Glossy paper is rather expensive (and one tends to make more prints - and larger), although having it done elsewhere is more expensive. But it's so very rewarding and you can do things (like making beautiful, perhaps even artistic , compilations) that you would never do otherwise.

Cees
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[Max Leung]

Another superb print program you can use is Qimage. Inexpensive shareware and arguably puts out better prints than anything out there. The upsampling and sharpening algorithms are extremely good (you could probably blow up a 2 MP picture to an 8x10 and still retain excellent quality).

I dislike glossy paper myself. I prefer the semi-gloss and "luster" paper myself. Keep in mind that certain brands of paper are not suitable for a given inkjet printer and inkset. For example, using HP or Staples paper on an Epson printer that uses pigment inks is a recipe for disaster...streaks everywhere, and easily waterdamaged.

I'm pretty damn amazed that I can lick the prints I've made on Epson Premium Luster paper on my Epson 2200, and the ink will not come off. Whereas a drop of water on a print made on my cheap HP 812C takes the ink off like turpentine!

I agree with Cees...today's inkjet printers can exceed the quality of prints made at a photolab. The only issue now is longevity.

 

[KyleS]

If I want permanent prints I put the pictures I want on a CD or floppy and take them to Costco or Walmart. Both have great development pricing and it is done with a professional machine and the prints will not Fade. Most Ink from home printers will fade if put in sunlight/ultraviolet light. I make prints all the time for myself and put them in frames all over the house but if I know I will want to permanently store the pics I have them printed by professionals.
I use Paint Shop Pro to edit the photos, great program by the way.
The Printer that I use is an HP 1215 Photo Printer which was just replaced by the 7350 and it does a great job especially on Glossy Photo paper.

KyleS

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

If I want permanent prints I put the pictures I want on a CD or floppy and take them to Costco or Walmart. Both have great development pricing and it is done with a professional machine and the prints will not Fade. Most Ink from home printers will fade if put in sunlight/ultraviolet light.

Just a note as to the permanence of prints made at your local minilab -- they won't last as long as those great b&w prints of your grandparents that are kicking around in shoeboxes in your house. Current tests for colour photographic prints made the good old-fashioned chemical way put their lifespan at 20 to 30 years. Compare this to making a pigment print with one of those lovely Epson 2000P or 2200 printers, where your prints can last a good 100 years on the right paper (a nice, acid free cotton rag paper is what you need).

Now, 20 to 30 years kicks the crap out of a non-archival inkjet print. And yes, those nice pigment printers are expensive, a lot more expensive than a regular dye printer. But in some cases, it's worth it.

My qualifications to expound on such subjects? This is my fifteenth year in the photographic lab industry, and my fourth as owner/operator of my own place, where my focus is on high quality, long lasting prints.

For nice 4x6s, it's hard to beat the cost and quality available from those digital Noritsus. Fuji also makes a good digital minilab machine called the Frontier that can be set up to accept digital files as well. I haven't personally seen any of the new Agfa digital minilabs, but I hear they're good, too.

 

[Cees Alons]

Most Ink from home printers will fade if put in sunlight/ultraviolet light.

First time I heard that story was more than 10 years ago, about the inks of the (then) new HP Deskjet printer. To find out more about that, I made a testprint on the first of those machines in our office and placed it under a window through which the sun shone almost daily. That was 1988. When I left my office last year, it was still there: all ink as black as it was originally (but the paper rather yellowish).

Photographic paper (and many professional dyes used in print) cannot stand UV-light. That's why photos are best kept in (indeed: the shoebox Aaron mentions), or in a special book, or, if you must display it, behind glass. I seriously doubt if those Epson prints fade faster.


Cees

 

[Max Leung]

Apparently they don't according to those who have had the printers (the Epson 2000P) for a few years. Prints not under glass, in humid and dry environments.

The regular inkjets (using dye inks, not pigments) can fade in as little 24 hours, depending on the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Speculation is that areas of high-ozone concentration may contribute to very rapid print deterioration. When they say 20-30 years, it's more like a tenth of that depending on where you live. I imagine that pollution isn't that bad in the Netherlands, but I bet people living on the east coast of the US have horrid print fading issues.

UV is not an issue, apparently. At least, not anymore.

I understand that you can use a special spray on your prints instead of getting the new archival-quality printers like the Epson 2xxx printers (which use the Epson-branded Ultrachrome inks). I can't remember the name offhand. Search the Printer forum on www.dpreview.com if you really need to know! Too bad the search function frequently doesn't.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

When I left my office last year, it was still there: all ink as black as it was originally (but the paper rather yellowish).

Was it a full colour print, or just black ink? In my own testing with a couple of dye-based printers, the black never showed any visible fading, while magenta ink tended to fade within the first three months, followed by yellow and cyan.

I've had a print from our Epson 7500 (which is a 24" wide 2000P, basically) in the front window facing the sun for more than two years now with no visible fading, and no yellowing of the paper (which is Ilford's Galerie Satin, the instant-dry stuff).

 

[Cees Alons]

Aaron,

The start was more than 10 years ago: it was a B/W print.

Cees