Your Digital Photo Developing Options
These days, purchasing a dedicated digital photo printer for
developing your digital photos may be a more costly and
necessary route than selecting a reputable digital printing
service. There are many services online that will print your
digital photos. If you need results faster, almost every modern
drugstore or photomat offers digital printing. Usually this is
as simple as placing your digital cameras memory card in a
machine and selecting which photos you want and any other
options. Your images then print right before your eyes.
Digital photo prints usually cost the same or even less than
traditional prints, but the savings go even deeper. One of the
biggest advantages digital photography has over traditional
photography is that you can choose to only print the images you
want. Imagine the money you would have saved over your lifetime
if you could pick and choose your film based prints. No more
dozens of blurry throw away images, now digital photography
technology has made it easy for you to simply submit the images
you actually want, not the ones you dont.
The real question is one of quality. Luckily, the technologies
that are involved are advancing rapidly. Todays digital prints
are made to last decades without fading or discoloring. The
lifetime of a professionally printed pictures is now equivalent
to the lifetimes of film based pictures. This is another major
advantage that professional digital printing has over do it
yourself photo printers, they last longer. The prints that you
make yourself with most consumer photo printers do not share the
long lifespan of prints that have been made professionally. This
is mostly due to the use of commercial grade archival paper and
ink in the printing process.
Preparing your photos for printing is really easy. First, you
can make any desired corrections to image quality with your
favorite photo editing software. Then, you simply save your
images (usually as .jpeg) and upload them over the internet to
the photo printers website. If you are printing them locally,
you would simply take your memory card with you and either place
it into the self service machine or hand it to the clerk.
If you ordered your photos from an online photo printer, you can
usually expect your images to arrive at your home in 2 to 5
days, depending on the service you choose and other variables.
You will likely be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the
images you receive. If you are using a relatively modern digital
camera (with high enough resolution), the resulting images will
be the same quality or better than if they were developed from
film. Digital based photos at higher resolutions store more
"information" (pixels) in the image than can fit into the fine
grains of film. This extra data makes for finer, better prints.
As you can see, there are many cost effective options for
digital photo developing. So, save your money on a photo printer
and get those images ready to upload. Its fun, its easy, and the
pictures will last a lifetime.