It looks like taking your digital photos to the photo mart for printing might be a bit cheaper than printing it yourself at home. The printer companies make a lot of coin on the the ink, so in the end you pay more. As this is going on, more people are sharing photos online and may later use print services from those sites. How do you Makers out there print your photos? [via] Link.
8 thoughts on “Return of the photomart?”
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walmart.com. It’s cheaper than most, the quality is good, and I can just go down the street to pick the photos up. I don’t even buy color ink for my printer at home anymore – the cost is just rediculous.
nevermind the cost of ink, consider the permanence. inkjet still has nothing on the permanence of a real print.
I don’t print out photos for myself, I just keep them on the computer. For distant relatives, I go to Costco.com and upload the photos, & have them printed & mailed to my relatives, all in one shot. The ones that I don’t just email the photos to, that is.
“Print photos?” What for?
Freaking luddites…
OK, that was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but it looked too harsh after I posted it. But… I don’t see any way to edit my own post, so I’m posting a second one and adding noise to the signal. Sorry.
every photo i care about is on flickr – i suspect it will be awhile before everyone uses an online photo service for all their storage and printing.
I use Costco exclusively for my prints. I have their printers color profile loaded in Photoshop so I can softproof my work, their turn around time is less than an hour and the cost for an 11×14 is cheap! Why would I spend good money on buying ink for my Epson? The jets clog after only one day of non use and it takes 2-6 cleaning cycles to purge them. That’s money down the ink sump! The only thing that money sucking monster is used for these days is to print UPS labels. I’d say that the printer makers have dug themselves a nice hole and don’t even know it yet.
I print to WalMart and Sam’s Club. The cost is incredibly cheap and the quality is indistinguishable from film cameras, even with my little 1.3MP camera I can print out excellent looking 8x10s (good lighting seems to be more important than MP in many cases). Even my digital art-work (non photos) are done there as well. I’ve found that when I create something new in Photoshop I need to leave about 1/4″ around the outside (for 8×10) because you can never be too sure where it will cut off. However, considering that it’s 1/20th of the cost of a “proof” from a professional place, it’s worth it.
If you’re good in some graphics program, you can print out mailing cards or christmas cards for $0.19 each verses the $1.75 – $5.00 that the drugstore wants for their holiday themed photo greeting cards.