Do you printyour pictures?

PeterAM · 12-18-2006, 07:54 AM

Other than the occasional e-mailing of a picture (family or business related) I print my pictures. After two years of tinkering, I generally print at 6X9, 8X12 and 10X15 depending on the picture. Printing is done on an Epson 2200;if I need to go larger than 13X19, I can use a friend's 7800. I would guess that I work with about 20/25% of my images and end up keeping final prints of 5/10% of what I shoot. I have also been scanning negs and slides and printing probably the same percentage of those. If it means anything, I had a darkroom, that was dismantled after getting up the digital learning curve.

I'm curious as to what your printing habits (if any) are and type of printer you are using. I once saw a statistic that less than 1% of all digital images get printed. That makes sense given all of the P&S users around;I'm wondering what more advanced photographers are doing.

I posted something similar to this on DPR a while back and got some interesting feedback. Still curious.

Buschmaster · 12-18-2006, 09:05 AM

I print smaller ones myself, otherwise, I send them into mpix.com, they do a great job.

bdavis · 12-18-2006, 09:18 AM

I'll be printing (the good ones

). 4x6's at home, and the larger prints at Costco if I can't get my dad to do them at home for me. Printers and I don't generally get along.

Ed in GA · 12-18-2006, 09:27 AM

I print 4 x 6s and 8 x 10s. So far, I have needed/wanted anything larger than that.

I use an HP Inkjet 5650 Photoprinter. Will probably up grade my printer next year.

vievetrick · 12-18-2006, 09:34 AM

Have this happen just a few months back. I had taken over 7K pictures over the past year or so and printed out maybe a couple of dozen at home. The digital world and the internet lets me share all the pictures with friends and family online. So my better half says we have no pictures of the kids in their photo albums. So I decide to make a disk going back to January 06 with shots of trips and kids around the house, you know things we should have in an album. I don't really keep track but know I have at least a couple of hundred. I take the DVD head to the local shop I really like to use and after this will always use. They have one of those PC that you load you card or disk into. I tell the guy hmmmm not sure how many he says well if over 400 we can do it on our other PC. Well long story short I had 1355 images on the disk... I start doing some math in my head and this is going to cost me well over $500. Well they have a discount of 25% over 100 prints. All said and down I cut the number to around 1100 asked if they could give me a better discount, they say they would check with the manager. I call back later in the day and they say that all the pictures in theone order crashed their computer so to save time they will only charge me for the 1100 as agreed before I left, but give me a copy of all 1355 and give me a %30 discount. I still saved about $150.00 the stores numbers for the month was improved buy a ton the wife will be filling photo albums for the next month.

So as you read or may have read before as I posted this in DP a while back, most of my pictures do not get printed right away. Well that was then, I try and make a habit of doing it more like every few weeks or even bi-monthly. But in the long run aI saved a good deal by doing it yearly.

Could I have done it online? Sure it would have took a month to upload. But I think working with the local guy paid off this time.

I will say I do print out some of the more artsy stuff or great ones of the kids at home on my HP I think 2200 all in one jobs. Not the best print but for 5X7 or even 8X10 it gets the job done.

HogRider · 12-18-2006, 10:03 AM

Unless it's a photo I really like and want to frame and display on a wall, I basically do not print any pictures at all. I have boxes and boxes with 4x6 and bigger color prints from over the years, 30 really nice albums from various trips, thousands of slides and the same amount of B&W enlargements. They are all stashed away somewhere. Nobody wants to see them anymore (including me).

Today, if I want to share a photo with someone I just email or link to a web host.

joele · 12-18-2006, 11:25 AM

I print either 5"x7" or A4 at home... Printer is just a canon ip4200 but I find with the high end Canon paper they come our really well.. Over time I have come to think the paper I use matters much more than the ink (original or clone)...

Ivan Glisin · 12-18-2006, 12:06 PM

I may have an interesting story for you: Some 15 years ago I started doing my full B&W processing. For some reason, I was using mainly ILFORD products, shooting mostly with HP 5, PAN 100 and XP2 B&W films (and Pentax ME, MX and K1000 cameras) and printing on ILFORD Multigrade IV paper. After switching to digital some 6 years ago I was not quite happy with most ink-jet prints I have seen and I always missed the look and feel of a good silver gelatin print. In addition, the fact that most ink-jet prints I made faded in a matter of months I did not have any motivation to print anything serious anyway. Finally, printing on home/office CMYK printers was not good for any fine art B&W photography. Advanced printers were too expensive. Check-mate.

I can't remember exactly how, but somewhere early last year I regained interest in printing probably after seeing some prints from new Epson and HP printers at some camera store. New thing to me was that in addition to just talking about print speed and resolution (irrelevant to me!), data sheets included stuff like color gamut, print permanence, paper quality, ink type and interchangeable ink sets available. To my surprise, both Epson and HP offered grayscale inks (Epson 2 shades at a time before Ultrachrome K3, HP 3 shades in Vivera set). That was it!

I started looking for two things: first, a gray scale ink set to avoid problems with quad-tone (CMYK) B&W printing (mostly metamerism and differential fading bothered me) and second, an ink type providing good print permanence. The solution: HP 100 Vivera photo gray: black, dark and light gray, with Wilhelm Research display permanence rating of over 100 years! Next step was to find a printer that takes HP 100 cartridge. My choice was cheap Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 7850 (an excellent printer!). Finally, selecting paper and that part was the most pleasant surprise: ILFORD now makes ink-jet paper as well!!! Finally, I felt at home with ink-jet printing.

So, my current setup is: HP 7850 printer, HP 100 vivera for B&W prints, ILFORD Classic Pearl for gallery prints, ILFORD Smooth Multi-Use for proofs, and ILFORD Smooth Heavyweight Matte for portfolios.

Recently (and for the first time) I got interested in color printing. The problem was with ICC profiles for ILFORD paper used in combination with HP printers. ILFORD download page does not offer Photosmart 7850 profiles, but guess what? There are ICC profiles for Photosmart 8450 printer that uses exactly the same ink cartridges as my 7850. Since on HP ink nozzles are integrated with a cartridge there is no way 8450 could disperse ink differently than my 7850. Tested -- perfect results!!! (I use HP 95 and 99 ink for photo 6 color CcMmYK printing.)

About the percentage? I don't print a lot because not everything deserves to be printed, but mostly because printing to me is an art as well: from image editing, preparation and calibration, to proofing, printing, drying (24h at least!), mounting on acid-free mountboard of foamboard, framing or in other ways finishing my prints, to displaying -- that is long but highly rewarding process, and printing 100 sheets a week is certainly not something I would enjoy doing anyway.

Still with me? Thanks for reading! :-)

shadowrulz3164 · 01-10-2007, 08:38 PM

I print my own pictures. i like having the a bility to crop them where i want. photolabs dont seem t ocrop them to my liking.

betsypdx · 01-10-2007, 08:46 PM

I use Shutterfly to print my shots (my printer's not very good, plus ink costs a lot). I've probably had them do over 1000 over the past year (mostly 4x6, many 8x10 - some of which I've framed, and some 11x14" and 16"x20"). I'm woefully behind in getting them uploaded or sent in via disk at this point, with only around 1/2 of my photo a day shots printed at this point, and none from my last vacation.

-=JoN=- · 01-10-2007, 09:53 PM

get a few here and there printed at adorama...

only about 5% of what i shoot gets printed

12-18-2006, 07:54 AM	#1
PeterAM Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Litchfield, CT Posts: 539	Do you printyour pictures? Other than the occasional e-mailing of a picture (family or business related) I print my pictures. After two years of tinkering, I generally print at 6X9, 8X12 and 10X15 depending on the picture. Printing is done on an Epson 2200;if I need to go larger than 13X19, I can use a friend's 7800. I would guess that I work with about 20/25% of my images and end up keeping final prints of 5/10% of what I shoot. I have also been scanning negs and slides and printing probably the same percentage of those. If it means anything, I had a darkroom, that was dismantled after getting up the digital learning curve. I'm curious as to what your printing habits (if any) are and type of printer you are using. I once saw a statistic that less than 1% of all digital images get printed. That makes sense given all of the P&S users around;I'm wondering what more advanced photographers are doing. I posted something similar to this on DPR a while back and got some interesting feedback. Still curious.

12-18-2006, 09:34 AM	#5
vievetrick Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Easthampton - Massachusetts - USA Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,183	Kind of long repeat answer. Have this happen just a few months back. I had taken over 7K pictures over the past year or so and printed out maybe a couple of dozen at home. The digital world and the internet lets me share all the pictures with friends and family online. So my better half says we have no pictures of the kids in their photo albums. So I decide to make a disk going back to January 06 with shots of trips and kids around the house, you know things we should have in an album. I don't really keep track but know I have at least a couple of hundred. I take the DVD head to the local shop I really like to use and after this will always use. They have one of those PC that you load you card or disk into. I tell the guy hmmmm not sure how many he says well if over 400 we can do it on our other PC. Well long story short I had 1355 images on the disk... I start doing some math in my head and this is going to cost me well over $500. Well they have a discount of 25% over 100 prints. All said and down I cut the number to around 1100 asked if they could give me a better discount, they say they would check with the manager. I call back later in the day and they say that all the pictures in theone order crashed their computer so to save time they will only charge me for the 1100 as agreed before I left, but give me a copy of all 1355 and give me a %30 discount. I still saved about $150.00 the stores numbers for the month was improved buy a ton the wife will be filling photo albums for the next month. So as you read or may have read before as I posted this in DP a while back, most of my pictures do not get printed right away. Well that was then, I try and make a habit of doing it more like every few weeks or even bi-monthly. But in the long run aI saved a good deal by doing it yearly. Could I have done it online? Sure it would have took a month to upload. But I think working with the local guy paid off this time. I will say I do print out some of the more artsy stuff or great ones of the kids at home on my HP I think 2200 all in one jobs. Not the best print but for 5X7 or even 8X10 it gets the job done.

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12-18-2006, 09:05 AM	#2
Buschmaster Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Minnesota Posts: 806	I print smaller ones myself, otherwise, I send them into mpix.com, they do a great job.

12-18-2006, 09:18 AM	#3
bdavis Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: 'Burque, NM Posts: 309	I'll be printing (the good ones ). 4x6's at home, and the larger prints at Costco if I can't get my dad to do them at home for me. Printers and I don't generally get along.

12-18-2006, 09:27 AM	#4
Ed in GA Guest	I print 4 x 6s and 8 x 10s. So far, I have needed/wanted anything larger than that. I use an HP Inkjet 5650 Photoprinter. Will probably up grade my printer next year.

12-18-2006, 10:03 AM	#6
HogRider Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Arizona, USA Photos: Gallery Posts: 608	Unless it's a photo I really like and want to frame and display on a wall, I basically do not print any pictures at all. I have boxes and boxes with 4x6 and bigger color prints from over the years, 30 really nice albums from various trips, thousands of slides and the same amount of B&W enlargements. They are all stashed away somewhere. Nobody wants to see them anymore (including me). Today, if I want to share a photo with someone I just email or link to a web host.

12-18-2006, 11:25 AM	#7
joele Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Melbourne, Australia Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,308	I print either 5"x7" or A4 at home... Printer is just a canon ip4200 but I find with the high end Canon paper they come our really well.. Over time I have come to think the paper I use matters much more than the ink (original or clone)...

12-18-2006, 12:06 PM	#8
Ivan Glisin Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Belgrade Posts: 656	I may have an interesting story for you: Some 15 years ago I started doing my full B&W processing. For some reason, I was using mainly ILFORD products, shooting mostly with HP 5, PAN 100 and XP2 B&W films (and Pentax ME, MX and K1000 cameras) and printing on ILFORD Multigrade IV paper. After switching to digital some 6 years ago I was not quite happy with most ink-jet prints I have seen and I always missed the look and feel of a good silver gelatin print. In addition, the fact that most ink-jet prints I made faded in a matter of months I did not have any motivation to print anything serious anyway. Finally, printing on home/office CMYK printers was not good for any fine art B&W photography. Advanced printers were too expensive. Check-mate. I can't remember exactly how, but somewhere early last year I regained interest in printing probably after seeing some prints from new Epson and HP printers at some camera store. New thing to me was that in addition to just talking about print speed and resolution (irrelevant to me!), data sheets included stuff like color gamut, print permanence, paper quality, ink type and interchangeable ink sets available. To my surprise, both Epson and HP offered grayscale inks (Epson 2 shades at a time before Ultrachrome K3, HP 3 shades in Vivera set). That was it! I started looking for two things: first, a gray scale ink set to avoid problems with quad-tone (CMYK) B&W printing (mostly metamerism and differential fading bothered me) and second, an ink type providing good print permanence. The solution: HP 100 Vivera photo gray: black, dark and light gray, with Wilhelm Research display permanence rating of over 100 years! Next step was to find a printer that takes HP 100 cartridge. My choice was cheap Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 7850 (an excellent printer!). Finally, selecting paper and that part was the most pleasant surprise: ILFORD now makes ink-jet paper as well!!! Finally, I felt at home with ink-jet printing. So, my current setup is: HP 7850 printer, HP 100 vivera for B&W prints, ILFORD Classic Pearl for gallery prints, ILFORD Smooth Multi-Use for proofs, and ILFORD Smooth Heavyweight Matte for portfolios. Recently (and for the first time) I got interested in color printing. The problem was with ICC profiles for ILFORD paper used in combination with HP printers. ILFORD download page does not offer Photosmart 7850 profiles, but guess what? There are ICC profiles for Photosmart 8450 printer that uses exactly the same ink cartridges as my 7850. Since on HP ink nozzles are integrated with a cartridge there is no way 8450 could disperse ink differently than my 7850. Tested -- perfect results!!! (I use HP 95 and 99 ink for photo 6 color CcMmYK printing.) About the percentage? I don't print a lot because not everything deserves to be printed, but mostly because printing to me is an art as well: from image editing, preparation and calibration, to proofing, printing, drying (24h at least!), mounting on acid-free mountboard of foamboard, framing or in other ways finishing my prints, to displaying -- that is long but highly rewarding process, and printing 100 sheets a week is certainly not something I would enjoy doing anyway. Still with me? Thanks for reading! :-)

01-10-2007, 08:38 PM	#9
shadowrulz3164 Inactive Account Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 157	I print my own pictures. i like having the a bility to crop them where i want. photolabs dont seem t ocrop them to my liking.

01-10-2007, 08:46 PM	#10
betsypdx Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Portland, Oregon Photos: Gallery Posts: 475	I use Shutterfly to print my shots (my printer's not very good, plus ink costs a lot). I've probably had them do over 1000 over the past year (mostly 4x6, many 8x10 - some of which I've framed, and some 11x14" and 16"x20"). I'm woefully behind in getting them uploaded or sent in via disk at this point, with only around 1/2 of my photo a day shots printed at this point, and none from my last vacation.

01-10-2007, 09:53 PM	#11
-=JoN=- Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: NYC Posts: 999	get a few here and there printed at adorama... only about 5% of what i shoot gets printed