Digital Photo Printing – The New Revolution

Digital photo printing has revolutionized the way photo printing is done. There is no use if you keep storing all the images you shot on your digital camera on the computer hard disk or on the memory card. To enjoy them more you need to print out those photographs. It will be a great idea to see all those fantastic digital pictures as hard copy or printed photographs. Let us now see how we could go about digital photo printing.

The fun part of digital photo printing is you can do it at home! But before that you need to consider the following that will get you started:

First buy a good printer. You don’t need more than ink jet printer – at least six colors to start with.

Secondly, buy photo-editing software. Look for simple software under $100 that has more automatic features like color correction, brightness control; auto focus etc. next step is to get good quality paper. Don’t compromise on this; invest in thick glossy paper which will give you high quality prints. Another important thing that you need to consider is the DPI or dots per inch. For normal 4 by 6 inches prints 300 dpi is adequate. For 5 by 7 or 8 by 10 you can go up to 600 dpi. Depending on your printer and software you may be able to print up to 1200 dpi, which is more than adequate.

Digital photo printing requires few components that make up the total process of printing. There are many good printers designed exclusively for the sake of printing digital camera photos. These printers are sold along with cartridges and photo papers and not meant for printing everyday document. These digital printers can transfer the images from your digital camera onto photo paper with great degree of quality and perfection. Generally the ink and paper are sold together when you buy a good printer and it will cost roughly 30 – 70 cents on an average per print. The best part is the printers themselves have become inexpensive and very affordable.

Another advantage in digital photo printing using these inexpensive printers is you do not require a computer for their functioning. You can print directly from the digital camera. Some cameras also enable the users to connect directly to a PictBridge compatible printer using USB cable. Some printers include memory card slots, which make it really simple to print images direct without even using up the battery in your camera!

Hope you got some good idea about the various digital photo-printing devices. Make sure that before starting to use, play around with the settings take a few test print outs on ordinary paper and then migrate to expensive photo paper. And most important don’t forget to have fun while you enjoy the digital photo printing experience!

Digital Photograph Printing – Get Perfect Prints Every Time

Photo paper or digital photo printing paper is a high quality print paper with different levels of gloss finish. Normal prints from film cameras and digital photo prints are similar to touch but follow entirely different processes.

For their digital photography, the professionals expect a true archival print media in a variety of weights and textures of surface. The photo Industry is providing acid free, one hundred percent cotton, hot press paper that is coated on both sides to get versatility.

Additionally the digital photo paper is also free from lignin and chlorine to retain the image quality over a longer period. The digital photo paper is specially coated to get realistic and vibrant colour prints. The semi-gloss paper which comes as a sample along with the digital or laser printer produces good results but they are very expensive.

A good quality digital photo paper should reproduce true photographic gloss, white colours at its brightest and in highest resolution. They are capable of retaining a sharp and well defined image and text with colours appearing true to the originals and with excellent clarity.

Extreme care should be taken to use the correct type of digital photo paper which is most suitable for the printer being used.

Using the fuser technology, Laser printers use a heated roller to fuse the toner to the paper. When glossy photo paper is used in a laser printer there is a possibility of the fuser melting the glossy film covering the photo paper thereby ruining the paper and also causing damage to the printer. This might not happen every time but extreme care should be taken to use appropriate photo paper when a laser printer is used.

Photo paper contains seven layers. They are arranged in the order of a resin coated layer, base which contains a layer of high compressed paper, again followed by a resin coated layer, brightness controlled layer, whiteness controlled layer, color stabilized layer and image formed layer to get a perfect output.

Heavy weight photo paper normally refers to higher end photo paper having a thickness of 8mil or above.

The usual terms to define photo paper finishes are semi-gloss, gloss and high gloss, each term referring to the surface shine of the photo paper. A less shiny coated finish is available in semi gloss surfaced photo paper which bears a satin finish.

Images which appear without any shine, non reflective and soft can be produced by using matte finished photo paper.

Whiteness of the photo paper gives brightness to it. Brightness of a photo paper is expressed as numbers starting from one to hundred.

Understanding Photo Printing Paper Sizes or What is 4XD?

What is an aspect ratio?
Every photo or movie has an attribute called an Aspect Ratio. The aspect ratio is the relation between the horizontal and vertical sizes of the photo. To calculate the aspect ratio simple divide the width or a photo by its height. For example TV in normal mode has an aspect ratio of 4:3 or in other words if we were to divide the width of the screen by its height the result would be 4/3. TV in widescreen format on the other hand has an aspect ratio of 16:9.
When we take a photo with a camera light that travels through the lenses hits a sensor (a film in traditional cameras or a CCD in digital ones). The sensor in turn translates the light into a two dimensional photo. The sensor itself has physical attributes such as width, height, granularity (in films) and number of pixels (in digital CCD sensors).
The connection between an aspect ratio and photo printing
When photos are printed on paper the aspect ratio of the paper must be the same as the aspect ratio of the sensor that was used to take the photo. If the aspect ratios are different the result will be a blank area left on the paper or a stretched photo that fits the paper but distorts the objects in it.
Why does it happen? The answer is pretty simple. For the sake of explanation lets assume a photo sensor that is 6 inches wide and 4 inches high (real sensors are much smaller). Lets assume that we are trying to print the a photo taken with that sensor on a paper that is 4 inches high. If the paper width would be less than 6 inches we will have to crop part of the photo since there won’t be enough space available on the paper. If the paper width is more than 6 inches we will have to leave a blank area on the paper since we do not have “enough photo” to print on more than 6 inches. If we want our photo to exactly fit the page we can stretch or shrink the photo horizontally to whatever the paper size is – but then the objects in the print will be distorted and look more fat or thin as they were in real life.
Printing on a 4X6 paper
One of the most common paper sizes is 4X6. This size was used for many years for printing photos taken with traditional film cameras. The traditional film had an aspect ratio of 3:2 and thus the photos taken with a traditional film camera would fit perfectly on a 4X6 papers.
For reasons beyond the scope of this article digital cameras use sensors with a different aspect ratio than tradition film cameras. The following table summarizes popular image sizes in pixels and the respective aspect ratio (sensor pixels, width X height and aspect ratio):

2 MP – 1600 X 1200 – aspect ratio 4:3
3 MP – 2048 X 1536 – aspect ratio 4:3
4 MP – 2272 X 1704 – aspect ratio 4:3
5 MP – 2592 X 1944 – aspect ratio 4:3
6 MP – 2816 X 2112 – aspect ratio 4:3
8 MP – 3200 X 2400 – aspect ratio 4:3
As can be seen digital sensors, regardless of the number of pixels they support have a 4:3 aspect ratio.
So what happens when we try to fit a digital photo on a 4X6 paper? The photo just doesn’t fit! it is either too wide or too high. For example if we want to print on the full 4 inches height we will only fill 51/3 inches (4X51/3 is a 4:3 aspect ratio) and 2/3 inches will be left blank.
To solve this problem and use the full paper size many printing services allow the user to crop a part of the photo. The assumption is that instead of leaving a blank area on the print the user would prefer to cut a part of the photo that is not important and use the whole paper for the rest. Some services allow the users to choose a preference for either cropping the photo or leaving a blank area on the print and this preference is automatically applied to all his prints.
What is a 4XD paper?
In light of the popularity of digital cameras and digital prints many printing services are introducing paper sizes that are designed for digital prints. This means that the aspect ratio of the paper they offer is 4:3 and thus photos taken with digital cameras perfectly fit the paper.
The new digital compatible paper sizes have an aspect ratio of 4:3 (the digital sensor aspect ratio) and are as close as possible to their traditional film paper sizes. So – in the digital world a 4X6 paper size will actually become a 4X5 1/3 (a 4:3 aspect ratio paper size that is as close as possible to a 4X6 size).
As a marketing gimmick and instead of writing exact paper sizes many use the “digital” abbreviation of 4XD – which means 4XDigital or in other words “as close as we could make it to 4X6 that is digital camera aspect ratio compatible”.

As digital cameras become more and more popular it is expected that more papers sizes which are digital camera compatible will be introduced. In a few years from now most printing services will support the digital paper size by default and the film compatible one will be the exception.

How Many Pixels Make A Good Print?

One of the more common dilemmas for people is choosing the paper size for printing their photos. Everybody knows that if your digital camera does not produce enough pixels (or actually megapixels) printing its photos on a large paper size will yield poor quality and you will be able to see the actual pixels (also known as pixelation)
So how many megepixels do I really need in order to print on a specific paper size? there is no one right answer for that. The actual quality of the print depends on many factors other than the number of pixels. For example the paper quality itself the printing process that is used the lighting conditions when the photo was taken the photo itself (i.e. portraits are different than scenery) and much more.
However a rough estimation of how good a picture will be based on the number of pixels can be calculated and is actually pretty easy to do. When evaluating how good a print will be there is a measurement that is simple to use and provides a good estimation for the quality - it is called PPI (pixels per inch). PPI is actually the number of pixels along one inch. To get a good print you would need a certain PPI (on both X and Y axis).
Experiments show that the following qualities are usually associated with a specific PPI number:
PPI 100 - fair to bad
PPI 200 - good
PPI 300 - very good
So all we need to do now is to figure out for each paper size how many megapixels translate to those PPI numbers. To calculate this we need to simply multiply the page length by its width in inches. The result is the number of square inches on the page. Now multiply this number by the square of the PPI number and the result is the number of pixels on the page which is the number of pixels we want our source photo to have. Here are the numbers calculated for some common sizes (for 100,200 and 300 PPI respectively):
page 4X6 0.24MP 1MP 2MP

page 5X7 0.35MP 1.5MP 3MP
page 8X10 0.8MP 3MP 7MP
page 11X14 1.5MP 6MP 14MP

page 16X20 3MP 12MP 28MP
page 20X30 6MP 24MP 54MP
Again we would like to emphasize that these are just ballpark numbers. Factors like the ones mentioned above and also like the compression ratio used (low or high compression) and the aspect ratio difference between the paper and the camera can result in a need for more or less pixels. Our best advice is if you are not sure just try one or two photos before printing a large batch.

Printing your photos at home – useful tips and hints for best quality

Digital photography revolutionized the way in which we take, view and share photos and also the way in which we print them. Many digital photos never get printed but there are still many of us who prefer tangible paper prints. Photos can be printed using a professional service (in-store or online) or at home. In this article we will give you tips for getting quality prints at home.
A few years ago getting high quality prints at home was an expensive task that was only suitable for semi-professionals who could afford it and who had the know-how. Today low cost printers can generate amazing quality prints and sophisticated software can do most of the processing work behind the scenes. The result is that even amateur photographers can generate very high quality prints by pressing a single Print button.
There are a few simple tips to follow that can help in getting higher quality prints:
Edit your photos: make sure that you print exactly the photo that you want printed. Using simple photo editing tools (such as Photoshop or even Windows built-in Paint application) you can crop a photo to include just the area you are interested in or crop out parts which you do not want in the print. For example you took a photo of a group of friends but on the left corner of the photo there is a bystander that just happened to be there. You can crop the photo to include only your friends and thus effectively eliminate the unwanted object from the print.
When cropping photos always remember aspect-ratio – depending on the paper and the printer you’re using sometimes you’re limited to a certain photo size. For example if you print on a special 4X6 photo paper any source photo that is not in a 4X6 aspect ratio will have to be either stretched, cropped or parts of the print will be left blank. Make sure that you crop your photo to fit a specific aspect ratio if you’re printing on a specific aspect-ratio paper.
More photo processing can be done in order to enhance your prints. It can include red-eye removal (many software packages will do it for you automatically) contrast enhancement and more. For example if a portion of the photo that is important to you is a bit dark – you can “stretch” the color palette in a way that this section will look more lit and detailed. This will usually be on the expense of “overexposing” other portions of the photo that you care less about.
Always remember photo resolution: Every photo is built out of pixels. The more pixels in a photo the higher the photo resolution is. We will not get into details here about the correlation between mega pixels and print quality but a general rule of thumb is that to get good print quality you need 300 pixels per inch or more. This means for example that the biggest paper size a 2 mega pixels photo can be printed on is 4X6 while an 8 mega pixels photo can be printed on an 8X10.
Pick the right printer and paper: there are many different printing each with its advantages and disadvantages. They range in quality and cost. To get the best print quality you should use photo paper in conjunction with a printer that supports such paper. Photo paper and photo printers are more expensive than document oriented A4 Inkjet printers. Choose the printer by evaluating how many prints you will make and how important quality is to you. If you print occasionally for fun an Inkjet printer with normal or photo paper is probably good enough for you. If you print a lot and quality is very important photo paper with a photo printer is the way to go. As a rule of thumb glossy photo paper provides the best quality for color photo prints while matte photo paper provides the best quality for black and white prints.
Printer ink and maintenance: printers need to be setup and maintained. It is extremely important to follow the instructions and to use compatible ink cartridges. High quality compatible ink can make the difference between low and high quality prints. It is usually recommended to buy ink from the same brand as the printer. Some calibration is usually needed when replacing ink and sometimes every few months of use. Follow the instructions for such procedures carefully as a calibrated printer results in much better quality prints than a printer that is not aligned and is poorly maintained.
In conclusion it is very easy to print your photos at home. Just buying a mid-range printer and hitting the “Print” button in your photo viewing software will probably result in good prints that are satisfactory for most consumers. Following some simple tips can enhance those prints to professional quality. As technology advances and prices go down experimenting at home with various photo processing tools, paper sizes, paper types and inks becomes affordable and is probably the best way to find what combination yields the best print quality for you.

Tips for saving money on your online photo prints

Taking photos with your digital camera and viewing them on your computer screen is fun. Sometimes you’d like to make hardcopies of your photos. One of the easiest ways to print your photos is by using an online photo printing service. In this article we will give you some tips for saving money when using such services.
Most of the services work in the same way: once you uploaded your photos to the site you can choose which photos to print at what size what kind of paper and in how many copies. Printing and shipping prices vary between sites. There are a few ways in which you can save money on your printing orders:

Get free prints: Many printing services offer free prints for new customers. For example when registering with Shutterfly you will receive 15 free prints. Use this and get free prints from many sites. If every site gives you around 20 free prints you can register to ten sites and accumulate 200 free prints. One word of caution: most sites will provide you with free prints but will still charge you for shipping. Always make sure to compare the total cost to the alternative of printing on other sites. Sometimes free prints will be more expensive then non-free prints at another site just because of high shipping charges.

Use coupons: The competition among the printing sites is harsh. Some sites are trying to promote their services and provide discounts by using special coupon codes. Some of the coupons are publicly advertised but many are emailed by the sites only to its current customers for future orders. For example at the time of this writing Snapfish offered 20% off its photo balls prints. There are sites such as printrates.com that aggregate such coupons and let users post and look for coupons. A good advice is to always check for coupons before you order prints investing just a few minutes looking for coupons can save you 20% and more.

Refer friends: Some sites provide discounts or free prints to customers who refer new customers. If you like the service provided by a photo printing site simply let your friends know about it and ask them to mention you as a referrer if they decide to register and order prints from the site. In this way you can enjoy both helping your friends by recommending a good photo printing site and getting some discounts or free prints.

Do testing at home: If you order expensive prints like enlargements you can save some money by printing trial prints at home. For example if you are planning to print a 20X30 poster you can first print a low quality on your home printer. If the page size is more than what is supported by your printer you can print a few sections and tape them together. Then look at the poster to make sure it is worth printing try to make it as real as possible place the poster at the destined location and look at it from the distance you plan to look at it from. Make sure the resolution is good enough and that it looks as expected. If you’re happy with the results go ahead and order the print. Enlargements can cost tens of dollars, by printing a cheap version at home you can save the agony of spending that money just to find out the poster does not really fit or does not look good.

Aggregate orders: Printing a large quantity of photos is usually cheaper on a per photo calculation than printing small orders. Some sites provide discounts for large orders and some sites provide a fixed shipping cost that when spread over a large quantity of prints results in a cheaper shipping cost per photo. For these reason it is always better to aggregate your printing orders and to send one big order rather than a few small ones. For example if you have some photos to print but you also know that you will have more photos to print in a week from now and if you are not in a hurry to get your prints it would be cheaper to wait and send all photos together.
In conclusion there are many ways to save money when printing your photos. Prices change all the time make sure to shop around and to check the various sites. You can use comparison sites such as printrates.com before sending your photo printing order. Spending a few minutes before printing can save you some money.

Photo printing made easier with DPOF

There are many ways to print photos. For example you could download the photos to your computer choose the ones you like burn them on a CD and take them to a printing service. DPOF makes such photo printing easier – here is how.
DPOF is a standard that was introduced by a consortium of camera and printer manufacturers. The goal of DPOF was the make photo printing easier and faster.
DPOF stands for Digital Print Order Format. The goal behind DPOF was to make the process of choosing which photos to print and printing them much easier and faster. If your camera supports DPOF then you can choose the photos you would like to print and the number of copies directly on your digital camera. This data is also known as the print order and is saved in the cameras memory card (the same memory card where photos are saved) in special files. Later on you can take the memory card with the photos and the DPOF data to any printing service that supports DPOF and it would automatically print the photos based on the DPOF print order data. Alternatively you could plug the memory card to a photo printer that supports DPOF and print all the photos that you chose with a single push of a button.
DPOF can do much more than just specify which photos to print and in how many copies. You can also specify additional information such as a photo title text, photo orientation, print paper size and more. Other useful information can be added: your contact information and your camera settings when taking the photo. All that information can make printing easier – for example you can drop off a memory card with any printing service and they can know exactly which photos to print, in how many copies on what paper sizes and in what orientation. They also have your contact information where they can reach you when the prints are ready or if there is any problem.
Not all cameras support DPOF and the ones that do support DPOF vary in their level of support. For example the simplest support would be for choosing which photos to print and in how many copies while more advanced support would be for enabling other data such as title photo title text, paper size, contact information and more.
DPOF was extended to support more than photo printing. Examples of new features enabled by DPOF: you can choose photos to be emailed as file attachment. The usage is very similar to choosing which photos to print but instead of printing the photos when you plug your memory card to your computer special software reads the DPOF data and emails the photos you have selected to the designated email addresses. Another feature is slide show or photo projection: the photos you choose can be replayed as a slide show on a computer or be projected using a photo projector. For example you could plug the memory card to a projector that supports DPOF and with one click play the slide show of your choice.
Some PC software allows you to define any custom action to be executed on the DPOF data. For example the software can be told to “copy all chosen photos to the hard disk and discard the others” or to “print all chosen photos, copy them to the hard disk and then create a backup of them on a CD” – this is a great way to automate some photo processes and can save time.
DPOF is not a must have feature but a good option if you want to save some time and make photo printing easier. Many cameras support DPOF but most users are not aware of it and are not using it. Check if your camera supports DPOF and learn how to use it to your benefit.

Digital photo printing paper sizes – 4XD 5XD and others

When you print digital photos on traditional paper sizes photos are either cropped or areas of the paper are left blank. The reason is that tradition paper sizes were designed for film and have different aspect ratio than digital photos. Digital paper sizes solve this problem and are offered by many – here is how.
Understanding aspect ratio
Before you can understand why digital paper sizes are different than traditional ones you need to understand what aspect ratio is. Aspect ratio is the relation between the horizontal and vertical sizes of the photo. It can also be applied to video, paintings or any two dimensional rectangle. Aspect ratio is calculated by dividing the width of a photo by its height. For example TV in normal mode has an aspect ratio of 4:3 or in other words if we were to divide the width of the screen by its height the result would be 4:3. Widescreen TV on the other hand is stretched like a movie theater screen and has an aspect ratio of 16:9.
The camera’s sensor which replaces the traditional film is a rectangle and has physical attributes such as width, height and resolution (number of pixels). As such the CCD also has an inherent aspect ratio – its width divided by its height.
What does aspect ratio has to do with paper sizes?
The paper photos are printed on has a width and a height and also an aspect ratio. When a photo is printed the aspect ratio of the paper must equal to the aspect ratio of the photo (or actually of the sensor that the photo was taken with). If the aspect ratios are different the results might be: a blank area left on the paper, a cropped photo or a stretched photo that fits the paper but distorts the objects in it.
Here is why: to simplify the explanation lets assume a camera’s sensor that is 6 inches wide and 4 inches high (real sensors are much smaller). Lets also assume that we are trying to print a photo taken with that sensor on a paper that is 4 inches high. If the paper width would be less than 6 inches we will have to crop part of the photo since there won’t be enough space available on the paper. If the paper width is more than 6 inches we will have to leave a blank area on the paper since we do not have “enough photo” to print on more than 6 inches. If we want our photo to fit the page we can stretch or shrink it horizontally to whatever the paper size is – but doing so would distort the objects making them look more fat or thin as they are in real life.
Printing with tradition paper sizes
Common traditional paper sizes are 4X6, 5X7, 8X11 and more. Lets take 4X6 for example which is the most common photo paper size. Traditional film has an aspect ratio of 3:2 and thus 4X6 paper was a perfect for those prints. Digital cameras however use sensor with different aspect ratios than traditional film. The following table summarizes popular sensor sizes in pixels – width, height and aspect ratio:

2MP 1600 X 1200 4:3

3MP 2048 X 1536 4:3

4MP 2272 X 1704 4:3

5MP 2592 X 1944 4:3

6MP 2816 X 2112 4:3

8MP 3200 X 2400 4:3
As you can see regardless of the digital camera resolution the aspect ratio is always 4:3.
So what will happen if we try to print digital photos using traditional paper sizes? The photo will not fit. It will be either too wide or too high. For example if we are printing on a 4X6 paper we will only fill 4X5.33 and 0.66 inches will be left blank. Many printing services allow the user to crop a part of the photo before printing. This lets the user cut a part of the photo and have the rest printed on the full size instead of leaving a part of the paper blank.
As digital cameras and digital photo printing became more popular printing services introduced new paper sizes that were the right fit for digital photos. The aspect ratio of the new paper sizes is 4:3 and thus photos taken with digital cameras perfectly fit such paper.
The new digital paper sizes have the same height as the traditional sizes they replace but a width that fits a digital 4:3 aspect ratio. For example the size of a “digital 4X6 paper” also known as 4XD is not 4X6 but 4X5.33. Digital paper sizes are usually written as height X D – where D symbolizes the fact that this is a digital compatible paper size. So if you see a paper size of 4XD – it means 4X6 that is digital compatible (or in other words 4X5.33) and when you see 5XD it means 5X7 that was corrected to the digital 4:3 aspect ratio (or in other words 5X6.66).

Printing on Matte or Glossy digital photo printing paper

When printing digital photos you have a choice between matte and glossy photo prints. Glossy photo prints have a shiny finish while matte ones have a more subtle neutral one. So which one should you choose? There is no right answer – there are pros and cons to both.
Matte and glossy are two different finishes to the photo paper digital photos are printed on. Using different chemicals and processes photo paper can have a glossy or a matte finish. Glossy finish looks shiny, reflects light very well and looks vibrant and color rich. Matte finish on the other hand does not reflect much light and looks “darker” and duller.
There are pros and cons to choosing either matter or glossy digital photo prints. Here are some of them:
Glossy photo prints: Glossy photo prints are shiny and are more appealing to the eye. They look fancy and convey a high quality feeling. Glossy photo prints have vibrant colors. Colors also look rich and deep on glossy photo prints. On the downside glossy photo prints “shiny” attribute can be a problem when photos are viewed using intense light sources such as daylight sun or strong light bulbs. Light reflected from the photo print can blind the viewer making it hard to see the photo. Glossy paper is also more likely to attract dust and fingerprints and is thus more likely to get dirty over time. Black and white glossy photo prints do not look as good as matte ones.
Matte finish: Matte photo prints do not reflect light and are thus easier to view at almost any light condition. Matte photo prints are also less likely to attract dust and fingerprints and are less likely to get dirty over time. Black and white matte photo prints look better than black and white glossy photo prints. On the downside matte photo prints do not have the fancy high quality look that glossy photo prints have. Colors in matte photo prints are less vibrant and less rich than on glossy photo prints.
So which one to choose – matte or glossy? It really depends on your needs and what you are going to do with the photo prints. As a general rule use glossy photo prints for color prints and matte photo prints for black and white ones. If the photo prints are going to be touched by many people and used a lot matte is a better choice unless you do not mind spending time cleaning your glossy photo prints every now and then. Also if you plan to print large photos (for example to hang on the wall or frame and put on your desk) matte is a better choice since a large glossy print would act as a large glossy and shiny light reflector.
As with many other choices a matter or glossy choice is a matter of personal preference. To make an educated decision you should have experienced both. If you do not have that experience you can choose a few photos some color and some black and white and print them both on matte and on glossy paper and in different sizes. Look at the prints and see what you like and what you do not like about them. In the future you would be able make better choices by applying that experience.

Online Prints: Walbums are Latest Personalized Photo Gifts

Imagine that you have returned home after your dream holiday!

The very next thing you do is unpack and upload your digital photos for printing to your printer’s website (online prints are really fast, cheap and takes all the necessary actions for quality control, as long as you take them to a reputable printer).

Then you wait for the prints to reach you via the post and once you have received them, all those memories come back.

Next, you put all of them in one or two beautiful albums and within a few days you forget all about them. The process of forgetting is as fast and perfect as getting online prints of your digital photos.

If you are very enthusiastic, you may make a personalised calendar, theme or wow mug, mouse pad or photo coasters to use as a personalised photo gift.

These things are too common these days and can be found almost at any place.

Why don’t you do something different, like making a “Walbum” – an album that hangs from a wall!

It is a customized album as well as a wall display that fits in any area of your living space. You can also fold it into a normal album whenever you want.

Just imagine, having a collage of all the beautiful moments and colourful events, always alive in front of your eyes to make you happy. This also adds to the smartness of your home décor and you can easily carry them wherever you go.

You can have them either in portrait or landscape mode, whichever you prefer. Normally a walbum carries twenty photographs on each side and comes in 6” x 4” size. Walbums are made of sturdy plastics with covers to identify dates and times.

You can easily create a walbum while ordering online prints of your digital photos. This also makes a unique gift for friends and family and undoubtedly it is by far a better way to show that you really care for the moments that you shared with them.

The market is already showing high-rise in walbum sales in this festive season as Christmas is just knocking at the doors and New Year celebrations are just to follow. All credit goes to the uniqueness of the walbum and your tendency to do something different.

Some photo printers are offering you free online prints alongside cheap albums. However when selecting a printer for online prints, try to find out about their market reputation. A reputed online printer always has their reputation at stake and offers the quality products to keep that reputation.

This is good practice for any online purchase, be it online prints or anything else!

Have a great festive season.

Digital Printing Services Hits International Market

There was a time when you would never have believed you could engage an overseas printer to take care of your digital printing needs, and have your posters or flyers delivered to you on time!
In our modern world people are becoming more and more quality conscious. At the same time they want value for money and the security of knowing their product will be delivered on time.
If we look at the printing market, we can see that all notions of a Printing Service being a location specific business are gone!
But what is the reason behind this subtle change in market behaviour? In the past people would contact their local printer to ensure the printing project was completed by the due date.
Part of this process was to scrutinize every step and aspect of the project. Individuals became printing technology experts within a few visits to the printing press.
The providers of online printing services are supplying every possible support to make your printing experience an easy one. From the user-friendly step-by-step online ordering process, to proofing and final delivery of the printed material on time, all done in a highly systematic way.
TheOnlinePrinter is an Australian based provider of online digital printing services worldwide.
In a recent press release they announced they have a large established customer base in New Zealand, UK, USA and many other parts of the world, with their customer base increasing year on year.
In a telephonic conversation with Leslie Miller, we found that “Providers of digital printing services like TheOnlinePrinter are using special software to monitor every specific aspect of the printing process at any given moment.”
“We can supply” he said, “any quantity of digital prints at a much lesser price in comparison to your local printer and you can rest assured you will receive the best quality digital print, be it a business card, appointment card, postcard, bookmark, brochure, pamphlet, leaflet, flyer, docket book, bumper sticker, letterhead or poster.”
We asked him – “What made it possible for your customers to change their behaviour?” and he answered with a winning smile that “it did not happen suddenly.
We had to work hard to motivate people and to make them believe they could easily have quality digital printing services online. Over time we gained their confidence and now we work to maintain our reputation in the market.”
But the basic reason, as he pointed out, is “here you can have international quality for negligible extra cost that can rarely be matched by your local printer”. He also added that, “under no circumstance do we compromise the quality of the product. To add to it we provide personalized services to our customers and are always prompt in answering any of their queries irrespective of the volume of their order”.
To wrap up the conversation, we have found that once clients experience the ease of use associated with the online ordering process, clients have faith that no matter where they are geographically located quality digital printing services are available at an international level.
For quality digital printing services, contact TheOnlinePrinter, your one-stop-shop for all your digital printing needs, regardless of where you are geographically located!
TheOnlinePrinter specializes in the delivery of business cards, appointment cards, postcards, bookmarks, rack cards, brochures, pamphlets, leaflets, flyers, posters, letterhead, envelopes, “with compliments slips”, booklets, docket books or docket books to anywhere in the world.

When Digital Print Enlargements are Considered

Digital photos can be viewed on computer screens or printed on paper. Most of the time you are most likely to print on standard paper sizes like 4X6 or 5X7. Every now and then however you might want to make enlargements of some photos that you specially care about. Print enlargements quality depends on your digital camera mega pixels figure, here is how.

Every digital photo that you take with your camera has a certain resolution normally expressed as the number of pixels in the photo or sometimes as two numbers depicting the number of pixels over the X axis and the number of the Y axis (multiplying these two numbers provides the total number of pixels in the digital photo).

When you print digital photos you are really printing those digital pixels on paper. If the paper size is very big relative to the digital photo resolution the result will be a poor quality print. One of the most noticeable results of such poor quality is your ability to actually see the individual pixels on the print also known as pixelization.

So how can you determine what is the maximum print enlargement that you can make from a certain digital photo? There is no one precise answer. In addition to the actual number of pixels in the photo there are other things that can influence the answer like how many details are in the photo, what were the lighting conditions and more. Even when considering the number of pixels the answer is not precise since different people would have different views about the quality of a photo print.

A rough estimation of what comprises a good print quality is based on the pixels density or in other words the number of pixels per inch on the printed photo. This is also known as PPI (pixels per inch) and it represents the number of pixels over an axis line.

Experiments show that the following qualities are usually associated with a specific PPI number:

PPI 100 - fair to bad

PPI 200 - good

PPI 300 and up - very good

The next logical step would be to figure out how many mega pixels are needed for good quality printing on a specific paper size. Fortunately calculating this number is very easy. To do that all you need to do is to simply multiply the page length by its width in inches. The result is the number of square inches on the page. Next multiply this number by the square of the PPI number and the result is the number of pixels on the page which is the number of pixels we want our source photo to have. Here are the numbers calculated for some common sizes (for 100,200 and 300 PPI respectively):

page 4X6 0.24MP 1MP 2MP

page 5X7 0.35MP 1.5MP 3MP

page 8X10 0.8MP 3MP 7MP

page 11X14 1.5MP 6MP 14MP

page 16X20 3MP 12MP 28MP

page 20X30 6MP 24MP 54MP

This table is just an estimation of what is considered suitable number of mega pixels for different paper sizes. There are many other factors to consider when making enlargements. Experimenting with different paper sizes is the best way to go but it can be expensive. In addition sometimes what is considered poor quality pixelization can actually be a nice artistic effect which strengthen the unfortunate fact that in addition to the above calculation some common sense and experience are needed in order to match a specific digital photo to a specific paper size enlargement.

Do Not Throw Away Your Old Photo Paper Prints

Many people still have large number of old fashion photo paper prints in their homes. Even if you threw away your old film camera and you are exclusively using digital there is a good chance that you still have many photos that are important to you in paper prints format. It is a good idea to upgrade those prints to the new digital format – here is how,

It is most likely that your photo prints are organized in this way or another in photo albums. The old fashion photo album book had two main purposes. First it was intended to allow for easier organization and browsing of photos as photo albums can be categorized by event, year or any in any other way that make sense to you. The second purpose was to protect the paper prints. Paper ages it fades and turn yellow. Albums are safer provide a safer environment allowing paper prints to last longer.

There are three main types of old fashion prints: paper, slides and negatives. Paper prints are the most common format. The usually come in standard sizes like 4X6 and 5X7. Negatives which are developed film are saved to allow future new prints of your photos. Slides are similar to negatives but they allow projection of the photo on a big screen using a special slide projector.

Upgrading your old photo paper stack involves some technique of converting paper photos to digital pixel based photos. This process is also known as scanning. While there are many different techniques and equipment for scanning in essence all scanning process are similar. Some device is used to electronically read or view the paper photo and convert it into a series of pixels each with its unique color and intensity. All those pixels put together comprise a digital photo that can be store as a computer file. This computer file, usually in the common JPEG format can then be used as any other digital camera photo file.

Different scanning methods vary in cost and quality. While you can spend a large sum of money to professionally scan your photos for most home users a cheap and simple scanning method will suffice. Photo paper prints can be effectively scanned by a simple scanner device that you can buy for less than $100. This process is time consuming though since you will need to manually feed every photo to the scanner. For a large number of photos you could choose to either by a more sophisticated scanner with an automatic photo feeder or to mail your photo prints to a professional scanning service.

One thing to consider when scanning photo prints is the scanning resolution: The same way that your digital camera has a mega pixels number that determines the number of pixels in a digital photo – scanners have a similar attribute that determines how many mega pixels are going to be in the converted digital photo file. This is also known as the scanner resolution and it is measured by the number of dots per inch that the scanner can produce. Most scanners can scan at 1200 DPI or more. Most scanners can also be set to scan in less of their maximum resolution. The higher the resolution the slower the scan and the bigger the digital photo file size. So what is the right resolution? The rule of thumb is that for most paper prints scanning at 300 to 600 DPI is enough as usually the print quality itself is not higher than that.

After you have converted your paper prints to digital photo files you can do anything that you can do with any other digital camera generated photo files. In addition to simply viewing them on your computer screen, you can share them with family and friends, use photo processing software to enhance them and more. And the most important thing, once converted to digital photo files they will never fade, turn yellow or lose their quality.

Perfect Photo Prints

There are many ways to share your landscape photos with digital photography, but photo prints remain the most popular. Prints can be framed and hung up on the wall to show your photos off to friends and family. Creating the perfect print can become even more challenging if your monitor isn’t calibrated properly. You will have suddenly wasted your time, paper and ink on a print which doesn’t match what you see on your monitor. Read these quick tips for getting the best prints possible.

Dpi and Ppi - When you make a print of one of your photos on an inkjet printer, a lot is happening inside the printer. Inkjet printers work by spraying ink dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black from nozzles while they pass over the paper. Most inkjet printers have a print resolution of 1440dpi and some printers go as high as 5760dpi. In general, the higher the resolution of your printer the greater detail you can print and the better your photo will look. The single biggest point of confusion comes from Dots per inch and Pixels per inch. Dpi is very different from ppi, which is the resolution of an image on your computer screen. Printers create dozens of tiny dots to fill the space of one pixel, and the more pixels you pack in an inch the finer the detail will look. The ideal resolution for printing an image is 300 to 400dpi/ppi.

Ink and Paper - You have a lot of options when choosing different quality inks and paper types, all of which can be combined to form a satisfying result. Different photo papers will give surprisingly different results from the same photo printed on the same printer. Photo paper comes in many different styles, weights, and photo finishes, including matte, glossy and varying degrees of gloss, which is usually called semi-gloss. Colour photos usually look best when printed onto glossy or semi-gloss photo paper, while black and white photos usually look better on matte. It is also worth while creating and saving different profiles for your printer for each type of photo paper you use. This is because on some papers a printer may use too much of one colour, instead of correcting the colour yourself you can select a profile you created before. The cost of ink can sometimes be greater than that of paper. Purchasing brand name inks by your printer manufacturer is usually the safest option and will produce the best results. Remember that printer damage caused by third party printer cartridges sometimes isn’t covered by manufacturers. Some companies such as Lyson produce high end inks which in some cases are better than the manufacturers own. Archival qualities and resistance to colour fading is also important when choosing inks. For example pigment based inks help guarantee that your prints will remain crisp and vibrant for many years. If you are going to print a large quantity of photos it is also worth checking the prices of online printing stores to see if they are a better option for you.

Monitor and Printer Calibration - Calibrating your monitor and printer is essential when viewing and printing your photos. Your monitor could be displaying inaccurate colours and density. Adobe Photoshop comes with something called Adobe Gamma which will most likely already be installed on your computer. You can use Adobe Gamma to create an ICC profile which uses calibration settings to change the way your monitor reproduces colours. Start Adobe Gamma, located in Control Panel and then select step by step and follow the instructions. Daylight can affect the accuracy of colours displayed on your monitor, this is why its best to carry out your monitor calibration in a darkened room. The first and most important step in printer calibration is to use the correct driver for your printer. Every printer driver comes with its own calibration controls and tools, designed for fine tuning the overall colour of your prints. You can visual calibrate your printer using test images with a wide range of tonal values, including colours bars, photographs, and blocks of colours. You can then adjust the colours using your printer’s controls to match on screen with what you have in print. Alternatively ICC profiles provide a way to insure consistent colour reproduction. Every printer comes with default profiles for use with different combinations of inks and paper which may be suitable for your needs.

Best Digital Prints: Things to Remember

So, you have captured that wonderful moment, a beautiful image in your digital camera!

Now, you are preparing to take a print to make a gift to your dear and near one or for your personal collection!

Now here is the crux!

In the majority of such cases, as our experience tells us, people are not sure what the maximum size can be for a digital print, without that image distorting! Many people think that they can make the image as big as they want, then print without knowing about the “image stitching technique”! And when there is distortion, they blame the printer for low visual quality.

One must remember that what looks the worst from a close distance may look the best if the distance between the image and the viewer is increased (10 to 15 feet or more) in case of larger digital prints.

While taking digital prints, the photographer should consider critically how the image will be displayed for a better, if not the best viewing experience.

There are some digital printers too, who do not know the limit or only who only concentrate on money rather than the quality of the output offered. Sometimes they forget that what is merely a digital photo to them, may be a precious moment to the photographer, which may never be repeated!

The maximum size that a printout of a digital photo can be, depends on various aspects. But the common aspect can be the following if you are thinking of having your photo printed for yourself:

If you are using a commercial 1.2 mega pixel camera, the best digital prints may come as around an 8x10’ photo, whereas an 11x14’ is almost the limit.

If you are using a commercial 3 mega pixel camera, the best digital prints may come as around an 11x14’ photo, whereas a 16x20’ is almost the limit.

If you are using a commercial 4 mega pixel camera, the best digital prints may come as around a 20x24’ photo, whereas a 30x40’ is almost the limit.

Another way of estimating the best possible result before taking digital prints, is calculating PPI (final print resolution). If you divide the width (pixel) by your desired print size (inches) you get PPI. As a general rule, if your final print PPI is around 200 to 400, you get an overall good digital photo.

Having a photo printer at home may save you for in some instances. However buying a printer is not a lasting solution for having quality digital photos. The cost is often too high in comparison to the reasonable prices offered by renowned printers for digital prints.

These days you don’t need to go out searching for printers from the high street to produce a good quality digital print! You can find better quality and cheaper digital prints sitting back at home over internet.

Hopefully, getting your quality digital prints will not be so hard next time.

Happy imaging.

Digital Photo Print Services Online - Is It Easier Than Printing Photos At Home?

Printing photos at home is expensive

Let’s cut right to the chase. What does it cost to print your own photos? Everybody likes the convenience of printing their own photos at home, but nobody is satisfied with the quality. I will show you that the cost is actually much higher and the quality is much lower when you print your own photos at home as opposed to having them printed by a professional developer. I will also let you know what a good alternative is. First, let’s look at the costs of doing your photos at home.

Cost of printing at home

Supplies and cost w/tax

Med. Quality Photo paper $19.66/100 sheets.

Color and B&W Ink $61.61.

Photo Printer $382.49.

Photo Editing Software $53.11.

Total cost $516.87.

Total cost per Photo $1.64.

WOW! That is expensive

Before you say I am crazy I will prove that these are conservative costs. The medium quality photo paper was priced on clearance at Office Max. The monotone and color cartridges were priced as a combo deal. The photo printer was the PSC 950 which is in most regards a cheap printer. Last but not least the editing software was not Adobe Photoshop which can cost over $500. It was a cheap Microsoft version that will do simple editing on images and video.

This is also assuming that you only print 10 photos per week, and that you only use your printer and software for two years. If we used a more realistic number for instance 10 photos per month then the cost per photo would go up to $3.04. For the ink I used 60 full color sheets per set of cartridges. I have never been able to print over 20. With other printing on that same printer I only got about 8 full pages out of the cartridges. The pictures were so bad that they ended up in the garbage. So the prices of photos can range from $1.64 per photo to over $3. Pretty costly for prints that you cannot display or hang on your walls.

Printing them online and having them mailed or picked up costs much less?

How about uploading your pictures to a professional and having them ready to pick up in one hour? Or uploading them to a professional and having quality prints mailed to you for prices as low as 12 cents per print?

Cheap Digital Photo Printing - Will You Get What You Pay For?

Cheap digital photo processors are a dime a dozen

Digital photo processors that do the printing cheap abound. They are everywhere you look. But to find an affordable location that can give you the quality that you expect is another story. Some places offer prints for as low as 12 cents for a 4X6 print. Others can charge as much as 58 cents per print.

What do you get for 12 cents per print?

Many customers of the chains that offer prints this cheap have a complaint similar to this one; "Some companies try to "alter" the images to get the "highest" quality photos. This person had done a test and submitted the same photos to various processing services. What they received were totally different results. Their complaint was that the photo shops try to make them look good instead of trusting their customers abilities. As simple as it sounds, leaving the picture alone can be a difficult quality to find in a photo printer online. To try to find out on your own is quite a lot to ask of paying customers. Other than altering your photos after you upload them common complaints are that the quality is not what they expected. As a photography lover let me tell you there are a lot of companies that will give you very high quality prints that will amaze you no matter what your expectations are.

What can you get if you find the right photo printing company?

There are printers that do not charge very much more and the quality is outstanding. With these more capable companies they offer very good sign-up bonuses such as 60 free 4X6 prints to start, and free membership. They can also offer various albums to organize your pictures online. All the while offering file uploads as high as 10MB. Other great services are bulk order prices. With bulk order pricing the more you order the cheaper they get. That way having a family reunion will not break the bank. As you look for a great company to print all your favorite photos remember that there are photo printers that can disappoint and there are printers that can dazzle.

Digital Photo Processing Online - How Easy Is It?

For Pick-up or Mail-order

As the online digital photo revolution evolves we see changes happening so rapidly that it is hard to keep up. We now have the option of uploading our pictures to a professional photo developer who can print crystal clear digital photos. Locations are popping up everywhere that will do this photo printing and are in your area. They are sometimes difficult to find and are sometimes where you would least expect them.

The days of printing from home are over

We have all been disappointed with our personal photo printers and have long since given up printing them ourselves. We have waited for a long time just looking at our photos on computer screens, palm pilots and cell phones. Now with faster internet connections sweeping the country it is easy and fast to upload our photos to a professional developer for processing and printing that is of very high quality.

Easy uploading

By putting your photos on your computer the usual way, with a USB cable or plugging your memory card directly to your computer, you can have your photos ready for uploading. Uploading is simple. from the website where you are doing the uploading you simply browse to the files where all of your photos are saved and select them one by one or as a group depending on the site that will print your photos.

Pick-up at the location is available everywhere

Picking your photos up at the location is available everywhere. The beauty of this is that 1 hour developing has now paved the way for people to want their photos quickly. With many photo processors digital photos can be available for pick-up in less than 1 hour.

If you don't want to leave the house mail delivery is easy and reliable

For those of you who are pressed for time running to the location to get photos is not an option no matter how fast they are printed and made ready for you. Prints can be mailed to you in a timely manner and is often FREE. This is a great option and the cost is even better. It is like printing your pictures to your mailbox.

Digital Photography- Printing Made Easy

The excitement of digital photography has increased manifold with the introduction of digital photography printing equipment. Anybody can obtain this equipment and start making prints right from their home. The days of worrying about the film running out and going top processing labs for taking prints are over!

Digital Photography Printing- Take Care of The Following Aspects

However, before you start taking prints from your newly acquired digital photography printing equipment, please keep the following tips in mind for better results. For good quality, digital photography printing you must ensure that the pictures are downloaded at their maximum resolution, which should be about 200-300 dpi for an 8x10 print. A 200 dpi is sufficient for large prints (13x19) that might be viewed from a distance but for a 5x7 print, 300 dpi would be necessary. There should be sufficient resolution for good quality digital photography printing. You would need at least 400kb (kilobytes) for a good 8x10 print.

If you work with JPEG file format, some image information might be lost in digital photography. It is advisable to make all the changes at one go and then save them at one time. The quality of digital photography printing depends to a large extent on the paper being used. You must use only recommended paper for the printer. As the good quality coated paper is quite expensive, it is advisable to complete all cropping and changes on the imaging software before giving the print command. For inkjet printing, the most durable paper is known as archival paper and it is acid-free.

For digital photography printing, regular color inkjet and laser printers might not be the best choice. If you want to print directly from your camera, you should use a printer, which is PictBridge-enabled. You can also use portable printers, such as the HP Photosmart 320 series to get 4x6 digital photography pictures anywhere. Dye-sublimation printers are good for smaller 4x6 prints but the paper and ink for these printers are frightfully expensive.

When you are printing larger than 8x10, you might not be happy with the results from your own digital photography printing. In such cases, you should use either one of the brick-and-mortar, or online photo labs.

Professional photo labs can carry out quality digital photography printing from the information on your memory card and as such, you can take your CD, digital camera or the memory card to them for getting quality prints.