Printing at Home
Posted on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 2:30.
I don’t get the obsession with photo-quality
ink-jet printers that have so many people going ga-ga over them.
Digital cameras allowed everyone to cut out film’s agonies: having some middle-man slowly develop the expensive photographs that probably didn’t come out as well as you hoped. But then, non-geek people started buying digital cameras. Apparently, non-geek people, particularly older ones, like to convert their digital photographs back to analog objects. Don’t look at me, I don’t get it either.
Printer companies, like Epson and HP, decided to capitalize on these people’s ignorance. They sold the non-geek ink-jet printers, expensive “photo” paper, and even more expensive inks under the claim that now anyone can have a digital darkroom at home. There was only one problem: ink-jet printers suck. It’s true. The inks fade, smear, scratch easily, and sweat onto the glass of picture frames.
And then, media like The New York Times and Consumer Reports and Slashdot reported that a typical 4×6 inch photo print using these printers costs ~$.50 in reality while professional online printing services (like the Kodak service in iPhoto or Snapfish) cost less than $.20 and don’t suffer the ailments of ink-jet printing technology.
Bottom line: Ink-jet printing is the most resourcefully wasteful way to print. It’s bad for the environment and your wallet. Recycle some pixels and just don’t print.
I figured that out pretty quickly after I bought an inkjet printer. It’s easier to just pay someone else to do it and not deal with the headache of it all!
-sean
Anyone ever use those Kodak digital printing stations, like at Walmart or whatever? Are they any good?
I’ve never seen the appeal of printing out digital photos at home, either. The paper is expensive, the ink is expensive, and they ALWAYS look like a digital picture printed at home, ie., crummy.
Well that may be true, but at least in some instances it’s worthwhile to CMD+P from home.
It’s sure as hell cheaper than printing from an emerson kiosk with the swipe system in place. I think it is a dollar a page for use of color? …
Marketing convenience and possibility is everything
The Kodak printing stations are different than what the articles are talking about. The quality of these suck, they still use an ink printer — just a more expensive one.
But…take a CD or memory card to Target (or Wal-Mart, if you must) and they have a kiosk you can put it into and order prints. They’re printed on the same machine you would get your normal film developed on. You get them in about an hour (15 minutes if they’re not busy). You can also upload them online and pick them up in the store.
There’s also online services that will mail them to you like oPhoto.
A\W: Emerson charges $.50 for a print on the color lasers. Depending on which lab you’re in, the cost may be worth it. DPL’s printers suck, but the 4th floor of Ansin is *great* and you can ask a labbie to use your own laser photo paper. Laser is great because it burns the image into the paper and doesn’t suffer from ink-jet’s drawbacks.