Why Do-It-Yourself Photo Printing Doesn't Add Up

Ant writes "CNET News.com and The New Yorks Times (no registration required) report that even though the prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months thanks to a savage price war, buyers are going to pay at least 28 cents a print. This is if you believe the manufacturers' math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports. In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home? Consumers seem to be saying just that. For the 12 months ended in July, home printing accounted for just 48 percent of the 7.7 billion digital prints made, down sharply from 64 percent in the previous 12 months, according to the Photo Marketing Association International, a trade group for retailers and camera makers. The number of photos spewing out of home printers is up quite handsomely, however, because of the overall growth of digital photo printing--up about 68 percent from the year-earlier period - but retail labs clearly have the advantage..."

Comments

Value for Paris, None For Us

[fragmentate]

I own an HP camera, and HP PhotoSmart 7760 printer. Here's some real world data for you:

Photo Cartridge: $35
Black Cartridge: $20
Number of pictures printed: 68

That's just under a dollar per print. All prints were 4x6. At that rate, it's just cheaper to run up to the pharmacy and get them printed in duplicate. Yes, twice as many pictures and it's still less expensive.

This whole printing from home thing is probably a great thing for people that have to drive 40 miles to the nearest pharmacy, but for the rest of us... yay? The only good thing about printing at home, you ask?

Well, Paris and Paris can take all the nudies they want of each other and never have them leak to the press! That's easily worth $.80 a print!

There's a reason to print at home and on-line.

[yagu]

This is a near and dear issue for me. I've eagerly slurped up all the new generations of printer technology each time more amazed than ever at the quality of prints, finally achieving indistinguishable quality from lab prints.

But, a disturbing parallel trend came with each new generation of printer. The printers became:

• better quality
• faster
• cheaper

but at the same time:

• less reliable (like, in a major major way)
• more expensive per print
• and inconvenient as hell

I still jump in every generation or so of new photo printer technology but not with rose-colored glasses anymore. I still need to on occasion get a quick print for home or some guest, but that's mostly it. For my serious stuff, I send it out to be done:

• it's just so much easier
• if they make a mistake, they eat the costs
• the majority of the prints I want to make are for other people, and the majority of the time those people are geographically far away. I can get a high quality print to them much more easily and in half the time than if I do it myself.
• I still am having trouble getting a ceramic cup to print properly on any of my photo printers.

I think the costs for high quality prints from services will remain competitive as there are plenty of competent "players" out there. Just read the reviews, sample a few prints yourself before you commit big time to any of them. Also, maintain your storage of prints yourself, lots of services offer storage, but I'd highly recommend if you value your pictures, you keep archives of your own. (Aside from reliability issues, what happens if any of them go out of business? Where do your pictures go?)

Something to be said for a chemical process

[davidwr]

The chemical processes used to print digital prints are usually the same as printing from negatives.

Depending on your photo lab, you should get a high, consistent, quality of print that you know will last as long as those shot with negatives, usually decades in good storage conditions.

This is unlike most low-end inkjets where printout lifetimes may be under a decade.

Now, if you WANT archival-quality inkjets, you can buy a printer that uses archival inks, and get matching archival ink and paper. Even then though, you are using unproven technology: You can only hope the vendor's torture-tests accurately simulate the promised 50 years in a photo album or in some cases 200 years in museum conditions. With a chemical process, you pretty much know what to expect.

Re:Something to be said for a chemical process

[jimboisbored]

The instant kiosks are just inkjets. What you want is the Fuji Aladdin kiosks, an AGFA e-box/imagebox, lucidiom's kiosks (I work at a lab and that's what we us), or another kiosk that is only for ordering. Then the files are stored on a server until a worker picks the order from a list and tells the printer to print the order. They're then printed with a laser (newer ones use LED's) onto silver halide processed paper. In fact your film is really put through some digital processing before it's printed and it's printed using a laser too. The printer scans the neg's, and allows for color correction on screen and then queues them up to print. I'm basing this on the knowledge of an AGFA D.lab 3, i'm assuming Fuji frontiers and Noritsu's are pretty much the same (I know the laser and silver halide paper part is). The brand of printer doesn't really matter as long as it's maintained well. We balance everything on our printer daily. Our output is professional quality (provided we get good files/film) and we have some local pros do their medium format stuff here. So as far as I'm concerned inkjets are worthless.

ink is overpriced

[jay2003]

Printer manufacturers charge ridiculous amounts of money for ink. I'm glad consumers are wising up and having pictures lab printed. Perhaps these numbers will convince Epson, HP & Canon, they can not gouge us on ink forever and they will lower prices.

If not, consumers are getter better longevity with lab prints since they are done on photographic paper. I know all the statistics about 100 year estimated print life on newer inkjets. There's always the little asterisk about not exposing the prints to air unless this they are inkjet pigment printers. Epson has some but pigment ink cartridges are usually even more expensive. Not to mention clogged heads, smeared prints and all the other problems you get trying to print at home.

You don't have to drive twice or wait

[ThatAdamGuy]

You and other posters here have lamented the inconvenience of driving to the store to drop off your photo-data-cards and then waiting an hour or driving back a second time.

I think you're overlooking two key options:

1) Upload photos to a site, then pick up. For instance, you can upload your photos via Yahoo and then pick them up in as little as an hour from Target (http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/thatadamguy/print_s plash). I seem to recall that other stores also let you upload-'n'-pick-up, too. With the aforementioned Yahoo/Target option, it's 20 cents per print, first 20 free.

2) Or, if you don't mind waiting a week or so, order photos online via Fotki, Shutterfly, etc.

As for privacy... I suppose there could be some issues, but particularly with mega-printers like Ofoto and Snapfish and such, I just don't imagine that the photos are being seen by many human eyes (perhaps not even by one).

Re:well....

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is they don't use ink. In the machine is usually a laser or led that exposes normal photographic (silver halide) paper, then it goes through the traditional chemical process. The checimal and paper cost is always going to be cheaper than what the inkjet printer manufacturers charge for their ink and paper. A lot of consumers got duped into thinking the convenience of printing at home was much greater than the price of the print. How wrong they were. When you stuff around trying to make the colour look right by trial and error, the cost of the print is a lot higher than getting it printed in a lab.

I work in a lab and this is what we have experienced. In Australia, Harvey Norman (consumer electronics) started off as the Computer Specialists, then they went to Digital Camera Specialists and now they are Digital Printing Specialists. When they were the computer and dc specialist, they were pushing that you must have an inkjet printer, but now they are telling you that you must have the photos printed on their Fuji digital labs. People who "specialise" in so many areas are really not specialists at all.

We do quality comparisons in our area by getting a digital file printed from a range of labs to compare quality and really, Harvey Norman's is really just shit. Although the industry has gone to a digital production, the underlying science of chemicals has not changed. Balancing the chemistry and what not is a daily manual job. There is no point creating the printer profile to bring it "back into balance" when the chemicals are so far out of whack.

-5 Wrong

[Tim]

Unless you have specially treated paper, your prints are likely to fade and lose color to the oxidation process within 5 to 20 years. Whereas photo prints are typically guaranteed to retain their color for 100 years in moderate to indirect sunlight.

Wrong.

Older (dye-based) inkjet printers had fading problems, but more recent models use pigment-based inksets, and the resulting prints actually tend to exceed the longevity of traditional color prints.

The Epson Ultrachromes, for example, are Wilhelm rated for over 100 years in good display conditions, and over 200 years in dark storage.

Re:Why would I? I'll tell you why...

[GiSqOd]

I develop all my digital pics at Costco. which happens to also be my primary grocery-buying place. Some clear advantages:

1. New/Better developing equipment. Costco (and probably most other retailers) have developing stations FAR better than my g/f's Epson photo printer. They update their machinery every six months or so, too, so I get excellent color reproduction, high quality print paper, etc.

2. Price. I pay 12 cents a print for 4x6, or something nearly as stupid. Maybe it's 14 cents; who cares? Much less than the costs people are posting here for home photo printers. I like money, don't you?

3. Convenience. I happen to do most of my grocery shopping at Costco (love dem 12-packs of Campbell's Chunky Soup -- mmmm, MSG...). They also do developing in less than an hour, most of the time, so you can develop while you shop. And if you'd rather sit in your jammies, Costco.com will let you send your pics from your home PC for pickup in store, or they'll deliver by mail (like Snapfish, etc.). It's not 3 minutes from concept to wall art, but if you want immediate results you're gonna pay in $$$ and quality.

4. Customer Service. This may be a Costco-only thing, but they'll refund your money if you don't like your pictures FOR ANY REASON. My father (bless his tech-inept heart) once developed all 200 of his pics from Europe. Problem is, he developed the thumbnails. Costco explained his error, refunded his money, and developed the actual pics instead. Try getting Epson to send you a replacement cartridge because you did something stupid.

Of course, home printers have their uses. Off the top of my head, Costco is terrible for:

1. Blackmail/Kidnapping Photos. I'm pretty sure they've got to report this kind of thing. Besides, if you've kidnapped anyone of signifigance, you've got a hefty payday coming. 50 cent prints aren't a big expenditure for you.

2. Pictures of your naughty bits. No need to traumatize the adolescents working the shop at Costco with pictures of your wang. Plus, hard copies are so 1970s. Just post the high-res shots anonymously to craigslist like the rest of us.

Outside of these two, admittedly rare, categories, I just can't fathom why people are spending hundreds of dollars on home-developing. My two cents.

I can think of only two reasons...

[mwvdlee]

I can think of only two reasons why you'd want to print at home.

1) You need the best possible quality but have no access to a print shop which can deliver it. Reality is that most cheap print shops will not deliver accurate color even if you jump through all the hoops. More expensive print shops can (provided your image meets some criteria) but these can be harder to find. If you're living in Alaska; your may be off a little bit cheaper buying your own printer if you need high quality prints.

2) You print material isn't supposed to be seen by anybody else. Print shops have access to the images and will usually check prints. So if you have, say, private (intimate?) pictures or other material which may be damaging or not intended for public viewing (secret?), a personal printer is essential. This is basically akin to one of the major reasons digicams became so huge; they allowed you to make pictures without any third party ever being able to watch them.