Do You Print Your Pictures?

I was just wondering if you guys print every single picture that you like? Or do you even hang them/put them in

frames around the house?

I don't mean the whole collection in your hard drive but only the ones that you think are nice.

I actually hardly make prints at all, mainly because I don't know where to put them and sometimes the colour

inconsistency between what you see and the actual printed result can be frustrating. Maybe I should start

printing some. I assume they look much better than on your PC if printed correctly huh?

I like prints. I print a fair percentage of my snaps, but a great deal of my work is of my grandkids. I put the prints in albums, I have a couple of bookcases full! On travel photos, I print about half of the digital images. Film I print it all. Sort it out later.

 

I also frame quite a few, both large and small. Big ones I have done at Mpix. Anything 8x10 and below I print at home or in my consumer photolab.

 

I just enjoy sitting down with a book better than scrolling on a screen.

Hello Albert: When you start printing you will begin to notice the photograph as an object and not just an image. The flexibility that modern digital prining allows, provides a high level of control over the image. The print is the final statement of an image. The array of beautiful fine art cotton papers not only accept the image but are a delight to the touch. It turns your image into an art object that you can share. You can create project portfolios in plastic sleeves, clam shell box storage and, of course, framing. In a pinch old paper boxes can store prints. Jump in and make some prints and join the fun!...............................Lou

If you calibrate your display correctly, and use the right profile when printing, your printed output should look as good - and usually better - than what's on your screen. So, no excuses there! However, that doesn't make more wall space.

 

I was actually just this afternoon handing over a set of prints to someone who was in turn going to give them as a gift to the subjects of the photos. I was hesitant, because my pixel-peeping on-screen view of these particular field action shots were always disappointing to me. For the thousandth time, I once again learned the lesson: prints can look very, very good. Better than the display in front of you can ever render them.

 

I let Costco do the little stuff, since I'm there picking up broccoli, charcoal, and a 55-gallon drum of olive oil anyway... other labs seem to make sexier hardcopies of the big ones, though.

Shooting is only part of making an image. Printing full time changed my conception of Photography.

I print most of my "keepers" at ~8 X 10 size. I have some of those enlarged to 12 X 18 to 18 X 24 size for matting and framing.

 

I sell a few, and give more away to friends.

 

In most cases "it's not a picture until I hold a print in my hands" Some make it only as far as the web. Some no farther than my hard drive.

 

<Chas>

Sometimes I print, sometimes I do it just to see what it looks like off of my comp. screen ;)

It's funny in a way that we ask this question. Prior to digital photography, the only way we considered photographs

was through the printed image--after all, that's what photography is (was?) all about: drawing with light--and we draw

on paper. Of course, back then we'd shoot a role of film that had (usually) a max of 36 images--today we shoot on a

memory card where we can literally hold over a thousand images. After a while, the immense magnitude of the

number of images we have gets to be overwhelming--who has time to wade through all of these images--or can afford

to get them all printed?

 

This reminds me of the time video replaced 8mm film--with the film, you about 3 minutes of shooting time before

changing the film, so you tended to be a bit more selective about what you shot. With video cameras you can shoot

hours on end and still only have a few minutes of worthwhile video. The question is who edits their videos --or better--

who sits down later and watches the entire event again?

 

My approach is probably based more on the old school thinking: When I'm using my camera I still think in terms of

film in the body and not a digital storage media device. I will never win an award for the most shutter clicks on my

cameras, and I have never once thought that I'd approach anything near Nikon's expected shutter lifetime actuations.

I still use a tripod for lots of my shots and still run through the checklist of getting the image right. I think this is why I

don't end up with hundreds upon hundreds of images for every trip I take. Because of this, I find selecting a image or

two that I really like from the trip/photo shoot easy and printing them.

 

What I have been doing lately is purchasing some sort of memento from the locale--usually something like a

mediallion or coin from the area (usually from the gift shop). I print the selected image on 11X14 to 13X19 paper on

my Epson printer and mat it to fit a 16X20 frame. I'll cut out a hole the size of the medallion in the bottom portion of

the mat and mount it in there--adding a little extra touch to the final framed print. Sometimes the image may be

some obscure feature of the place that is not readily identifiable so the medallion/coin sets the location.

 

In this way, I end up with one good size print of a trip, matted, framed and hung on the wall. Now your photographs

are part of your everyday viewing--even when you're not holding a camera. It is also a good way to get feedback from

others. If you aren't printing now (or getting them printed at a lab or by someone else) I think you are depriving

yourself of a vital component of your your photography.

No, it would take far too long. I print the images that i feel that will make the absolute perfect print. its about 1 per 36 for me. I make a few other work prints sometimes but id say that about 2% of my actual negatives get printed.

 

With slides, its more like 0%, i dont have a single one in my house. Its too hard in the darkroom and ive never bothered having someone else do the work for me.

 

People above say that they print a lot, well i have to say, most of those prints arnt stunning work. Ansel admitted that he got about 12 good shots per year, thats one per month, about twice as many me, and clearly mine arnt near as good as his. So people with digital cameras who make 700 prints per year are just deceiving themselves. That work probably doesnt deserve to be on paper.

 

David has got it right, theres no point in taking more images than you really need, it makes it harder to choose and you end up with thousands of junk images tp sort through when you could have taken forty and got twice as many good prints.

The finished product is with a print. Usually framed. However many images are deleted and others are just saved for a future time when I find that a print is wanted by somebody. It's to expensive to print out everything. Outside of family pictures I have no use for 4x6 prints.

I make a 10x15 cm print of each and every one which I catalogue and use for reference purposes. It beats the hell out off browsing through your folders on screen, mainly qualitywise. Furthermore I make working prints on A4 size as a last check before sending the ones I really want to print large format to a pro lab.

I started printing since some months, basically when the space for a printer opened in my budget. I did some try with prints done in shops, but the scarce control over the result was not of my liking. When I went to digital, I was spoiled by the amount of control you have on the whole process, and I did not want to lose it in the final stage. <p>

I have currently some of my prints hanging at my walls, never larger than A4, and mostly B/W. Not every good photo looks good on the wall: it should go well together with the room, and add something to it. <p>

But even if you do not hang it, a photo really becomes "real" on paper. The choice of the paper, its color, surface texture, glossiness, could and should be chosen to match the photo. This is a fascinating phase for me, and really like the hand sensation of a fine paper. On the other hand, I do not print everything, but try to print all the good ones in their final form. The backlog is still long here though.<p>

As others have stated, some learning on the ways of color management, a calibrated monitor and some paper/printer ICC profiles should allow you to get a good color consistency. Printing well requires a lot of learning: I'm just starting, but find it a really interesting matter. <p> L.

It's interesting. I've only just started printing a few of mine (due to now having a photo-capable printer, a wireless Lexmark - prior to that, my old Samsung mono laser with a tired exhausted cartridge was never really much cop at photos). I still don't really prioritise printing photos in the way that I used to about 25-30 years ago when I was a habitual enlarger user.

 

I've also recently found that a TFT monitor I thought had broken about 4 years ago (it came over all dead - I thought it was the backlight inverter gone pop) that'd been in the attic all this time, was not broken after all (turned out to be the psu - fooled me by still giving out the correct measurable voltage, but was in fact unable to support a load). So I've put this TFT monitor on what used to be a headless home server (a little EPIA board running Gentoo Linux sitting in the corner with usb hard drives on it), with the intention that this can now be a cheap 'digital photo frame' instead of going out and buying one of those digital photo frames for additional cost, and ending up with a considerably smaller screen than this one. So now, it's running through my backup of my current iPhoto library, displaying all the photos cyclically. Quite nice. Next step is to actually select some good ones, not just have it display everything.

 

What this has done in effect is 'force' display of images that wouldn't normally be held up and shown to anyone, unless they were printed and framed and hung up. The choice of prints to print and hang would be quite restrictive, based on space to hang prints. Prints that go into albums in book form are, in my opinion, a bit of a one-way street in today's attention economy - there are far too many other sources of novel information demanding that we attend to it to ever seriously bother to return to a photo album that one has seen already, so putting photos in a photo album book is almost the same as archiving them, but not using them.

 

I still haven't got round to printing up many of my photos - I've even got the inks and papers ready in a very nearby proximity, in a feeble attempt to prompt me to select and print some - because I think my digital photo frame successfully out-competes with it. Of course, this raises two further points: one, the act of selection is the biggest effort in all of this (bigger than taking the photo, bigger than developing the film, bigger than scanning the film, bigger even than choosing which camera to leave the house with (although that's a close contest - maybe an even tie!)). The other point is that now that the images are on rotation on a digital picture frame that is actually marginally bigger than I can print at (the TFT monitor is a smidge bigger than A4 landscape) it also means that, from normal viewing distance within the room, there's almost no difference between photos I shot on my Nikon F4, my Bronica ETRSi, or my Sony Ericsson W800i phone! The main difference in camera selection now has become a question of "what equipment is going to satisfy me to use and handle" rather than one which in any way relates the equipment choice to the results I hope to obtain.

 

- (actually, to be honest, the Bronica's 150mm lens is still responsible for most of the the stand-out images even on the digital photo frame)

In some cases a photo is simply a record, and may as well be kept on a computer, like any other data.<BR>

Hard copy isn't really necessary.<BR>

Sometimes the image is taken purely for email or web use.<BR>

Other times, it may be more of an artwork, and it isn't finished until its printed.<BR>

<BR>

Sometimes I just want to show some pictures around, or send them to people.<BR>

Holding a picture in your hand informally, showing someone else physically, is a

more human way of sharing, than doing it all by computer.<BR>

Because making a good print can be time consuming, I sometimes just run of some quick A4 that are about right, or have some 6x4 photo prints done on line, next day delivery.<BR>

I've had A4 and A3 prints that took some trouble to get right, and aren't really cheap, spoiled by mishandling or even the cat or dog walking on them, so the the old fashioned envelope of 6x4 can be a good option to hand around when visiting.<BR>

I only print the ones that I think will look good at 19" or bigger. Don't really know why, but I happen to really like 13 x 19 or bigger. I have them printed by a lab in London, ON, about 100 miles away. I sometimes order an 8x10 first, one on matte and one on metallic, to see which I like best. It seems that nearly every print I have has been done on metallic paper.

 

Challenge then becomes what to do with the prints. Luckily, I live in a 6-level house, including basement, so we have tons of wall space on the stairs, and each level is only one or 2 rooms, so decorating schemes are very different and allow for a wide range of image types and colours to be displayed. I also have a number of them on display throughout the public areas of my office space.

 

I like to sit and look through my pictures on my laptop - I probably wouldn't look at them as often if they were just printed. As my skills with post-processing grow, I sometimes find myself making a copy of the original and trying a different processing on it. That's always kinda fun.

 

I do, however, take great pleasure in looking at the thousands of slides my Dad took as he travelled the world in the 1960's on business.

I use a professional printing service for my clients and for the images I want for myself. My wife used our photo printer for the photo album.

 

I have several of my prints around the house.

I print just about enough to fill an 8.5x11 art portfolio each year. These are the shots I can show to those that

want to see my work. I print them on a 6 color HP photo printer with soft gloss paper.

 

The shots that get hung on the wall are 1 or 2 a year. We've got an old 2 story house, so we're not getting close

to filling the walls. We have a couple of printing services locally, so I can get up to a 24 x 30 if I want it.

I just checked my hard drive and I think I got more than 4000 pictures sitting around. And out of those maybe I've printed not more than 50 of them, haha...

Maybe I really should print out all the better ones. Now a decent photo album is also expensive too and won't accommodate that many pictures. Maybe I can just print them out and put them in a box or something and hope the prints won't deteriorate.

I have 5 pics hanging in my home.- 3 20X30s and 2 11X14 one of which is someone else's work. Dislodging my wife's Walmart collection is not that easy. I do most of my printing for others when I get a good shot at gatherings. These I give away. (Worth every cent:) I love the struggle of making the print look like the screen.

i currently have a calibrated monitor, which is needed for any serious printing. the montior and my prints look the same.

 

in my drawer of the pc desk, i have hanging folders in which there is about 6inches of 8x10s and about 3inches of 4x6s. i have several 16x20s and a 20x30 hanging on walls in my home including a 12x45inch panorama in the frontroom. ther are several friend and relatives who have large prints hangingb on their home walls. and even a couple businesses.

 

to me, there is nothing like looking a good print that you made that is on your wall. not to mention what is said and the looks of people who have seen it on the wall. it sure does you photographic ego good.

 

i make my own 8x10 and smaller. for larger prints i send them out via the web to either jumbogiant.com or kodakgallery.com.

 

if you send them out to be printed, the following may be of interest.

 

i have been sending my finished edited but not upsized images to kodakgallery.com and jumbogiant.com for quite awhile. Kodakgallery.com makes my 16X20 and 20X30 in matte. while jumbogiant.com makes my glossies and panoramas. i have been printing to 30inch wide(you can get 40X60 regular and 24X80 panoramas) with jumbogiant. you also have several choices of paper with jumbogiant.com. they seem to be using Epson paper. The biggest I have so far ordered are 20x30 inch regular prints, and 12x48 panoramas and 16x36 panos.

 

i send my jpeg and they do any upsizing needed. you cannot send raw(which require converting and pp) or tiff(file size is too big).i also have been sending them the image in adobeRGB, they either change them or use them as is. the colors from either company come out great.

 

you have to read the information of the printing website and see what they want and will accept.

 

i would not resize or change the color gamut till you KNOW that the printing online outfit will not accept what you are using. if you have to change only change the copy to the specs you need to send them never the original image.

i have been using adobeRGB and not resizing AT ALL to either outfit with no problems. and by not resizing i mean that i have been sending them every size imaginable and the print are all great from either place. sizes range from 6mp digital shots to unresized 4000dpi digital scans of slides which are still the original scan size(1.4inches X .9inches).

i would not create a problem of your own till you have to.

 

i print 8x10 and smaller, myself.<div></div>

It is very costly to print in terms of materials and time. Consequently only a tiny fraction of my images end up on paper. My customers usually prefer images on a disc, which they can keep on file and select the ones which fit a certain application. In the past, very few have ended up on the wall. Most were relegated to file folders or just stacks. I have evolved to the point of assembling portfolios of 8x12 to 11x14 inch prints, which protects them and keeps related prints together in a certain order.

 

Calibration is the key to color consistency. I have an Eye One Photo calibration system which I use to profile printers as well as monitors. I also standardize on the paper I use, limiting the choices to just a few. It pays to use high quality paper, but not necessarily museum quality. Once calibrated, a color laser printer is more than adequate for contact sheets and one-off samples, for pennies a page and a few seconds of time.

 

A large print has a certain "wow" factor, but otherwise I don't think they look any better in hand than on a monitor. For one, a monitor has at least a couple more stops of dynamic range, especially in shadow detail.

Just abiut every time I go into my dark room, I grab a few random negs that I've not printed before. Sometimes, it's painfully apparent why I never did. But sometimes I find a jewel that I just over looked.

I always print lots of my pictures. I have some in a gallery for sale (these are matted). Many photos I make into my own notecards as thank-you's, birthday cards, etc. These notecards also make nice gifts for people who have everything when packaged as a set of 6 or 8. I print 4x6's to share with friends at work of photos they would appreciate (birds for the nature lovers, cats for the cat fans, etc.). I have several framed prints around my home and my sons have asked for specific prints they have hanging in their homes. Printing is half the fun of photography, imo. I have an Epson R380 for printing 8x10's and notecards and an Epson 2200 for bigger prints. I love my printers! It's important to calibrate your monitor so the prints match.

This topics comes up a lot - you might find other interesting responses by searching for similar threads.

 

I print many of my negatives (but certainly not all of them) and hang a handful of the subsequent prints at any given time, both at home and in the office. I often expose knowing how I will finish the print (tone, hand color, historic process, etc.) so for me, the print is the last step, and skipping that step leaves the idea unfinished. For digital pictures I have been having them printed into photo books - I use digital for vacations and such and a nice photo book of the years' travels makes for fun browsing.

 

- Randy

I guess what, how much, and how you print is a very personal thing. I tend to print as much as I can afford. A lot of them are snap shots since I still believe in putting pictures in photo albums. But some of them I really like and have found their way onto my walls.

 

I wanted to react to a comment that someone made ... That work probably doesnt deserve to be on paper. I think anything "deserves" to be on paper. Everyone shoots for different reasons. I'll be the first to admit that the snapshots I take of my son can not be considered "Art" but they are incredibly dear to me and most definitely do deserve to be on paper.

 

Cheers,

Catherine