Do you print your images? Do you know why you should print your photos? Do you ever print off all of the images from a photo session or some of the images stored on your phone? Or are they all floating around on the internet, or stored on the hard drive of your dying computer? I know that right now, digital is all you might feel you need, but I’m going to talk a little bit about why you should print your photos and how and what kind of prints you might want to print.

Why You Should Print Your Photos

My grandma passed away unexpectedly a couple of years ago. When she died, my mom and aunt had to clean out her home and my great-grandma’s home. The thing that took the longest was going through all of the pictures. Figuring out who was who and reminiscing about what had been happening in those images.

All the stories that came along with those pictures, filled us up with remembering the ones we loved and had lost. I look at pictures of my 6-year-old when she was just an hours old baby and my heart aches a little at how tiny she once was. How did she change so quickly? Why is it so hard to remember her little baby face when I look at her beautiful big girl face?

Flipping through those images is much easier and more likely to happen when I had an actual copy of the image. I can’t remember the last time I scrolled and clicked through all of the images stored on my external hard drive, can you?

How You Should Print Your Images

Now there are a few different ways you can print your images. Here are a few options from cheapest/lowest quality to heirloom pieces that will last for years.

Mpix/Adorama

These are pro quality labs for consumers. They have more print options and the quality of the prints is noticeably better and will look much closer to the original digital image. These are great if you don’t want to print through your photographer but want quality images, albums, and canvases.

Professional Print Labs

These are what you’ll receive if you print through your photographer or order through their online gallery. I use a few different labs, but there is one that I use the most. When you print through a pro lab, you’re going to have a guarantee on quality from your photographer. If the print arrives and it looks off and nothing like what the digital image looked like, then they are going to continue to print it in order for it to look how it should.

There are also calibration machines photographers can use to make sure that what they see on the screen is what will be printed by the lab. The quality is also going to be higher. The chemicals used to print at places like Costco and Walgreens are not necessarily monitored and maintained correctly. At a pro print lab, that’s their job. I’ve found that my prints from Costco/Walgreens/etc tend to be darker and the colors less vibrant than when I get them printed at my pro lab.

What Kind of Prints Should I Order?

This entirely depends on what you want to do with them. Do you want them in an album? It looks so nice to have an album full of beautiful images from a session. Or do you want to hang them in your home? My go to print is a fine art print (basically images printed on watercolor paper) if I’m framing them. I had a client who only ordered canvases because she liked not having to deal with frames.

My parents have a metal print in their home and it is so bright and beautiful in the best ways possible. Talk to your photographer about how you want to use the images in your home and they will help guide you and teach you about all the different print options out there.

So tell me! Do you print your images? And if you’re looking to book a family session, let’s talk!