Photo Printing: What Choices are Available?
These days, there are a remarkable variety of photo printing options available. The technology used to create, print and share photos has certainly come a long way in a short period of time. I still remember my old Polaroid camera, with its bulky flash cube. After taking a picture, the camera created the photo right then and spit it out. You had to wait a few moments for the color to develop, then you had your photograph. Sure, the image quality wasn’t that great, but it was the best we could do at the time. Following the Polaroid instant camera came cameras like the 110 and 35mm which used film. Back then, you had to send your film off for processing and wait days, even weeks, to get it back.
Today, some people still use film cameras. Many of them, however, have made the switch to digital photography. Digital cameras allow you to see the photo as soon as you take it, then decide whether you want to save it or delete it and start over. Then, you can load the pictures into your computer. This allows you to edit, share and print your photographs quickly and easily, right from home. There are also lots of photo processing shops that offer cheap prints from your digital camera, memory device or disk. These shops can do much more than just make traditional sized prints, however.
You can now get your favorite photographs made into a variety of different keepsakes. For example, you can transfer a photo to a coffee mug, mouse pad, or item of clothing. You can even find professionals who can transfer a favorite photo onto a cake. These personalized items make wonderful gifts for loved ones. Another fun idea is to take twelve of your best pictures and make them into a calendar. There is software you can use at home to do this, or you can have a photo processing shop do it for you. Your regular sized snapshots can be enlarged to any size you want — even poster size. You can even put your photos on a CD and make a slideshow of them set to your favorite song.
As you can see, there are all kinds of photo printing options available. You’ll find services like the ones described here at various photo processing companies as well as copy shops like Kinko’s. Even superstores like Wal-Mart are getting into the act and offer handy photo processing centers right in the store. They can do one-hour and three-day processing from traditional film, prints from digital cameras and other media, and certain types of specialized printing.
