How do you print your digital photos? Do you print them yourself? Do you take them to a retail photo center at a mass-market retailer like Walmarts, K-marts, Price Chopper, etc? Do you take them to a local camera store like Ritz Camera? Do you take them to a pharmacy like Walgreens? All of these services allow you to upload your photos on site and do some editing and photo manipulation before sending your photos to their automatic production equipment. This equipment produce high quality prints at a very good price per print but did you know that you can get prints of an equal quality at an even better price per print without even leaving the comforts of your home? It’s called online digital photo printing.
Google “Online digital photo printing” and you will come up with 7, 790, 000 hits (actually, I got these results using “Bing” not “Google”). There are dozens of online digital photo processing services and they are all vying for your business, all trying to outdo the others in enticing new members. With a little judicial shopping around you can get a 4”X6” print made for as little as six cents. Besides the excellent per print prices most of them offer you a large quantity of free prints as a sign-up bonus. These online services offer you far more than just good prices on prints they offer you free editing software. Special file uploading software that expedites the uploading process and they offer you a plethora of other services. Services like the ability to create all kinds of special photo gift at a very reasonable cost, online photo albums that you can share with family and friends, and much more. Believe it or not, by the time you figure in the cost of quality photo paper and quality photo inks for your inkjet printer, you can’t print your own pictures at home for what it cost to have them printed online and your satisfaction is guaranteed. I never had a reason to test that guarantee because in over ten years of using online services I never received a single bad print that was their fault. Once or twice when I did receive a bad print I discovered it was my fault and not theirs.
Online digital photo printing is a very competitive business so each company has something unique that other companies don’t offer and all of them run weekly specials just for their members. Because every company offers something, a little different from all the others it behooves the serious photographer to join as many as he or she can since there are no sign-up costs. I belong to ten or twelve services but the best ones to start with are Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Ritz Camera.
Ritz Camera http://wwwt/Default.aspx pix.com/is one of the best of the best because besides high quality prints at one of the lowest prices on the net, memberships makes many other valuable services available to you. The one thing that Ritz offers that most other services don’t offer is the ability to sell your digital pictures right from their server for a small monthly fee. They do all the work for you; they take the customer’s order, print and ship the pictures, collect the money and send you your share of the income from the sale. This is a great way to get a pro photography site and to market your work with a minimum of work on your part. As a member to their services, you also get a discount on equipment and supplies. Membership in Ritzpix is mandatory for every serious digital photographer. Oh, yes, Ritzpix also run monthly photo contest that you can enter to win camera equipment and other valuable prizes.
Snapfish http://www.snapfish.com/welcome/v=1 offer you free editing software, expedited uploading software, online albums, and the ability to create exciting photo gifts of all kinds. Shutterfly http://community.shutterfly.com/ offer the same services as Snapfish with slight differences in the types of photo gifts that you can make online.
