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Digital Photo Printing Technology - Some Thoughts

Introduction

The printing of a digital photograph – unlike a traditional, analogue photograph – requires no film negative, plate, or any other form of intermediate medium. Instead, the information pertaining to the colour, and intensity, of each picture element, or "pixel", is converted into a series of discrete, numerical – "digital" – values that can be stored, electronically, on a memory expansion card, the hard disk of a computer, or a CD, for example. This means that individual images can be viewed, and printed, at will, without incurring the cost of developing, and printing, a whole roll of film.

Digital Photo Printing

If you want to print a photograph taken with a traditional film camera, you need to shoot a whole roll of 24, or 36, exposures, take, or send, the film to a developer, and wait to see if your results are satisfactory. If they are, at least, for the most part, you may need to order reprints, to send to friends, or relatives, and wait, again, for these to be produced.

Printing a digital photograph, on the other hand, is a much simpler process, whether you decide to do it yourself, at home – not really a possibility for analogue photographs, without your own darkroom – or leave it to a professional printing shop. In either case, the cost of printing is limited to those photographs that you really want to print, and this can be determined without any development costs.

You can, of course, use an inkjet, or photographic, printer, equipped with suitable paper, to print your digital photographs at home, but the cost of printers, paper and inks does make this quite expensive. A simpler, and more cost-effective, method – in terms of "cost per print" – may be to upload your photographs to a digital processing centre, on the Internet. Obviously, this requires an Internet connection, but a wide range of papers, and finishes, is available, along with the possibility of printing on other materials, such as plastic, or canvas. It may be possible to have your prints posted directly to your intended recipient, or to store them on the processing centre website, where they can be viewed, and prints can be ordered, by any of your friends and relatives who want them.

Digital Photo Printing Possibilities

The great advantage of photographs in digital form, rather than on film, is the ease with which they can be transferred to a computer, for editing, or distribution via email, or the Internet, or incorporated into all manner of personalised products, and gifts. Many companies, on the Internet, and on the high street, are able to create calendars, stationary and other products that feature your digital photographs. You can, for example, have your photographs "rasterised", so that they can be printed out, in sections, on A3 paper, and recombined to form posters of almost unlimited size. A so-called "photo book" – like a traditional photograph album, but with photographs actually printed on the pages, rather than mounted – is a popular option, as are digital photo frames, and items of clothing, such as T-shirts and caps.