Digital imaging is all very well, but there’s nothing like the presence and permanence of a physical photograph. Nik Rawlinson finds out how to turn your snaps into high-quality prints
We live in a digital age, but photo printing is far from dead. In fact, the market is thriving, with numerous companies such as Shutterfly, Moonpig and Photobox all eager to turn your digital images into glossy, colourful hard copies. A recent report by Daedal Research projects that the market is set to grow its revenue by more than a third over the next five years.
Sending your pictures to a commercial print service is one choice, but modern inkjets can produce stunning results at home. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, far from dying off as many had predicted in the past few decades, the inkjet market is also expected to grow by over 40% in the next five years.
So if you still like to print and display your prized photos, you’re far from alone. The question is, should you be looking to print them for yourself, or is it better to send your pictures away for printing?
Start at the source
If you want to get good prints, you need good source images. As a rule, unless your phone or camera has made a very poor job of capturing the scene, it’s best to apply a light touch when editing shots for print: adjustments that look fine on the screen have a habit of appearing heavy-handed and unnatural on photo paper.
Think about dimensions, too. Generally, modern phones and digital cameras capture enough megapixels that you can print out your images at any size you’re likely to want. But if you’re working with small pictures – or hoping to make large prints – you’ll want to ensure that your images don’t come out looking pixellated. The industry standard for top-quality prints is 300 dots per inch (dpi), so if an image is 3,000 pixels across, that means you can print it at up to 10in with no loss of quality.
Don’t think of 300dpi as an uncrossable line, however. You’re perfectly free to blow up the image to, say, 15in across, for an effective dot density of 200dpi. A picture printed like this may appear a little softer from close up, but the difference won’t be noticeable from a typical viewing distance of a few feet away, so it’s fine if you want to hang it on a wall or stand it on a mantlepiece. Conversely, if you go for smaller prints, the effective resolution will be higher, but in practice you almost certainly won’t notice any benefit once you go beyond 300dpi: the human eye isn’t sharp enough. There are several dedicated photo printers on the market that output
