Managing Your Digital Photos: Day 4

Printing Digital Photos

• An inkjet printer squirts tiny dots of ink onto the paper.  A typical ink cartridge will only do a few hundred pages even of plain text.  Printing photos uses ink much more rapidly than printing text (the "estimated yield" typically assumes 5% ink coverage; a photo is often more like 50% ink coverage) so it can be surprisingly expensive to print photos using an inkjet.  Specially coated inkjet photo papers can produce much better results for photos, since ordinary paper tends to get saturated with ink.
  
• A laser printer melts tiny dots of toner onto the paper.  Laser printers toner cartridges are more expensive than ink tanks but typically print at least a thousand pages, and the melted toner is more waterproof.  (I switched to a color laser printer about a decade ago after I got tired of expensive inkjet ink clogging up and drying out during our low humidity winters.)  But inkjets often emit smaller droplets than laser printers, making smaller dots that do a better job of reproducing smooth color gradations. 
  
• A dye sublimation photo printer evaporates rolls of plastic pigment onto special paper, producing a smooth continuous color tone that looks like an optical photographic print.  These printers are typically specialized to only print photos, usually at 4x6 inch size or smaller.
  

• Fred Meyer:
• Either of the Fred Meyer stores in Fairbanks can print matte or glossy photos, and posters up to 24x36 inches in store.  This service was once prominently labeled as "one hour photo," although now makes no mention of time. 
  
• Sam's Club:
• Members of Sam's Club can use their 1 hour in-club photo center to make prints from 4x6 through 8x14. 
  
• Walmart:
• Walmart can make 4x6 inch prints in 1 hour to matte paper, although the Fairbanks Walmart's photo pickup area is way in the back of the store by the electronics, and there's not always a person at that desk. 
  
• Walgreens:
  
• Walgreens East Fairbanks, off College Road by the Bentley Mall, can make prints by the end of the day.
• Walgreens West Fairbanks, off Airport way, is scheduled to take several days to get prints.

Scanning Digital Photos

• A dedicated film scanner will make the highest quality scans of photographic negatives, since a print cannot have more detail than the negative.  Of course, this only works if you have both a film scanner and the negatives; professional photographers and portrait studios normally retain the negatives so they can charge for prints later. 
  
• A flatbed scanner is big and clunky, but makes high quality images of flat paper photo prints. 
  
• You need to choose the scan resolution.  Most prints only have a few hundred dpi worth of detail, although if you have sharp high quality original prints, it could be useful to scan as high as 600 dpi.  Higher resolution takes a bit more storage space, but can capture more detail.  Scanners often support ridiculous resolutions like 6000 dpi, which is almost always just magnifying a blur. 
  
• You need to choose the image file format.  I recommend JPEG or JPG, the same format as almost all other digital photos.  (Some recommend an uncompressed format like PNG or TIFF, but JPEG seems more likely to keep working for decades into the future.)
  
• The scanner head needs to physically move along to take the scan, so each scan will take at least 10 seconds.  To speed up the process, I try to pack the scanner bed with related photos.  Even if you can only pack in two photos, that takes about half as long to scan as one at a time, and a 9x14 scanner can scan four normal prints sitting on the bed at once.  If you want to extract individual photos later, you can use the crop tool (for example, in Showfoto) to chop apart the scan into separate photos. 
  
• I try to work systematically, picking related photos and making sure the prints are all right-side up as the previous batch is scanning, then transfer the scanned photos onto the "already scanned" pile.  If the scanning software (which is different for each scanner) has an easy one click "Scan and Save" option, I definitely use it; some scanner programs make you click several times to set up the scan, scan it, and save the file. 
  
• Here are some photo prints I scanned.
  
• You can also take digital photos of prints with your camera; this is the lowest quality approach, but is sometimes the only option (such as at the family reunion).
  
• Taking a photo is much faster than scanning, and makes it easier for several people to get copies.
• A typical process is: lay out a small number of prints, take two pictures, repeat.  (Two pictures gives you a backup in case one is blurry.)
  
• But prints are glossy, so it's difficult to arrange the lighting so you don't get glare or shadows.  Flat soft diffused light from all sides is ideal.
  
• It's also often difficult to reliably focus on the prints--use "macro mode" or manual focus if your camera has that setting.  
• Definitely double-check the quality of the pictures you're getting, especially around people's faces--it's very frustrating to realize the last 300 prints you photographed all came out blurry!
  

Managing Your Digital Photos is an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute course taught by Dr. Orion Lawlor.