Do you print online or at home?

Well, I really want to start printing my photos and I'm considering if it is worth buying my own printer or simply using an online printing company.

If I bought a printer it would exclusively be used for printing photos and nothing else. Of course I do have a budget and the Epson R2880 is right in that budget.

So, I'm just trying to figure out what would be most beneficial for me. Most of my images are 8x12 and I suppose if I wanted to go bigger than I can order prints online.

I guess one huge advantage that I see in buying a printer is that I love instant gratification which is why I love digital over film.

However, if using an online printing company far outweighs that benefit, I will go online.

Thanks

Online. For Me, I see no benefit of doing it at home. And unless its something really special, i can have it from Walgreens in an hour or so. For a more pro job, I'll send to MPIX or someone and they are pretty quick and good.

I used to print at home, but when the last printer died I did not replace it.
I was (typically) only printing a few shots a month. It seemed that every time I went to print, at least one inkwell had dried up.... good-bye $25. Places like mpix.com provides great quality and a 4x6 is about 25¢..

If you print a lot, I think a printer is probably more economical, certainly more convenient... But for the occasional print, I find it a lot more economical to use a service.

I've converted to online printing only. My Epson R800 started to give me fits and between the costs of ink, paper and now a new printer, I find I can do it faster, easier and better results with a known company.

I print alot of my personal work at home just for the fun of it. Anything for a client get sent to my pro lab which in essence is online but I can drive to it to pick them up when they are done. I have the Pixma ip8500 and the Pixma Pro 9500 for the larger prints. I had that rule that these would only be used for printing pictures but that fell by the wayside pretty quickly. In reality printing text doesn't impact the quality of a print that you may want to do later. The key to being able to do good prints is keeping your system calibrated.

95% of my photos that are printed are 18x24 and up. I print at home since I love being able to control the final print. It is expensive but after selling a few framed prints I do recover the costs. If costs are your prime concern, I would agree with the other posters that you would be better off printing online or find a quality lab in your area. You could also contact the local art community to see if someone already has a printer that will cut ya a deal on prints. If costs are not an issue, go for it and have fun.

I print at home. Two reasons: quality and profit.

Quality - I use high quality fine art substrates, most labs don't unless you go with their higher-priced fine art printing option.

Profit - example: a 36" x 17" printed from roll costs me about $2.50 for paper and a buck or two for ink. No lab will touch that for less than $25 (plus shipping - say $5) - for a total of $30. End result - more profit for me, and not for a lab.

Home for me on a Pixma MP990

I used to print at home but it would be in batches with long periods of inactivity. I got tired of print heads clogging and using a lot of ink to clear them, etc. Plus it took up a lot of my time. I threw it out last year.

I now send out to a pro lab near me. For 4 x 6's I print on an Epson Artisan 835 now. In the past I could print up to 13 inches wide. It's actually cheaper to send them out when you factor in amortizing the cost of the printer over it's useful life. You have to be printing a LOT to justify printing at home, imho, or use paper surfaces that are just not available from a lab.

The lab I use is excellent. The prints perfectly match what I see on my monitor.

bohdank wrote in post #12075462
I used to print at home but it would be in batches with long periods of inactivity. I got tired of print heads clogging and using a lot of ink to clear them, etc. Plus it took up a lot of my time. I threw it out last year.

I now send out to a pro lab near me.

Me, too, except I use these guys instead of my old pro lab: Post #10 & #18. Costco & Sam's Club Digital Prints
Note that this is a 2005 thread & I haven't had any problems with them in 6 years.

I love doing all of my printing myself, up to 13"x19", on my Epson Stylus Photo 1400. I do it for the joy of the process and to get almost instant feedback to permit subtle creative adjustments. When I first started film photography decades ago, I did all my own darkroom work, and that carried over to my interest in digital. For 4"x6" prints you can do them yourself or send them out.

I don't print at home.

Picture North Carolina wrote in post #12075162
I print at home. Two reasons: quality and profit.

Quality - I use high quality fine art substrates, most labs don't unless you go with their higher-priced fine art printing option.

Profit - example: a 36" x 17" printed from roll costs me about $2.50 for paper and a buck or two for ink. No lab will touch that for less than $25 (plus shipping - say $5) - for a total of $30. End result - more profit for me, and not for a lab.

Where do you find a roll for that much?

For me, photography is a hobby - I like doing it. Printing too.

V-Wiz wrote in post #12077213
Where do you find a roll for that much?

http://www.atlex.com …preadd=action&k​ey=1161764


$80/roll, you can get roughly 33 36" prints from that 100' roll, so right around $2.50 per print for paper - ink will depend on the individual image.


After being a longtime advocate of lab/online printing (MPix specifically,) I just jumped on the home-printing bandwagon. I was amazed to learn that the current home photo printers have a much broader gamut for color than MPix did, which may or may not mean anything to an individual photographer. Certainly it makes it easier to turn out images that look fake or "cartoony." But if you're into that super-saturated HDR look, it's definitely a better way to print

I was also surprised to find that the printer I purchased (Epson 4880) seems to hold shadow detail better than the equivalent print from MPix. I realize that it's VERY profile-dependent, but I was still very surprised to see that.

If you're only ever printing 4x6 or 5x7 with the rare 8x10 thrown in, printing at home will likely never pay for itself. But I'm of the opinion that if an image is worth printing, it's worth printing 8x10 or bigger. That "or bigger" can get expensive in a hurry. Being able to crank out 17"-wide prints (either 17x11 or 17x25 for a standard DSLR image) at roughly $2 per linear foot makes the proposition of buying a printer a whole lot more digestible. Especially when you factor in MPix minimum $7 shipping cost.

Epson has some OBSCENE rebates going until the end of the month, and for the difference in price between the 13" 2880 and the 17" 4880 with roll feed, you basically are just paying for the extra ink they include with the printer. That, combined with SIGNIFICANTLY lower ink costs per-mL down the line, and it was the way for me to go.


And truly, I was the one saying that printing at home could never compete with a pro lab. And logically, I didn't believe that I could afford to put a machine in my apartment that would be able to out-perform the high-end machines MPix prints on. But with just a few prints out so far, I can unequivocally say that it does in fact generate better output. And now I can fire off a 17x25 in my living room, and 30 minutes later it's sitting in the output tray. That's a heck of a lot better than the 4-odd days I used to average with MPix.