Deanne Gallup often prints her digital pictures at home, but for Christmas, she wanted to use a family photo in her greeting cards. And that took her to the Best Buy store in Arlington, Texas.
Gallup joined a growing number of Americans who are using photo processors, both online and at retailers, to print their digital photos rather than using home printers. The availability of special theme cards and treatments, along with competitive prices, will lead 37 percent of digital-camera owners to use retailers and 15 percent to use online services this year, estimates InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, a Massachusetts researcher.
That’s a big increase from last year, when about 14 percent had pictures printed by retail processors and 9 percent used online services, said InfoTrends analyst Ed Lee.
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s not cheaper here,” Gallup said as she picked a photo from among dozens stored on the tiny memory card she popped into a Kodak self-service terminal at the Best Buy. Gallup likes the prints she can make at home, but she said the quality’s good at the photo processors and they can be more convenient.
“You run out of ink fast at home if you print very many pictures,” she said.
The latest, most cost-effective home printers can churn out a 4-by-6-inch color print for as little as about 29 cents, they say. With most home printers, the cost is closer to 60 cents per print.
For example, Kodak’s printer dock, introduced two years ago, prints 4-by-6-inch photos for 50 to 60 cents each.
In comparison, Best Buy, CVS Pharmacy, Shutterfly, Ofoto, FotoTime and other processors charge no more than 29 cents for the same size print. Sales and specials are frequently offered, while some discounters like Costco and Wal-Mart offer lower prices. Online processors generally mail prints to customers’ homes, at added cost, while the retailers offer in-store pickup.
But with larger prints, most processors charge $3 to $4 for an 8-by-10-inch print, which costs most consumers less than $2 to print at home, experts say. The cost of a 5-by-7-inch print, for which processors charge around 90 cents, can also be cheaper at home.
Still, since 4-by-6-inch prints are by far the most common, industry watchers predict that the number of digital prints handled by professional photo finishers will keep growing. The Photo Marketing Association International, an industry group, expects Americans to make 8 billion digital photo prints next year.
Yet while consumers take billions of digital pictures, they don’t print nearly as many of the pictures they take compared to film.
Instead, consumers e-mail photos to friends and family more frequently than they print them–especially the relatively low-quality pictures taken with camera phones. Kodak’s Mark Cook said company studies show that about a third of the digital photos on Americans’ computers were sent to them by someone else.
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