Share Your Digital Photographs With These Two Types of Digital Photo Printing Services

By Steve Nash

Aren't digital cameras great? It's not only easier than ever to take photos (of whatever interests you), it's now easy to get them printed too without worrying about the prints being blurred or too dark. With digital cameras, or camera mobile phones, you just get to print the best photos.

The thing is, though, how many of us actually print our digital photos? How many of us share our images with our family and friends, without making them squint at a tiny LCD screen?

Digital photos should not just stay on your digital camera, iPod, or camera mobile phone.

After all, you've had the adventure holiday of a lifetime; you've taken photos of the 'funny incident' at the weekend; you've snapped the children or grand-children (that keep growing every day) -- it's not enough to capture the moment, it's time to share your digital memories with everyone that matters to you.

Nor should your best digital photos simply be printed on cheap paper via a cheap personal printer.

There is a much better way to print your digital photographs, a more personal way to share. These include using digital photo printing services that let you create the following:

• Digital Photobooks
• Prints
• Calendars
• Cards
• Canvas Prints
• T-Shirts & Clothes
• Christmas Cards

All of these items can include your digital photographs.

Let's look at two of the most popular ways of printing digital photographs, below.

Print Your Digital Photos Online

Use an online digital photo print service and have your snaps printed professionally on gloss or matt photo paper from as little as pennies per print. You can get your glossy prints delivered directly to family and friends, too (including those people you know who might not have a computer or access to the internet).

You can even frame your prints to give as presents or to keep for yourself.

Many services warn you if your digital image will be cropped because of the print size you've selected, or if your photo is of too small a resolution to print at a good quality.

There are many websites that offer a digital photo print service online, some offer a pre-pay method of payment based on credits, whilst others let you print your first twenty photos free and charge after that.

Note: when digital photos are processed on real photo paper the colours remain stable for many years, unlike cheaper inkjet or laser prints which may fade quite quickly.

Create a Digital Photo Book

Digital photobooks are essentially a photo album; the only difference being that the photographs are printed directly on to the pages of the book. This means that your digital photo album looks very professional indeed.

Even better, you can have your digital photos printed to any size within the book, to vary the layout. And you can add personal captions to each photo.

To create a photobook, you either download software onto your computer and design the photobook there, or you use an online service to do exactly the same. Some services are better than others, for sure, but most let you create professional looking photo albums.

So you would either download the software, or upload your photos to the website, depending on what type of service you were using. Then you simply follow the straight-forward instructions. Once you're happy just place your order, and your photobook will arrive several days later.

You can, of course, simply print your digital photos onto paper or frame them, but creating a photobook is just so much better. In fact, seeing a photo book for the first time, with your very own photos in them, is definitely a "wow!" moment.

Whether you just take digital snaps, or consider yourself to be a serious amateur (or professional) digital photographer, it's more fun if you share your photos, with the people that matter to you, as professionally as possible.

Nowadays, there are many ways to print and share your digital photos to create long-lasting memories and simply no excuses to just store your photos electronically. So share your photos with the world, or at least with everyone in the world who's important to you!

Steve M Nash is owner of Photos4.co.uk, an impartial guide to UK digital photo print services. Visit the site for recommended services, whether you want to print digital photographs, create photobooks or calendars, or make personalized gifts like mousepads.

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