Are you pleased with your 4x6 digital photos?
 

I find that after editing my digital photos on my computer, that I am a little disappointed when I see them as little 4x6 prints! Anyone else feel that way? I like making CD's and viewing them on a TV.

Well, you can print them larger than 4x6. Have you tried printing them at, say, 8x12?

But a TV works fine. I usually just use my laptop screen...

I am planning to print about 600 photos of my trip to Russia, so I guess I can't afford to print 8x12's. Maybe I will enlarge some of them!

Do you backup to an external hard drive?

Drive as in only one? No, I have about a dozen backup drives. :-) Seriously. A few of them are for photos.

I'm a serious photographer actually. I have about 120GB of photos so far. I have two copies of them where I live and another copy (incremental) on hard drives on the opposite coast.

So I have at least three copies of every photo in my archive.

I am pleased with my 4x6 prints (which I order online from Kodak). But I am much MORE pleased with looking at the photos on my Mac....they are so big and bright.

I find I am only getting prints to mail family pics to relatives who don't have a computer, or when we want a photo to carry with us to show off the grandkids etc.

For photos i want to "back up" I make a CD and those are in my safe deposit box. Not the most tech-savvy method, I know.

I print mine 8X10 and sell them (sometimes bigger - I've got 2 that are 16X20)... so they are pleasing or I don't print them :P

aloha, just remember that CDs can degrade over time, and even in your safe deposit box, that CD may be become unreadable in a few years. It's really important to have more than one copy of any important files you have. A CD as one copy is fine. But consider a portable hard drive as an alternative. They are getting cheaper and cheaper for more and more space.

I upload photos to Flickr in addition to backing them up on an external drive.

As a professional photographer, I have no interest in giving some right to my photos to Flickr (Yahoo) or anyone else, and I don't want to rely on them to keep a pristine, original copy of my images. What if they decide to compress your images to save disk space and money for them? What if they start deleting your images if they aren't viewed for, say, a year?

Flickr is a nice photo sharing site, no doubt, but I wouldn't personally rely on them to keep archives of your photos.

Andrew, I do know that CDs can degrade, but I was thinking that would be in 10 or more years....should I be thinking it can happen in 2 or 3 years? Is there a type or brand of CD that you could expect to be longer-lasting than others?

My own approach is to use different brands of CDs when burning copies. Copy 1 may be a Memorex, Copy 2 may be a TDK. But I don't think you can count on any period of time for them to remain 100% readable. They may be fine in 20 years, or the CD may have been marginally OK when you first burned it and it could quickly degrade.

I still would never rely on a CD or DVD as my only copy of any files. Having multiple copies including one on a hard drive seems like the safest approach to me.

To each his/or her own - and if I were a professional photographer, I wouldn't store my photos online either. For the average person though, I think Fickr is a good way to go.

I wouldn't use them as my only archive, but it is great as a backup.

My disappointment is that the prints that I order on-line look so much worse than the photos on my computer.

I've tried several different services - and none are really good at getting colors right.

I finally got one to explain it to me. He said that most people don;t notice because they're using PCs (some of which have only 256 colors). Macs are set to show colors in the millions - while the print machinery used by the on-line services is much less precise (thus you often end up with really dark or off color prints). Now I go to a local photo store - where they apparently have someone actually monitoring and adjusting the printer - and prints cost more but look a whole lot better.

nytraveler writes: <i>I finally got one to explain it to me. He said that most people don;t notice because they're using PCs (some of which have only 256 colors). Macs are set to show colors in the millions - while the print machinery used by the on-line services is much less precise (thus you often end up with really dark or off color prints).</i>

Are you talking about circa. 1997? Something would have to be screwed up on a PC to have it display only 256 colors (and you'd notice) - they all display millions of colors now by default, unless you are re-installing Windows and don't install the right video driver. Most people I suspect never install Windows, just use whatever comes installed on the computer which would be set to millions of colors.

Obviously the person who told you this has knowledge that is about ten years out of date.

Andrew, thank you for your answer to my question.

I think the difference now is you see your photos before getting them printed. Those convenience printers (i.e., Target, etc.) are doing what they always did with your images. Only now, you can see that THEY are messing them up - rather than believing the old hype that you took a crappy photo.

Target, etc. set their developing system to one photo per batch (or roll). With film, that was usually OK because you took the photos at one event. Rarely would you have a roll extending multiple events. Now with digital, you may not print until you've filled your card - which could take months. That means you're processing photographs that were taken in various locations, different times of day, etc. The odds of the photos coming out poorly are much greater.

Andrew -

I'm not talking anything. This is the answer I got from the photo service when I asked why the colors in the prints were so far off those on the computer screen (usually much darker).

Perhaps it was just his excuse for the fact that no one looks at any of the prints - they just print off masses without looking.

As I said, now I go to a local shop (where apparently someone looks at the prints being made) and the colors are closer to what they should be - but still not as good as on the computer. And you really have to stay on top of them - I find I need to refuse them about 1/3 of the time. It's especially bad when you get black and dark blue together - and what is clearly 2 very different colors on the screen (real black and a dark, but brilliant blue) comes out as one dark blob of color.

Here's an option - check out www.whcc.com. I use them to print out my photos for sale, they are great. :)