Digital Printing Tips

Get more out of your digital printing service (whether you pay for it or not), with out digital printing tips:

1. Don't rely on online albums to store your images
   Most of the online printing services will provide you with free space, or albums, to store you images. Whilst these are very useful for organising your collection they should not be relied on as permanent storage. If you value your images it is much better to save them to some sort of removable media, such as a CD or DVD.

2. Increase your resolution
   The single biggest factor affecting final print quality is the resolution of your image. If your digital camera has several settings (most do) then have it set to the highest resolution setting when taking pictures. If you find that you are getting short of space it is better to invest is some more memory for your camera than to reduce the quality of your images.
   

3. Watch out for cropping
   The images that your digital camera takes are usually not quite the same dimensions as those taken by a standard 35mm camera. Some photo printing services are now aware of this and print on new paper sizes, but some will either crop the edges of the image or provide borders in order to make the image fit. All of these approaches are acceptable under different circumstances, but it is worth keeping an eye out for which method is being used.
   

4. Pre-purchase credits where possible
   If you print images fairly regularly pre-purchasing credits can save you even more money. Because the processing services have to pay the credit card companies to process your payment, they offer discounts if you buy more credits in one go.