Printing, storage & Editing

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CocoFray

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Edit My Images
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Hi I am pretty new to photography and have a couple of questions that I'd love to hear people's view on:

First of all printing: I love a printed photo my current printer seems to do nothing but crash and the photos seem to come up dark on it. I am wondering if people have suggestions on a reasonably priced printer that will:
A. Print a good quality photo
B. Not cost an arm and leg in ink!

Secondly, in terms of actually editting photos prior to printing or sharing what is everybody using?

Again it's for a hobby rather than a profession is there such a thing as a good Intuitive piece of editing software that is free? Or cheap?

Finally (sorry!) What is the most cost effective and secure way of storing images? Mine were syncing direct to one drive which obviously filled it up really quickly so I'd be interested to hear what people use

Thank you in advance
 
Hi there,

New printers are a bit of a minefield. Generally cheap printers have small ink carts, so you end up needing lots of them. Larger printers are more expensive but generally have bigger carts so you need to buy less frequency. When I was doing research the cost per ml of ink went down, the bigger the cart. There are eco printers that feed from bottles which might be a better option, but an idea of budget might help here!

I use Lightroom (paid for), but there are some good free ones out there. I tend to recommend Darktable which is free and has a friendly user interface, but I haven't looked at it in a while.

Do you have Amazon Prime? You get free unlimited photo storage with that which is a nice alternative. Personally, the most cost effective for me is a big hard drive on my PC, backed up to an external hard drive, with a second backup to Amazon Prime (cloud). That way, if my PC packs up, I have a convenient backup with the hard drive, and if my house burns down I have a less convenient restore from the cloud. For me, that's a cost effective solution (a physical disk at home is going to be cheaper long term than cloud), but it really depends on what value you attach to your images.

Hope that helps! I'm sure others will be along to chime in.
 
CocoFray said:
Hi I am pretty new to photography and have a couple of questions that I'd love to hear people's view on:

First of all printing: I love a printed photo my current printer seems to do nothing but crash and the photos seem to come up dark on it. I am wondering if people have suggestions on a reasonably priced printer that will:
A. Print a good quality photo
B. Not cost an arm and leg in ink!
Click to expand...

Dark prints can be the result of a screen which is too bright.

I think you have to balance ink costs with number of prints made. If you only print occasionally then it's possibly not worth investing in printer with more expensive, but better value in teh long run, ink cartridges.

FWIW I use a Canon iP8750 and it does a good enough job for me with prints up to A3+, and I use it as my everyday 'office' printer.
 
Ed Sutton said:
Dark prints can be the result of a screen which is too bright.
Click to expand...
True. Check the brightnes in settings, and aim for about 50% for starters.

Once that's sorted, for prints it's probably simpler to use a service like Photobox. Home printers have a short life, are a hassle and far from environmentally friendly.

An external hard drive of 2 or 3 Tb will hold a serious quantity of image files.

Software - you could try Affinity Photo - very powerful for the price. You could trial it free for a period, but all software has a learning curve that's steepest at the start ..
 
I used an Epson 2100 for years to produce my A3+ prints of my artwork, it has seven individual cartridges so you only need to replace the one that is empty rather than waste ink from multicolored cartridges.
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I'm not sure I can concur with @droj when he says home printers have a short life. My Epson P1400 is a teenager and my wife's XP-900 is certainly more than 5 years old. I think I've got good value for money from them :)

As mentioned already, dark images can often be as a result of a screen that is too bright but can also be caused by using third party cartridges and/or not selecting the correct type of paper in the printer settings. Both of these can cause all sorts of undesirable results.

Both of the printers we have have been fitted with a continuous ink system and I use genuine Epson ink which I buy from their "ink tank" range. This reduces the costs significantly - The normal XP-900 ink set is £70-75 whereas ink tank set is £45-50 AND the quantity of ink in the tanks is HUGE compared with the individual cartridges.

Hope that helps :)
 
If you asked 10 photographers your questions you would probably get 20 answers to each of the 3 questions :)

I use a Canon Pixma printer with third party inks and third party paper. It gives me results that I am happy to have on show indoors, the colours may not be 100% and they do fade after a while. If I want better quality or longer lasting prints then I get them done for me.

For editing GIMP is good and free, Photoshop Elements costs but is very good, it has a basic setting which is extremely easy to use and a guided setting for more complex adjustments, once you understand the basics there is an Expert setting. You can download a trial

For backup I use an external hard drive which is permanantly attached to the PC, I back up to that at least daily. I have another external hard drive which I back up to when I feel I need to, that is kept in a fireproof, waterproof safe. I also back up to my wife's laptop.
 
The first thing to do is to check that your computer monitor is correctly calibrated.
Secondly, it's usually far cheaper, quicker and better to send your digital files to a specialist printer than to print them yourself.

As for storage, you can store them on your hard drive(s) but, if the photos are important to you then you need to create backups elsewhere - you can use all sorts of remote services, and/or you can store to a separate hard drive, they're pretty cheap, and/or you can store to USB stick(s).
 
Garry Edwards said:
Secondly, it's usually far cheaper, quicker and better to send your digital files to a specialist printer than to print them yourself.
Click to expand...

I do agree with this. Using a printer like DSCL can give you very good results at almost minimal cost, unless you want to go down the "fine art" print route with fancy papers.
 
Harlequin565 said:
Hi there,

New printers are a bit of a minefield. Generally cheap printers have small ink carts, so you end up needing lots of them. Larger printers are more expensive but generally have bigger carts so you need to buy less frequency. When I was doing research the cost per ml of ink went down, the bigger the cart. There are eco printers that feed from bottles which might be a better option, but an idea of budget might help here!

I use Lightroom (paid for), but there are some good free ones out there. I tend to recommend Darktable which is free and has a friendly user interface, but I haven't looked at it in a while.

Do you have Amazon Prime? You get free unlimited photo storage with that which is a nice alternative. Personally, the most cost effective for me is a big hard drive on my PC, backed up to an external hard drive, with a second backup to Amazon Prime (cloud). That way, if my PC packs up, I have a convenient backup with the hard drive, and if my house burns down I have a less convenient restore from the cloud. For me, that's a cost effective solution (a physical disk at home is going to be cheaper long term than cloud), but it really depends on what value you attach to your images.

Hope that helps! I'm sure others will be along to chime in.
Click to expand...
Harlequin565 said:
Hi there,

New printers are a bit of a minefield. Generally cheap printers have small ink carts, so you end up needing lots of them. Larger printers are more expensive but generally have bigger carts so you need to buy less frequency. When I was doing research the cost per ml of ink went down, the bigger the cart. There are eco printers that feed from bottles which might be a better option, but an idea of budget might help here!

I use Lightroom (paid for), but there are some good free ones out there. I tend to recommend Darktable which is free and has a friendly user interface, but I haven't looked at it in a while.

Do you have Amazon Prime? You get free unlimited photo storage with that which is a nice alternative. Personally, the most cost effective for me is a big hard drive on my PC, backed up to an external hard drive, with a second backup to Amazon Prime (cloud). That way, if my PC packs up, I have a convenient backup with the hard drive, and if my house burns down I have a less convenient restore from the cloud. For me, that's a cost effective solution (a physical disk at home is going to be cheaper long term than cloud), but it really depends on what value you attach to your images.

Hope that helps! I'm sure others will be along to chime in.
Click to expand...
Great thanks I do also have Amazon prime why have I never thought of that? I'll do some research into the other bits you suggest...thanks
 
Suvv said:
If you asked 10 photographers your questions you would probably get 20 answers to each of the 3 questions :)

I use a Canon Pixma printer with third party inks and third party paper. It gives me results that I am happy to have on show indoors, the colours may not be 100% and they do fade after a while. If I want better quality or longer lasting prints then I get them done for me.

For editing GIMP is good and free, Photoshop Elements costs but is very good, it has a basic setting which is extremely easy to use and a guided setting for more complex adjustments, once you understand the basics there is an Expert setting. You can download a trial

For backup I use an external hard drive which is permanantly attached to the PC, I back up to that at least daily. I have another external hard drive which I back up to when I feel I need to, that is kept in a fireproof, waterproof safe. I also back up to my wife's laptop.
Click to expand...
Super lots of great info here thank you!
 
Garry Edwards said:
The first thing to do is to check that your computer monitor is correctly calibrated.
Secondly, it's usually far cheaper, quicker and better to send your digital files to a specialist printer than to print them yourself.

As for storage, you can store them on your hard drive(s) but, if the photos are important to you then you need to create backups elsewhere - you can use all sorts of remote services, and/or you can store to a separate hard drive, they're pretty cheap, and/or you can store to USB stick(s).
Click to expand...
Agree I send my files to DSCL but there’s several firms that do it , it’s not worth printing them yourself
 
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