Create Your Own Photo Lab - Making Quality Prints At Home
You never have to miss a moment thanks to the convenience of digital cameras. However, many of us don't want our memories stored in digital format. Printed photos let us share our memories with our friends and loved ones - we can put them on display or tap into our creative side and make a scrapbook. Meanwhile, photo printers make it easy to print photo lab quality prints at home, so the possibilities are endless.
Creative ideas for Photo Printing
Print photos are great for framing, but there are so many other ways to print and remember those special moments. Here are a few ideas:
Greeting Cards - The tradition of Christmas greeting cards with the family shot continues - and photo printers make it easy to print stacks of them to send to everyone. You can also turn holiday snaps and brilliant landscapes into fun postcards and greeting cards for use year round.
Scrapbooking - scrapbooks are still one of the best ways to preserve and relive those special moments. Art supply stores and many stationery retailers offer a variety of fun decorative pieces to really make your scrapbook stand out or you could try some of these creative scrapbooking ideas from Canon's Creative Park. Scrapbooks make great personal gifts for any memorable occasion - be it a birthday party, anniversary, wedding or graduation!
Artwork and decorative prints - show off some of your most dazzling photos somewhere outside of your desktop screensaver. You can make prints of varying sizes and present them brilliantly in frames or as part of a collage or creative piece. Look for unique ways to display your photos, such as this nifty photo mobile or these magnetic photo ropes. Meanwhile, for those serious about photo printing, you can invest in a professional photo printer and get large poster sized prints for display.
Ready to get printing? There a range of options available for photo printing. Overall, there are three categories of photo printers:
Inkjet photo printers - inkjet printers that offer a high quality photo printing option are also great for all-purpose printing. Many inkjet printers, like the Canon PIXMA printers, also offer scanning, faxing and photocopying capabilities so you can tackle a variety of tasks with one machine.
Dedicated photo printers - these machines specialise in making photo prints so they usually only print on photo paper, and are often limited to smaller sizes, such as 4x6 inch prints. Canon's range of Selphy printers offers small, compact machines that make photo printing fun and easy. Some models have an optional battery pack which means you can take your photo printing on the road and share your snaps instantly. Dedicated photo printers use either inkjet or unique thermal dye technology (also known as dye-sublimation thermal print) which allows for around 16.7 million different shades of colours.
Professional photo printers - PC Mag suggests that if you're serious about photo printing and are after large professional quality prints, a professional photo printer could be a sound investment.