Photographic Printing
Thursday, June 26, 2008 @ 00:33
Many of us take thousands of digital pictures in a given month. We shoot pictures in all sorts of genres and in all types of environments. Some of them are beautiful while others, well; let's just say we'd prefer to forget we ever took them.
Most of us like to keep our work, at least in electronic form, but what about those one-of-a-kind shots that we just have to show off to others. Those we print.
In the past, to print a photograph, you had to take the negatives into a darkroom and expose them to photosensitive paper with an enlarger. Then you would have to chemically treat the photo paper in a series of baths, developer, stopper bath with fresh water, a fixing bath and finally a rinsing bath again with fresh water. This was a long and cumbersome process and often involved a substantial investment to acquire all of the materials necessary to construct the dark room, not to mention the loss of one room in the home to other uses.
Today, thankfully, with the advent of digital photography and photo printers, the process of printing photos is no more cumbersome than printing out that PowerPoint slide presentation for your next client meeting. Digital images can be captured on a memory card in your digital camera, the images are then transferred to a computer disk and perhaps "fixed" or enhanced with a few strokes in a decent photo editing package. Finally they can be printed on a relatively inexpensive photo printer using specialized photo paper that one can buy at any OfficeMax or Staples store.
Standard print sizes usually range from 3" x 5?, 4? x 6? to 5" x 7? and most home photo printers will handle these with ease. If you don't have a photo printer at home and would prefer not to invest in one, you still have inexpensive options. Many pharmacies and photo stores offer printing services and often they can provide you with your finished prints in little more than an hour. Some of these retail outlets even have an in-store kiosk where you can plug in your memory card and select the photos you want to print. Finally, there are online options such as kodakgallery.com where you can upload photo galleries and order prints right online. These online retailers even offer options where you can "build" custom-made photo books, complete with captions and have them shipped loaded with your favorite photos.
The "digital age" has certainly provided us with many more options than the old days of darkroom chemicals and accidentally over-exposed prints.
