Do you print and archive your digital pictures?

[fatoddsun]

Has anyone ever used Bob Books? I was thinking to give it a shot... They have good reviews and they offer the option to print on silver halide photographic paper and bind in "lie-flat" style.

[Manfred M]

they offer the option to print on silver halide photographic paper and bind in "lie-flat" style.

This suggests that they are using a commercial chromogenic printing process using papers like Fuji Crystal Archive paper. This is the processes typically used in mass production photo printing because it is the lowest cost option.

The other main book printing process involves a "digital press", which is nothing more than a high speed laser printer, often with additional colours beyond the basic cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

[fatoddsun]

They say it's their professional quality paper, and it's 300gsm. From the website they look rather competent, although I could not find more info about the specific type of paper they use; that's why I was curious about anyone's personal experience. There is also a review of a guy on youtube here, where the quality seems quite nice.

[ideaprog]

Negatives can be printed after 100 years, even if the technology changes, having negatives you can always get new and beautiful photos. I recently printed a photograph from a negative taken in 1966

[Manfred M]

Negatives can be printed after 100 years, even if the technology changes, having negatives you can always get new and beautiful photos. I recently printed a photograph from a negative taken in 1966

That is not a universal "truth". It depends on how well the negative was processed, handled and stored, even for B&W film. When it comes to colour negatives and transparencies, these can and do deteriorate over time.

[fatoddsun]

Sorry to jump back on the previous topic, but after trying Bob Books I can confirm they do an amazing job!
I am really really pleased with the quality of their service and final product!

Just wanted to share, in case someone is looking for a good company that prints photo books.

[Leowu]

Hi, need advise. Wanna buy printer for print my photos think about Espon, but don't shure whitch model to choose. Think among V550 or V600. (characterisrics here: https://www.bestadvisor.com/scanners...erfection-v600) their functions are almost the same, but what will be more profitable?
Plz tell me

[Donald]

What you've given us links to are Scanners not Printers.

You need to read up about the difference between printers and scanners before thinking about which model of printer you want.

I use an Epson printer and will be happy to give you an opinion, but I think you'd best read in general terms about photographic printers in the first instance.

Also, I'd suggest that when you do come back for advice, that you start a new thread rather than jumping onto an already started thread that is not really about the topic on which your are asking.

[Leowu]

Oh, maybe then you will advise the printer? I need that there was good image quality, and speed is not important.

[Donald]

Oh, maybe then you will advise the printer? I need that there was good image quality, and speed is not important.

Rather than advise what printer, I will be happy to comment on your selection of possible printers. I do think you need to understand printers and photographic printing much more than you do just now before you decide which printer it is that you would buy.

Photographic printing is not the same as printing a document or a spreadsheet. There is quite a bit more to it than that. I would strongly advise you to read about photographic printing and then you can start looking at suitable printers

[Manfred M]

Oh, maybe then you will advise the printer? I need that there was good image quality, and speed is not important.

It's difficult to advise unless one understands your actual printing skills and printing requirements; i.e. size of prints you are planning to make and how often you are planning to print. I personally use the Epson SureColor P800 and with it I generally produce several hundred prints per year up to 17" / 43cm wide. I have a paper roll attachment for the printer, so can in theory make prints that are up to 50 ft / 15m long, although in practice, I would rarely go longer than 51" / 1.3m.

The SureColor model numbers starting with the P600 use at least 9 colours and archival pigment inks. I tend to print on high end photo papers, usually rag or baryta papers.

[Leowu]

SupeColor looks good. Canon PIXMA PRO-100S, Epson L1800. all kinds of bloggers highlight these models, they say that the best price-quality ratio and praise color rendering. What do you think?

[Manfred M]

SupeColor looks good. Canon PIXMA PRO-100S, Epson L1800. all kinds of bloggers highlight these models, they say that the best price-quality ratio and praise color rendering. What do you think?

The Canon is an entry level dye based photo printer, the Epson model is not (only 4 inks).

I really don't care what bloggers say. You are asking photographers who print high end fine art quality work, and they will likely give a better answer than the bloggers, but only if you answer the questions on what you are trying to achieve and what you are trying to do with the prints.

Like any other piece of equipment, one has to understand what you are trying to do with it. In many cases, I do not recommend a photo printer to people, but suggest they use an external print lab because for most people that is the most cost effective solution. If you are looking at producing large size, fine art image and will be printing daily, I would give you a different answer than if you are looking at printing off the occasional family snapshot.

[Antonio Correia]

I am having some trouble, I should say work to select and organize the best photos I take. I do not take many in fact. I select some which are printed in A5 or A3+ and organised in projects

But I just wonder how do you manage your time to select the best images among so many... and I am not counting the time spent on working on each image, hesitations, failures and so on...

At this moment I have the number of photos you see in the screen capture bellow, which include many which are gradually being sent to trash. I try to manage the keywords when importing the photos, and this is also very time consuming.

[Leowu]

I photograph goods on a turntable for advertising. My orders are not large for 20-50 photos. So image quality is more important to me in priority.

[Antonio Correia]

...So image quality is more important to me in priority.

That is good point. But sometimes we have do take a few photos to get a good one, haven't we ?

[Leowu]

You bet! Sometimes I have to expose the light for hours to make everything perfect

[Manfred M]

I photograph goods on a turntable for advertising. My orders are not large for 20-50 photos. So image quality is more important to me in priority.

The image quality is generally a function of the skills of the print maker as much as the quality of the printer itself.

If you are creating images for advertising, then you might be able to get away with a printer that is not a photo quality one. Most print advertising is done on offset presses using a simple CMYK ink set. It is done on fairly inexpensive paper stock and it has a very limited life, i.e. measured in days or weeks rather than years or decades. I would suggest that you do not need a photo printer.

The other consideration is the cost of the consumables; ink / toner and paper. If you are printing 20 - 50 images a day, that would give a completely different view than printing 20 - 50 images a year. In general ink / toner unit costs go down as size of the cartridge increases. As an example a 25.9ml cartridge for the P600 costs $USD32 or $USD1.24/ml whereas the same ink for a P800 80ml cartridge runs at $USD 58 or $USD 0.73/ml.

[DanK]

I photograph goods on a turntable for advertising.

In this case, it seems to me, you don't need archival quality--that is, you don't need images that will resist fading for more than 10-15 years. If that is correct, my personal advice would be a good dye-ink dedicated printer. They are much cheaper than pigment printers and are less prone to clogging because the ink doesn't comprise suspended particles. (One person here has had the revers experience, but if you look online, I think you will find that the common experience is that dye-ink printers are less prone to clogging.) The Canon Pixma Pro 100, a dye ink printer, is quite inexpensive if you wait for Canon's periodic sales, and it produces stunning prints, similar to those I get from my Prograf 1000, which costs several times as much.

However, as Donald wrote:

Photographic printing is not the same as printing a document or a spreadsheet. There is quite a bit more to it than that. I would strongly advise you to read about photographic printing and then you can start looking at suitable printers

If anything, that is an understatement. Learning to print photos with a good printer is a complicated task. You need to learn about ICC profiles, the characteristics of different papers, softproofing, and how to control the printing from whatever software you use. It's not like printing a document, which takes two keystrokes.