Have you ever purchased digital images from your photo studio San Diego only to be completely disappointed when you got the images printed from your local retail store and hung them on your wall?
You’re not alone.
Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, we shot some beautiful photographs for a client and gave her the digital images in a custom USB. When we visited her home one day, I noticed the images we’d so painstakingly created hanging on her wall and almost cried.
Why?
Because we spent hours and hours shooting and editing those photos and she had them printed at a local discount store. They looked awful! The image quality did not at all represent our work and the time we had put into creating them!
A professional photograph is a work of art. It’s something people typically spend a significant amount of time and money getting done, so doesn’t it make sense that people should put the same amount of care in having them printed?
Printed Photos vs Digital Images
The point of digital images is simply to compress images and have a place to store them temporarily. It was never really meant to be a means of transferring professional photographs to clients, but some photographers will end up selling digital images, most of the time at a premium price. But there are a couple of reasons they would rather offer printed photos vs digital images:
1. In selling clients digital images, most of them will never get printed. You probably have good intentions of printing them, but chances are you stick them in a drawer and never do anything with them.
Imagine that you found the perfect photographer, had beautiful images shot and stuck the disc in your drawer to have printed later. The problem is you are a busy Mom and/or you have a job and you keep forgetting to get them printed… then years go by… Your child is now ten and has never seen her baby pictures until now. How wonderful would it have been for her to see her own photos on your wall all these years? Why put these photos away to never be enjoyed by family members?
2. Photographers know that the quality of the images will suffer if printed cheaply and that reflects poorly on them.
Imagine this scenario…
You spend an entire afternoon Googling the best photo studio San Diego near me and come up with an impressive list of photographers you’re interested in hiring. Your selected photographer spends hours shooting and editing your photos to give you the perfect images. If you have them printed at your local retail store, some of the image quality and colors are often lost, leaving you with a less-than-impressive piece of art.
Buying high quality photo prints from your photographer on the other hand, ensures that you are getting the best product. Your photographer will choose the best professional lab for your images and have them frame-ready for you when you get them home.
3. CDs and USBs sometimes get damaged, losing files permanently.
How many times has a CD gotten scratched and lost data? It happens all the time! And even if you’re photographer and uses USB drives, they’re not foolproof. With the rapidly changing technology, why chance not having a way to view those in a few years?
It’s always best to have your photos printed and framed professionally to avoid any of these scenarios.
Despite our advice, many people still prefer digital images over high quality photo prints for various reasons, and that’s okay. It is after all, your choice. One of the reasons may be that you are taking the photos yourself and will have to first store them digitally. If this is the case, we highly suggest that you find a cloud to store your images, like DROPBOX, Google Drive or iCloud.