Digital Photo Print Services Online - Is It Easier Than Printing Photos At Home?

Printing photos at home is expensive

Let’s cut right to the chase. What does it cost to print your own photos? Everybody likes the convenience of printing their own photos at home, but nobody is satisfied with the quality. I will show you that the cost is actually much higher and the quality is much lower when you print your own photos at home as opposed to having them printed by a professional developer. I will also let you know what a good alternative is. First, let’s look at the costs of doing your photos at home.

Cost of printing at home

Supplies and cost w/tax

Med. Quality Photo paper $19.66/100 sheets.

Color and B&W Ink $61.61.

Photo Printer $382.49.

Photo Editing Software $53.11.

Total cost $516.87.


Total cost per Photo $1.64.

WOW! That is expensive

Before you say I am crazy I will prove that these are conservative costs. The medium quality photo paper was priced on clearance at Office Max. The monotone and color cartridges were priced as a combo deal. The photo printer was the PSC 950 which is in most regards a cheap printer. Last but not least the editing software was not Adobe Photoshop which can cost over $500. It was a cheap Microsoft version that will do simple editing on images and video.

This is also assuming that you only print 10 photos per week, and that you only use your printer and software for two years. If we used a more realistic number for instance 10 photos per month then the cost per photo would go up to $3.04. For the ink I used 60 full color sheets per set of cartridges. I have never been able to print over 20. With other printing on that same printer I only got about 8 full pages out of the cartridges. The pictures were so bad that they ended up in the garbage. So the prices of photos can range from $1.64 per photo to over $3. Pretty costly for prints that you cannot display or hang on your walls.

Printing them online and having them mailed or picked up costs much less?

How about uploading your pictures to a professional and having them ready to pick up in one hour? Or uploading them to a professional and having quality prints mailed to you for prices as low as 12 cents per print?