Digital Photo Printing - Money Saving Tips

After writing about digital photo printing way back in June I set out to find some great money-saving digital photo tips. I came up with a few, but I gotta say, I learned them the hard way. Now you can learn from my stupid digital photo mistakes. Just follow these simple tips and you’ll save yourself some cash, not to mention some heartache …

1. Find how much each digital photo print will cost before you press the print button (or fill out the order form). I had a few dozen digital images output as 4″ x 6″ prints at a local mom and pop photo store. I forgot to ask how much each print would cost. Well, I didn’t just pay for them, I paid for them … at double the cost of my next batch at the local chain pharmacy. I’m sorry to say that I won’t be back at the mom and pop. (If one hour photo is your company motto, don’t promise the pictures in three hours.)

2. Always check for special offers (both on- and off-line). Our local chain pharmacy store has a nifty new self-service digital photo printing setup. It will accept all kinds of media–from compact flash to CD-ROMs. The price and quality are excellent, as they should be with Kodak paper and chemistry. (And they hooked me up with the prints in about fifteen minutes.) Unfortunately, I didn’t realize (until after I made the prints) that the pharmacy runs digital photo coupon specials in their junk mail fliers. Needless to say, I threw out that junk mail and another ten bucks.

3. Do not leave photo prints in your car trunk. Uh, yeah. This one was really stupid. I left fifteen bucks of gorgeous 8″ x 10″ prints in the trunk of my car. I couldn’t figure out where I had left them … three weeks later, there they were, hopelessly fused together. Of course, since the prints came from digital files, it was just a matter of getting them reprinted, but still …