Don’t Forget to Print!

Printing photos: it's the lost step in photography since digital came to town. Now that we have all the pictures we need right at our fingertips on our computers, it's easy to forget to print them and put them into albums. Photo images collect in our hard drives and eventually turn the process of printing them into an overwhelming impossibility.

I'd like to suggest an easy system for printing your photographs on a regular basis:

1. Make a habit of taking images from your camera's memory card and putting them onto CDs or into folders on your hard drive. Do it after each event you photograph-and don't wait! Organizing your photos as you go is the key to almost all photo storage and printing needs.
   
   
2. Label your CDs or hard drive folders with the date and name of the event. It will make finding and identifying them much easier later on.
   
   
3. Create a folder on your computer desktop called "Photos to Print."
   
   
4. At the end of each month (or quarter, or even year depending on your photo-taking tendencies) look through the CDs or folders and choose which pictures from the past month you want to include in a photo album, scrapbook or frames.
   
   
5. Copy* each image you want to have printed and paste it into your "Photos to Print" folder.
   
   *Be sure to copy, not cut. You don't want to lose the original image!
   
   
6. Once you've chosen all the photographs, go through the "Photos to Print" and take a close look at each photograph. Perform any photo-editing, cropping, color-correcting, etc. that is desired before you print them. If you do not have any photo-editing software, this step can also be done using an online photo-developing service or an in-store kiosk.
   
   
7. Upload your photos to your online photo-developing service of choice or use a CD, jump drive or a memory card to transfer the images to a portable device that you can take to the store with you to make the prints.
   
   
8. Choose the sizes and quantities of each photograph that you'd like to print, and place your order.
   
   
9. When your photos arrive, divide them up according to where they will be used: scrapbook page, frame, mail to family, etc. If they belong in frames, put them there. If they will go in a scrapbook page, put them in a page protector. If they are photos that need to be mailed, mail them.
   
   
10. Once your photos are printed and received, you can delete the images in your "Photos to Print" folder and you'll be ready to do it all again next month.

Don't let your photos be trapped in digital form forever! Print your favorites, and print them often. All you need is a system.

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