Many photographers grapple with whether printing their images is necessary or if digital presentations alone suffice. Is it right for you?
Coming to you from Craig Roberts of e6 Vlogs, this insightful video confronts the idea that printing is the essential final stage of photography. Roberts openly shares his experience with an older printer, highlighting practical issues like discontinued inks and clogged print heads, suggesting that maintaining a printer might be more trouble than it's worth. He emphasizes the broader attitude toward photography in the UK, noting it's often undervalued as art compared to painting, influencing how photographers choose to present their work. Roberts points out that although physical prints feel special, the practicality and audience reach of digital presentations—such as social media or online galleries—often outweigh the benefits of traditional printing.
Roberts also discusses the economic realities of printing versus digital sharing. Producing prints involves ongoing expenses like ink, paper, and equipment maintenance, making it financially unsustainable for many unless you already have a following eager to purchase your prints. He recalls his own brief attempt at selling prints at craft fairs, revealing that the experience wasn't particularly rewarding or profitable. Conversely, digital platforms and ebooks offer affordable, straightforward ways to share your work widely, though they lack the tangible satisfaction provided by physical prints. Roberts makes a case for ebooks as a convenient compromise, giving you the ability to present curated collections without the financial risk associated with self-publishing printed books.
Expanding on alternatives, Roberts shares his current preference for smaller, tangible print methods like instant prints. These formats offer a cost-effective way to produce physical photographs without large upfront investment or ongoing expense. He references photographer Michael Kenna’s preference for smaller-sized prints as evidence that larger prints aren't inherently superior. Roberts clearly sees value in physical presentation but argues convincingly that you don't have to commit to expensive printing solutions to achieve tangible, meaningful outcomes. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Roberts.
If you're going to print get the professionals to print it for you. I'm very sorry but those desktop printers they're not the same quality and you'll spend a lot of stuffing around with calibration buying ink. It's just not worth it honestly if I'm doing a framed A2 piece which I sell for 699 the A2 print cost me $34. It's just such a small percentage of the overall cost. It's not worth it. Get the professionals to print for you and you'll get amazing results. I print for customers a lot and I would argue that printing a few of your own photos and putting them on your wall will also inspire you to go out more. It will also show up your faults with all due respect photos just sitting on smart phones on Instagram will look good but once you start printing you will really find out more about your own photography and what you need to do next. Even if you don't sell your prints I still think it's worth getting a few done because like I said you will learn a lot about your photography from looking at them and there. I say you'll probably be quite inspired to go out and shoot some more photos belong on walls, not smartphones.
I agree with about everything you've said, and taking your images to a professional printer certainly makes financial sense from your position. I suspect most people would probably prefer to spend their time making photographs rather than printing them, no matter whether they're in it for the sales or not.
But I disagree that desktop printers are necessarily inferior in terms of quality. It probably depends on the “look” of the print you’re looking for. Lab C-prints, or Chromira prints that were so popular 20 years ago have become somewhat archaic with the improvement in terms of color gamut, resolution and archival qualities of inkjet printers. I believe the LightJet 430 was introduced in 2003 at a cost of well over $200,000. I found a Chromira Prolab 5x, introduced in 2005, on eBay for $29,000. With today’s newer technology there are Lumachrome and Fujiflex prints, and it’s hard to argue their appeal if you like bright, bold, saturated colors. Landscapes print nicely on those type of printers. There’s certainly a “wow” factor there.
But not all photographs lend themselves to super-saturated, blow-you-away color for the purpose of hanging them on a wall. Personally, I don’t like the Fujiflex Crystal paper prints for my own collection of prints as much as what I can make on my inkjet printer. Black and white, for one, prints more according to its fine art heritage on a cotton-fiber paper. For almost any true fine-art print, inkjet printers are the best choice because of the wide variety of papers available, and most print labs even make that distinction by offering both technologies. For my tastes I prefer inkjet prints, and the smaller desktop units such as the Canon Prograf 310 and 1100 printers are as capable of making museum grade, high-quality, archival prints as anything else on the market. Even if I did not own a large-format printer, I would have one of the smaller Canon desktop units. They're extremely capable of making great prints.
Mate I stood side-by-side with desktop printers versus proper lab printers and I can tell you there is a massive difference. Won't you start getting into the higher grade printing and bigger prints above A2? It's probably under A2 like A4 and A3. You're not gonna notice a lot of difference, but once you start getting into a bigger frames, you are going to notice it. I'm probably referring to bigger print though and like I said I'm doing some really big stuff 1.3 m x 700 mm kind of stuff.
I don't doubt that you saw a difference. My point is that not everyone draws the same conclusion from looking at the same thing, or wishes to create the same look, feel, or aesthetics in a print as you do.
But my point is not just what makes a superior print at 1.3 meters, because that is subjective, but whether desktop printers are worth the time and cost for a hobbyist. You've concluded that their quality is too poor to be a legitimate printing option. I would agree that a $100 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier probably is comparatively poor. However, a 13" x 19" Canon Pro-300/310 or 17" x 22" Canon 1000/1100 contain virtually the same print head and ink sets as my professional level 44" wide-format printer.
For personal use, a smaller high-quality inkjet printer is perfect for someone wanting greater control over the printing process. It's a skill that takes considerable time and effort though to master, just like photography, so it's not for everyone. It's all about priorities (style of photography, the style in which images are rendered in print, and the type of customers who buy our work), and yours are different than mine.
Yeah, the difference with my prints is that they are a lot bigger than that and my clients want a wow factor that takes them into the landscape I shoot with the GFX camera which is 100 megapixel so I want to take advantage of that. I know you can shoot big with a 16 megapixel camera I understand that. But I also understand the quality that you get with a bigger lab printer and that's what I crave. I'm probably a bit of a perfectionist with it like I said for small print it's not an issue but yeah, I go for detail. I want to take the people to the landscape when they look at my photos and that's what I do.
For me, learning to print was both a nightmare and a revelation. I began printing almost as soon as I started developing my photographic voice — and it transformed my sense of color entirely.
On the one hand, printing slowed my progress. It stole time from shooting, demanded attention, and drew energy inward. But on the other hand, the act of photographing itself became more deliberate, more aware, more full of meaning.
So, in my view, if you truly want to grow — try printing. But do it seriously, with care and craft. If you're content with what you see on screen, if the process already brings you joy — you can safely leave printing aside. A large, well-calibrated monitor with accurate color rendering will serve you just as well.
I have a Canon Pro A3 colour printer that produces very good prints but I have only used it very sparingly and for printing some of my favourite images. It is a lot of hassle and expensive to use and I think compiling a photo book is a much better way to display a collection of images at a reasonable cost and is something that I will be doing more of.
Visual details and textures in a paper print can be lusciously appealing to the senses, in a way that fine food or wine can be appreciated. If that doesn’t resonate with you, no amount of logically debating the merits of printing will ever change anyone’s mind. People have described the excitement of watching a print appear in the darkroom. I get that sort of thrill watching the print materialize from my digital printer. It’s still an amazing technological marvel to me. The picture’s details emerge as the purpose of the photograph itself. I enjoy holding the print in my hands. Holding an electronic device doesn’t even come close to the satisfaction of holding a piece of paper and feeling the texture. Maybe that's because I started my career after college in the commercial printing business, so I suspect I may have some paper and ink in my DNA. Printing is my passion.
Do I save money making my own prints? Probably not. I make prints myself because I love it every bit, if not more, than capturing images with my camera in the first place. In fact, the camera is the least used tool in my photographic process. I spend far more time in post-processing, and if it’s a photo that I’m particularly happy with, I’ll print it a few times because invariably the print exposes details and issues that I don’t always see on the monitor. Nobody will ever convince me that it’s not worth the trouble. If you see it as no more than a frustrating pain-in-the-neck, then it’s not a good activity to pursue. Printing is like photography… achieving the results you want depends on skill and experience. There are no shortcuts.
If I died tomorrow, the chances that my kids will make an effort to find electronic files on my computer is zero. They hardly care about their electronic files in their own phones.
The albums with the 5x7s, the 9x12s, and the large prints that are part of their lives, will remain. Hopefully for decades.
Though I and my family have been migrants since forever and I personally have migrated and moved about a dozen times, I still have small prints from my grandfather's time. None of the electronic media we had from the 70s (tapes) made it. Any my current electronic media requires constant re-backup. The prints are still here, over 100 years old, with no special care, and they don't need devices and batteries to be viewed.
Print your pictures, because e-files are supposed to be temporary anyway, and will be lost or corrupted.
Well said!
There are other reasons to print besides trying to sell. For me personally it's difficult to call any of my images 'art' as a digital file sitting on my hard drive. I get that others might not feel that way and that's fine but for me it's hard. But when I print and have a tangible piece of art in my hand or on my wall it's a completely different feeling and experience. To each their own.