By Mindi Haehl
Photo Lab Printer
If you are like me having a photo processing lab in your office is too much to resist. I bought a $360 digital camera, a $400 color photo printer and I was ready for business. Or so I thought. I took piles of pictures and filled my hard drive up with somewhat goofy pictures of all my kids, neighbors, cars and pets. I was really pleased just to have them on my computer ready to peruse at my leisure. When I showed them to relatives they often requested copies that I was dying to make with my new lab equipment.
Printing pictures at home was too expensive and the quality was poor
After printing the first 2 or 3 photos it struck me that they were not fit to put in a frame that would grace the walls of my 800 square foot apartment. I could still see the printer lines when I looked closely. Although the picture on the computer was incredibly clear, the printed copy had lost its crisp edge. I still did not give up hope. I wanted to print my own photos! I set out to find the highest quality inks and the finest of photo papers. All at its due cost I was ready to process some photos that would make my neighbors and colleagues sick with jealousy.
To make a long story short I have not used my color printer since that day and I have a drawer in my desk full of rather expensive blank photo paper.
I lived the next few years content with flipping through folders on my laptop when family was in town. When they were out of town I would avoid their phone calls and email the pictures in hopes that they would find a compressed photo sufficient to fulfill their needs.
Then out of the blue my husband decided to learn more about photography in a three week course offered at a nearby local college. Every night he would come home and rattle on about all the cutting edge information they taught him about the new digital photography age that we had entered.
You can print your digital photos online
In the midst of his sharing this information I heard him mention that the professor owned a rather large chain of camera shops.
Printing photos online and getting them in the mail was easy
They offered online photo uploads that would be processed and mailed to you in your selected sizes and various other options. It flicked a switch in my rather foggy brain and I realized that I could have my very own photo processing lab. Instead of retrieving the photos from my printer I just had to get them out of my mailbox.
Right away I jumped online and began uploading my favorite pictures. It was a piece of cake and the first few prints were free for signing up. A few days later I was putting more nails in my walls to hang some very beautiful, professional prints that I had made with my own digital camera in my very own home.
