Do you get your photos printed?

[rosarugosa]

I find it a bit unsettling that after a certain point in time I have no hard copies of photos. Today I checked and found that the company where I used to mail in my film has an online easy upload and order prints function, and it was really cheap. I was about to get a lot of prints made to capture all the digital photos I have on my hard drive and Facebook and now my phone, but then I stopped and wondered whether I really need to do this or not. It would just be more stuff, right? I did get a few prints made of some recent pictures with relatives so I can share with my Mom (who doesn't have a computer or a smart phone), but I thought I would ponder for awhile before doing anything more large scale. I will also add that I've always been very good at organizing hard copies of photos, but my digital photo archives are much more chaotic. What do you all do with your photos?

[iris lilies]

I am just now trying to figure out what to do with images from our European vacation. i doubt that we will print any of them.

Up until now my archive format of choice was paper, but I printed very very few, and kept a slew of images digitally. I always figured the digital ones might disappear someday, and so be it. But now I dont know. i dont really have terrific images from this vacation I would like to keep forever.

I do print a few garden and plant related images for flower show contests. Photography contests at my low level still require prints that are matted.

[bae]

I haven't printed any in years and years, except when I needed to make physical presentations/gifts and such.

[razz]

I have a huge bin of printed photos in albums that no one wants but I am not yet ready to discard. I know that one can scan them to store and later print but would not a simple album with key photos be more visible and enjoyable now?
Going to watch this thread to see what others suggest.
BTW, I take a very few photos now with my iPhone and glance at them periodically but it is the limited number that is enjoyable.

[mschrisgo2]

For the last several years, i have mostly saved photos from my phone to the cloud. They are cataloged by year and event. I have forwarded a few of family to my daughter and brother, and just very recently printed a select few of my dogs for a little "dog album."

However, I have 12 shoe box size archival boxes full of prints, as well as an album from 35 years ago. I need to deal with the boxes full; mostly I just shake my head and think, What a waste of money that was!! The photos in the album have faded badly, that may end up in the trash soon. However, I am very glad I shot a couple of rolls of black and white film of my daughter in her first year, those are very precious prints.

I suppose I won't know until I gt into the boxes what the criteria for saving is going to be. We traveled the country every summer in the motorhome for about 12 years, and it was fun to take pictures of new places...

[Teacher Terry]

No. My kids want the photo albums from their childhood so will keep those for them.

[catherine]

Same here. All my photos are digital. But I do make a family calendar every year with the "Best of 201x".

[CathyA]

Being the bit of a neurotic person that I am, and afraid of losing things, I have digitalized some of our old prints, and all the new ones I take on various digital cameras, we back up several times. I'm even thinking of putting them all on a thumb drive thingy (did I say that right?) and keep it in our safety deposit box.

[Float On]

I still love going home and pulling out one of mom's photo albums (she organizes by year) and looking over the memories. In fact, I did that just yesterday while I was up north visiting the farm. I chose an album that was one of my better horse show years.
My own storage system is chaos! A few albums, mostly photo boxes not organized in any manner. My digital system is even more chaos. Memory cards and memory sticks tossed in a bowl - that my husband keeps insisting I should move to the safe-deposit box but I intend to upload them sometime and maybe create a few coffee table books...it does represent my husbands entire glass career and our children's lives.

[SteveinMN]

I print only when someone else wants to look at them. I have a SiL who's big into scrapbooking, so I will end up printing pictures for her (actually, just as often I send them to her and she gets them printed). And I print some of my better stuff for display on our walls. Other than that, electronic it is. And they're backed up in three places. :~)

[BikingLady]

I have maybe a dozen pictures on my phone. No actual prints in years. I am ok with that as I do not look at old pictures.

[jp1]

No prints here. I take dozens of pictures everywhere I go, upload the best few to Facebook, back everything up to dropbox, download them from Dropbox onto my laptop where they get sorted by event or type. That folder gets backed up to an external hard drive once a month. At random times I will change my screen backgrounds on various devices to my favorites among the new photos. The vast majority of,pictures that I stake never get looked at by anyone but me.

[Simplemind]

I love photography and I have photobooks made from our vacations. I figure when I'm riddled with dementia I can look back on them and remember my travels.

[Rogar]

I have a collection of photo prints in albums from the film days. I actually get them out a time or two times a year, sometimes on snowy evenings, and go through all of them. As far as keepsake photos go now, I don't print any of them from the digital files. I am fairly good at editing and organizing the digital files. I back them up a couple of times a year on external drives. I have a large capacity flash drive that fits neatly in my safety deposit box kept at the bank. I update that with photos and any important documents occasionally.

[KayLR]

Walgreen's has a service where you can download photo files to their website and create printed photobooks. I've used this for special vacations and excursions, mainly as gifts for my grandson when we do special things together. Last winter we went to OMSI (science museum) where they had a Lego artist's exhibit ---it was incredible--I had taken a lost of photos with the grandson in them with exhibit pieces. I got the photos made into a book and gave it to him as a keepsake. He also has one of a train trip we took. So I guess I'm saying I print ones I want to keep as keepsakes, and this service binds them all together into a nice product.