What have you done with the photos you’ve taken with your 
digital camera? Hands up if they are languishing on your hard 
drive waiting to be printed. If your hand is up you are not 
alone. Well I have my hand up too!  But  I’ve  promised myself 
that two years worth of digital photography will see the light 
of day before Christmas.  

The problem is that we expect to do out own digital printing. 
Its supposed to be a feature. This “feature” puts  many people 
off buying a digital camera in the first place. For one thing 
its not cheap. First you may need to upgrade your printer, or 
buy a photo printer. Then there are the running costs, which 
come as a shock to most new printer owners. The price of 
inkjets and photo paper doesn’t encourage much trial and error. 

Having assembled all the equipment we then have to spend some 
time working out how to use it. Suddenly we have a hobby that 
we really didn’t want and don’t have time for. We just wanted 
a nice easy way to take fantastic photos. How much simpler it 
was to take a roll of film into the photo shop and collect the 
prints an hour later!  

Well, here is the good news, you can still take you photos to 
the photo shop. Not only that but  you can delete the duds 
first. Now that’s an improvement on film. Even better you can 
email your digital images to an online photo lab and receive 
the prints back in the post. If you have Microsoft Windows XP 
you can just click on “Order Prints” in the My Pictures folder 
and off they go. What could be simpler? 

Ok so what about all the cool stuff you can do with digital 
images? You can do that too, but you don’t have to. The best 
thing for non experts to do is very little. You can crop and 
usually adjust the contrast and brightness with a single click 
using the software that came with your camera. If the software 
can manage red eye removal too, that is a trick worth 
learning-its easy. 

The thing to remember is that  digital images are free. Take 
lots. You can ditch the duds and still have one or two that are 
good for printing. Then you won’t need to bother with a lot of 
tricky time consuming editing. 

Another option, useful if you do not own a computer, is to use 
one of the self service kiosks that are springing up in urban 
and tourist centers. These machines allow a little simple 
editing and you get your prints instantly. Over the next 
12 months these are likely to be more widely available.

For more information  about printing your digital photos check 
out http://tinyurl.com/4fm3q . 

Liz Beresford owns and operates the web site Digital Cameras 
and Accessories, which provides information and resources for 
digital camera buyers, particularly new buyers. You can find 
the best value digital cameras, equipment and accessories 
online at the Digital Cameras and Accessories shop. 
http://www.digital-cameras-and-accessories.com/