What's the best way to do digital prints?

My wife and I have found that it's cheaper and you get better quality prints from online services. We like kodakgallery.com (formerly ofoto). We've tried snapfish as well and they also do good work.

Let's say a good photo printer costs you $100 on sale plus future consumables like paper/ink. At ~15 cents per photo, your breakeven point is over 650 prints. Both kodakgallery.com and snapfish.com give you 20 free prints just for signing up -- no future commitments. So you can try before you buy.

Good luck!

Unless speed is an issue I'd go with an online service. I like Mpix.com. They have the best color accuracy I have tried, and I have tried many online labs.

If I need something quick I prefer Walmart over Walgreens. That said I have had some pictures done at Walmart that were terrible. I have found that it depends a lot on the people running the equipment.

There are several good inkjet printers out there but to match the quality of the photo labs you will need to get one of the more expensive models. Those models have lots of ink tanks and we all know that the printer companies make their money off of the ink. Having a printer is kind of a Catch-22. If you use it a lot it will cost, but it you don't use it much you risk the ink heads getting clogged.

It depends on how many you are making and how often you would need to print photos.

If you are someone that needs to print photos frequently, then you should invest in an inkjet photo printer and some glossy photo printer paper.

If you are not someone that needs to print alot of photos very often or needs to print a large amount on just one or two occasions then you can either use an online service or a photo store service.

Shutterfly.com produces very good quality prints and has fast turnaround. For faster turnaround, put your photo files on a CD or USB thumb drive or other flash media and take them to a 1-hour photo lab. 8x10 prints typically cost $2 to $3. Photo labs use expensive professional quality equipment so you should use them when quality is your primary concern. When quality is not a concern, then homemade inkjet prints will suffice, but the cost is not much lower. Good heavyweight glossy 8x10 photo paper costs 50 cents or more per sheet and the cost of printer ink is insane.

It is much cheaper to get them printed than to print it yourself. You don't need to print them online only. You can go pretty much anywhere to get them printed. Your local chain drug store, WalMart, etc. will all have kiosks where you can bring your memory card and have the pictures printed off.