[prmoustache]

I went back to printing photos on a regular basis.

It is relatively easy to select the best and edit photos every other day on vacations or at home for printing. It is however a major PITA to do that for hundreds or thousands of photos at a time. Thus I am still too lazy to have a look at those 20 years gap where the only pictures I took were digitized and are stored on a hard drive and remote backup.

[tomek_ycomb]

I told my [family member] this for years she should edit her digital photos. She said, no, my 40k pictures are a retirement project. Then I said <<you'll be overwhelmed by that many photos>> and actually I was wrong.

AI photo stuff massively improved, and all her bad photos were very easy to sort in Picasa and bring down to a reasonable 5k or so photos to put into albums over few years of retirement.

[serallak]

Of course Picasa is one of Google abandoned projects...

[sethammons]

I'm still sore about Picasa. while it was great to use, it lost a few years of photos that I hadn't backed up outside the service. Figured it was online and safe.

[teddyh]

> Figured it was online and safe.

That’s a contradiction in terms.

[samplatt]

Always been frustrated that this abstraction became so commonplace. It's not even like there's ever been a time in history where 'online' meant 'safe and reliable'. Marketing always wins out, I guess.

[a_gnostic]

The cloud is just someone else's computer.

[tetris11]

My ex and I had a wonderful tradition of collating all the photos we'd taken in a single year, and making a printed album of it. It's a fantastic ritual to let you appreciate the good moments.

[YurgenJurgensen]

I would print more photos if I could find a printer that didn't actively hate me. Even the ink tank one I got turned out to have non-replaceable waste ink sponge with an internal counter that will brick the unit long before it wears out.

[ramses0]

Color Laser. Rumor is that HP-M254DW is great b/c it's before a lot of E15N has taken place (enshittification... we should numberize it!). I got mine used off Craiglist nearing 10 years ago and it's been a pretty serious workhorse, along with pretty decent "trash" picture output.

I say trash b/c home printed photos on regular paper are never going to compete with your local CVS/Walgreens prints (which I do batches about 2-3 times per year, putting them in letters / christmas cards).

...but if I'm willing to wait for really good prints, I've had a great experience with "PersnickityPrints" who I tried after a local pharmacy print shop gave me an envelope of my wedding prints where some of the fancy B&W ones showed ~2mm chromatic aberration (hence: all the photos were misaligned / mis-calibrated).

Persnickity basically says: "you take the photo, we print the photo!" ...no auto-redeye reduction, no trying to make the colors pop, and they calibrate their machines at least once per day as opposed to once a month or whatever the generic pharmacy places do.

1) Color Laser for "tossable" printouts. 2) Walgreens + Mobile App for "5 copies to send in letters" (pick up in ~1hr, ~$0.20 per print, often less). 3) Persnickity for 8x10's, custom paper, cards, or if I'm planning ahead. (~$0.40/print, modulo shipping, etc).

[prmoustache]

I have a canon Selphy for 10x15 format as well as a Kodak Mini Shot Saqure "instant camera" that I really use as a printer for square polaroidlike photos from the smartphone. I also own a Fujifilm Instax Wide and an old Polaroid 600 that I converted to rechargeable batteries so that I can buy the slightly less expensive I-Type films. Between the Polaroid and the Instax, I take an average of maybe 2 instant pictures per week, maybe more during Christmas period or if I have family visiting me. Sometimes pictures that I don't keep but just gift to friends I am meeting with. All in all 2 pictures per week is just around 100 pictures. 2 packs of 10 Instax Wide cost me around 20€, a pack of 8 polaroid I-Type is much more expensive, around 17€ but I don't think spend more than 150€ a year on those anyway. Both printing with the Selphy/Kodak and taking instant pictures is expensive compared to bulk printing at a shop or online but in my opinion it is worth it and is still better than forgetting about those photos or even not taking them in the first place. I tend to think it is still less money wasted than if I was smoking.

One of the last Polaroid picture I took was of a little girl playing with her mom. Her husband told me several week later that it had become a bookmark that he has pleasure rediscovering everytime he grab his current book. Sometimes the smallest but meaningful gifts are the nicest.

For holidays, special events, whenever I have more than a handful of pictures to print or if I want bigger format I am doing it through the local photo print shop or online.

[a_gnostic]

Brother has been pretty good with ink. Even allows 3rd party.

[heavyset_go]

Print photos degrade over time, if you want them to last you'll need to preserve them in an additional way.