Beyond the 4” x 6”: Snazzy ways to print
Check out the coolest printing options available
By Erin Bell
When Susana Aumueller was still using a film camera, she would display her 4" X 6" prints in picture frames around the house. Now that she has a digital camera, the Toronto ESL teacher is considering other options such as printing full-colour, glossy photo albums and ordering custom-made photo keepsakes online.
Thanks to advancements in digital printing, it’s now possible — and easy — to create everything from professional-looking albums and posters to personalized playing cards, clothing, ceramic tiles, teddy bears and other 3-D objects.
Photo gifts and neat ideas
“It’s nice to see that people are getting the pictures off their cameras and off their computers and actually putting them onto real 3-D form factors,” says Liz Scanlon, director of communications of Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Scanlon has even surprised herself. “I thought, ‘Why would anyone want to put a picture on a pillowcase?’” she says. Lo and behold, she found herself ordering one for her daughter.
You can order photo keepsakes through print shops such as Black’s and Costco Photo Centre or from photo-sharing web sites such as Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Flickr and SmugMug. Some photography shops — such as Black’s and Costco Photo Centre — let you place your order online and pick it up in person.
“Mugs are really popular,” says Scanlon. “They make nice gifts, the quality is really wonderful, and they’re useful.”
If you don’t mind your own mug (that is, your face) travelling around the world on an envelope, then consider using personalized postage stamps. At Canada Post’s Picture Postage web site, you can upload your image, edit it to fit the stamp frame and receive a sheet of legally usable stamps. The stamps are undenominated, but you can still use them if postage rates go up. The stamps come in full sheets of 40, and the price goes down if you order in bulk.
You can also get a Keepsake Sheet of 20 that includes a blown-up souvenir stamp. You can’t add text after you’ve uploaded the image, but using image-editing software such as Microsoft Paint, you can manually add text to the image before uploading it.
Home printing
Many photo printers have a built-in setting for adding colourful borders called “fun frames” to pictures. You can also download templates from Microsoft and HP for frames, cards and calendars.
It’s also getting easier to print posters from home. Because the quality of digital cameras is improving, photos look better in larger sizes, and large-format printers that can create prints larger than 8.5” x 11” are dropping in price. HP, for example, offers the entry-level Photosmart Pro B8350, which can print on 13” x 19” sheets, for $369.
Printing blast-off!
Here are some of the ideas on the printing horizon.
Touchscreens Natalia Case, category business manager for consumer inkjet printers, HP Canada, says that in the future, printers will have touchscreens that will let you write directly on the image and then print. “That way,” she explains, “you could do a whole scrapbooking layout, print it just as it is and insert it into the album, which is a lot less fussy than doing the cutting and gluing.”
Inkless printing But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Xerox Canada is developing inkless printing. The process includes reusable paper that can be printed on and erased up to 50 times. The paper is treated with compounds that darken when exposed to ultraviolet light to produce an image that can last for up to 24 hours before fading back to its original state.
Electronic paper Another exciting development on the horizon is electronic paper, which is actually a thin sheet of plastic that can display text, photos or video. Each pixel of the “e-paper” contains various capsules that, when stimulated by different electrodes, are forced to the surface to give the appearance of black or white, and even basic colours.
Ink embedded in paper Zero-Ink (“ZINK”) paper uses dye crystals that are embedded in the paper instead of being housed in cartridges. Each pigment is chemically programmed to melt at a different temperature so an image can be created by applying the correct bursts of heat. We could see ZINK paper on shelves by fall 2008, and it’s expected to cost about $1.99 for a pack of 10 sheets.
3-D printing Finally, imagine not only being able to print on 3-D objects, but also being able to print 3-D objects. Desktop Factory has developed a printer that can create 3-D plastic models based on digital data from a computer-aided design, 3-D graphics or animation software.
It’ll be a while before this printer — priced at US$4,995 — becomes affordable for the average user. But the possibilities it affords — being able to turn your photo subjects into tactile 3-D objects such as action figures, toys or statuettes — are fun to think about.
