You have two obvious options when it comes to printing your digital colored photos:

1. your own inkjet or digital color printer at home or office or
2. an online photo printing service.

There are advantages to both choices of photo processing The key is to choose the factor most important to you - cost, convenience, and quality.

Photo Printing At Home

For around $200 to $400, you can purchase a decent inkjet branded photo printer from HP, Canon, or many others. In addition to the main device purchase, you need to spend some money in ink and a photo-rated gloss or matte paper stock. It is difficult to ever come up with a true per print cost as you would find in online print services. Based on testing from numerous independent studies, photograph prints can cost anywhere from 28 to over 50 cents per copy dependent upon the type of ink and quality of paper and efficiency of the printer used (price does not include the cost of the printer machine).

The quality of home prints is most likely comparable, if not just as good, as the prints you would get from an online service. However, some studies suggest that cheap paper and inks will fade in a short future. The higher resolution of your printer and images, the greater detail you will get in your prints.

Costs aside, there are certainly advantages to printing your own photo prints. Convenience of having the prints on-demand within minutes if not seconds can be beneficial dependent upon your needs. You also have much more control over the color and look of your pictures by instant trial and error.

Online Photo Printing

Without the same investment of a physical printer, you could print about thousands of 4" x 6" prints. The only costs to you are prints and shipping. No machine to store in your already crowded desk or home-office. These costs will vary from service to service. When pricing online photo prints, it helps to know how many prints you will be ordering since many photo prints services discount print costs as your order volume gets higher. Currently, the price per photo print for a standard 4" x 6" is as low as 9 cents at Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, Fujifilm Seehere or PhotoWorks.

A great feature to many online photo print services is the ability to store and share your images with others on the internet. Online photo sharing is the fastest way to tell the world about your latest happenings and is a must nowadays.

When ordering prints, you need to upload your digital photos to a server. In this same step, your photos are organized and hosted. Additionally, if you have friends and family interested in your pictures, they can easily create their own account and order your pictures for themselves. This saves you some money by eliminating the need to print for family members!

Before sending your photos to the printers, be sure to use a photo prints review website such as Free Digital Prints. This web guide will allow you to find the service that best fits your need, ongoing promotions, offers, trials and especially to give you the coupon codes to get your free prints for your first orders.

On Top of Both Worlds

When looking for a new home-office printer, spend a little extra and grab a color photo printer. When printing emails and documents, you can print black only, saving your color ink for photos. This gives you the convenience of having prints when you want them, how you want them and save a little bit on the larger prints like the 8 x 10 prints when compared to online prices. However, when you have hundreds of pictures (after the family vacation or that big event) or planning to share your megapixel joy with others, try an online service.

Photo Tips: Stop wasting your time and money at home. Print your photos online! As a matter of fact, you can get hundreds of free camera prints just by signing up with the best online photo processing services here - Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, SeeHere and Photobox. So why not try them all and save more money and time? If you want something out of the ordinary 6x4-sized print, try PosterXXL and get a 12x16 print for free, and stop wasting your ink.