Save your snaps
Don’t lose all those precious memories when you change phones... it’s cheap to get your photos printed
NOW is the ideal time to keep the memory of your summer holiday alive by getting your photos printed.
Sales of prints are in sharp decline thanks to the arrival of digital photography. It means cherished photos that were once stored in holiday albums now often only survive as megabytes on a smartphone, files in social media or in folders inside a computer.
According to research by photo shop Jessops, more than 40 per cent of holidaymakers have lost digital photos they wanted to get printed, with broken hardware and accidental deletion the most common explanations.
Given fewer people now order paper-printed snaps there is also a danger that even if copies of old photos do not get deleted following an accident, they could still be forgotten about and lost if mobiles or computers are subsequently replaced.
It is vital to have an external hard drive to provide a back-up against loss. It is also worth getting favourite holiday moments turned into prints to provide a further guarantee of their survival.
A common excuse for not having copies of digital photo turned into paper snaps is ignorance over how to go about it, but the process is easy, involving no more than a few clicks of a button on a website or phone app. Payment can be made using a credit or debit card or an online payment facility such as PayPal.
Online pictures can be converted into print from about 5p a snap. It is also possible to have a couple of dozen photos put together into a hardback album for £20.
The more photos you order the cheaper each print becomes. For example, Jessops charges 15p a standard print for orders of less than 100 but this drops to 6p a print if you want more than 500 – postage is extra. Truprint charges £ 1.99 postage if you order up to 15 snaps but if you want 700 or more it costs £7.99.
With high street companies such as Boots and Jessops it is possible to pop into a shop and order photos in person by handing over a memory card or plugging in a smartphone, camera or laptop.
Deborah Reid, who lives near London Bridge, uses Photobox to print holiday snaps when she comes back from trips abroad. Her most recent travels took her to Rome.
She says: ‘Taking photos on my phone is convenient. But when I get home from a holiday I go through the pictures on my laptop and then pick my favourite ones to turn into prints. If they are really good I get t hem framed – offering a permanent memory of my visit.’
The 26- year- old marketing manager also uses Photoboxowned service Moonpig to turn snaps into postcards to send to family when she i s abroad. Moonpig allows photos taken on a mobile to be posted as a card with just a few clicks on the handset.
Moonpig sells postcards in bundles of eight for £6 plus from 65p each for postage. Similar personalised postcard providers include TouchNote and Funky Pigeon.
Steve Cochrane, a director at Jessops, says: ‘There has been a seismic shift in the way we share our holiday memories in recent years. But nothing triggers nostalgia more than a physical photo you can hold in your hand, put into an album or hang on a wall.’
He says many people post their pictures on social media websites and then delete the original digital snaps, not realising that the online picture is ‘compressed’. This means it loses some of its sharpness if you wish to make a paper copy in the future.
Digital snaps can be ordered in a variety of sizes as well as gloss or matt finishes. Pictures can even be printed on to mugs, cushions, calendars, wall art canvases and jigsaw puzzles.