Without printing your memories, you’re likely to forget about them until the day you decide to flick through your media library on your smartphone. If you want to go back in time (slightly) to have photos printed on the regular to put aside in photo albums, you’ll need a way to print from your smartphone.
Technology has graced us with multiple options.
Transfer to computer/PC
The most common way to print photos from smartphones is to transfer them to a computer. That’s likely because there are more powerful photo editing apps available for PCs to increase the quality of a digital image before sending it to print.
Getting your photos from your smartphone to the PC can be done wirelessly via BlueTooth, USB cable transfer, or upload to a cloud service from your phone, and download it from the computer.
Once on the computer and the file is finalised, you can then connect to your home printer and select “send to print”, save it to a memory card to use in a print kiosk, or send it to an online printing service.
Bluetooth printers
There are types for different sizes of prints, and various levels of quality depending on the technology used. Some use dye sublimation, others use inkjet, and then there are thermal printers that require thermal paper instead of ink cartridges. These are better known as label printers, but for small photos for the kids to print cartoons, doodles and photos they take that they want to be printed, thermal Bluetooth printers are the cheapest, and the quality is not too shabby. These are useful for scrapbooking projects or black and white prints.
Wireless printers
Wireless printers are akin to the print kiosks you’ll see in stores. You pair your smartphone to the printer over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, grant it access to your media library, and then select the photos you want to print.
If you’re printing a lot using self-service kiosks, investing in a wireless colour photo printer could provide savings in the medium to long term.
A good quality wireless printer can handle standard 6” x 4” photos, although some of the branded wireless printers use non-standard sizes of paper, such as 6” x 7” paper sheets, then print with a border, or have templates available in the app for the printer to print multiple photos in smaller sizes to the one sheet of printer paper.
Photo print service apps
On both Android and iOS, app stores have several apps for photo printing services. So much so that they’re competing for your custom by offering free prints either when you register, or for the first order, and sometimes offering hundreds of free prints over the year, every year. These are usually the 6” x 4” photo sizes. If you want any of your photos enlarged, that’s when the premium prices kick in.
For photos that you want to print to preserve, you’ll still have to protect them either in an album or a suitable frame unless you use a different app for a print and frame service, or alternatively, use an online print and frame service.
Online print services for frame packages
Standard photo printing apps do just that. Let you order prints. You still have to frame them. For that, you can go the standard route, but for the prints that you want to keep around for years, those are better framed either by a professional, or at least, using the highest quality of materials, such as acid-free materials, professionally made to measure frames, and custom sized mount boards.
To order complete frame packages online of any of your prints on your smartphone, framers with websites use software that lets you upload your photos, or scans of other artwork that they then print, frame, and ship to you.
Naturally, combining the printing and the framing will be more expensive so it makes sense to have the photo printed so you can inspect it prior to instructing a framer to print it out and seal it up in a frame.
