Getting round to printing some photos

I was looking through my photos recently – my actual printed photos in albums – and realised that I don’t have very many from the last five years or so.  I used to get photos printed regularly, even once I switched from a film camera to a digital one, but now that everything’s on my phone, I just don’t think to do it.

Given how long it’s been since I printed any out, I decided to have a good look round to see what the best options were for getting good quality prints these days at a reasonable price.

I found several good options – and which is best for you depends on how many photos you want to print and where your photos are stored at the moment.  Since all the pictures I wanted to print are on my smartphone, I decided to use a smartphone app called “FreePrints” (I went for that one, but you get a very similar deal with the PhotoBox app and the Snapfish app).  

Here’s how they work:

1. You download the app and set up a free account with them – you can get the apps for free from the Google Play Store on an Android phone or the App Store on an iPhone.
2. You can then choose up to 45 (or 50, depending on the app) standard-sized photos to print each month.  You don’t pay anything for the prints themselves – you just pay for the postage.  On the FreePrints app I used, postage was between £1.49 and £3.99 depending on the number of prints I ordered that month.  That’s a pretty fair price for the postage too, so the prints genuinely are free (or thereabouts, anyway).  Exact postage costs will vary a bit from app to app, so if you want to try one of the others, it’s worth checking their prices.
3. There’s no subscription or anything, so you don’t have to order every month.  But if you don’t use your free photo allowance for one month, you can’t carry it over to the next month.

I think these apps are a good option if you like to order a small number of prints regularly, rather than a load in one go.  

But if you’ve saved up a big batch of photos to get printed all at once, maybe stored on your computer or a service like Google Photos, it’s well worth looking at the deals on websites like Snapfish, Photobox or Boots Photos (there are loads of others, too).  They’ll often have free photo deals for new customers, or give you free postage if you spend over a certain amount with them.  They usually charge around 10p per print.

Both the apps and these websites are great for other photo products if you’re looking for presents or just something a bit more special to put on your wall – poster-sized prints, canvases, mugs, T-shirts, calendars…  It’s worth shopping around a bit for these, though, because prices do vary quite a bit between the different websites.

Right, that’s it for me for this week.

Happy printing.