Digital technology has changed the world we see.
Desktop color inkjet printers and laser printers are technologies where HP played a leading role, feeding the appetite for color printing. In the commercial printing industry, during the early 1990s, Indigo revolutionized printing with the introduction of the first digital offset printing systems.
In the consumer world, parallel to these developments was the development of digital cameras, first at the high-end, but quickly followed by affordable cameras that produced images of a high enough quality to make consumers discard their 35mm cameras.
Digital data storage and output became the next focus for development. While viewing images on a computer or television screen filled the need of those people who preferred transparencies, it was not a universally accepted solution.
Affordable ways of transferring images from digital data to something that could be put in albums, pinned to a wall or carried in a wallet were needed. The move from analogue to digital is not yet complete, though all the signs point to the demise of the use of film in consumer markets.
Retail outlets offering film processing, using mini-labs, are able to accept images for digital printing via a variety of formats (memory and flash cards, CDs, and mobile phones), and even those offering analogue film processing now supply CDs of images as well as processed negatives and prints.
Affordable technology for printing photo prints at home came on the market with high quality desktop photoprinters, inks and user-friendly software for photo manipulation and printing. Photo-quality paper and inks became available in supermarkets, further encouraging the home photo-printing market.
The ability to print images, on-demand, at home, was an attractive notion and proved popular. Ordinary desktop printers and all-in-one scanner/copier/printers became capable of outputting high quality prints that were under direct control of consumers.
Inks and papers have continued to evolve to facilitate the process and feed the market. The increase in the total number of digital pictures taken has resulted in the development of new opportunities for photofinishers and commercial printers seeking a new specialist niche for business expansion.
The demand for hard copy
While the ease and versatility of digital photography has transformed the photographic market, there remains an almost primal requirement for hard copies of photographs.
Digital technology has made duplication and distribution of photographs easier than ever before, and it has given rise to an array of new photographic products and possibilities.
Photobooks are an example of a completely new product that consumers are quickly adopting as a new medium to print and share their photos. Digitally printed photobooks, which can be produced in elegant hardcover versions, or less elaborate magazine-like soft-cover versions, fulfill the traditional desire for photo albums with hard-copy pictures. However, the ease and affordability with which multiple copies of photobooks can be produced enables pictures to be shared in a way never before feasible.
The market for photobooks is fuelled by a number of factors:
- The traditional demand for albums
- New ways of sending image data for printing
- More cost-effective means of production
- Greater selection of products
- Instantaneous results, satisfying the "now" society
- An expanding base of digital photography
Just as the desire for albums continues, the film-based model for photo-printing has remained nearly unchanged over a century of mass-market amateur photography: take pictures; deliver media for processing, and collect prints.
This procedure has been adapted and modified, but remains essentially the same today. Media delivery can now be to a supermarket, via the post, or the internet, but the basic process remains the same: printing photos, gifts & photo-specialty products remains a professional operation.
Since digital technology did not replace the desire for prints, the paradigm for obtaining prints has not been changed, but merely supplemented by the home printing option.
As the generations that grew up with computers and digital photography mature, these models may yet change, but for the foreseeable future, processing and printing by professionals will remain the dominant means of obtaining prints.
