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3 Reasons Why You Should Print Photos in the Digital Age

Why print photos?  Do people still print photos?  No one prints photos anymore.

These are some of the recommended search terms that came up on Google while I was doing my research on this topic.  For someone who grew up in the age of analog photography, printing pictures is not at all uncommon to me.  In fact, it is something that I think that more people should do.  But we want to give you, our readers, an objective perspective on the topic of printing pictures in the digital age.

Source: Google Images | Gone are the days of good old analog photography, when you needed to keep several rolls of film on standby just to capture the perfect photo.

Here are 3 reasons why you should print your pictures to preserve them:

The Threat of Digital Data Loss

A large majority of our pictures and files that we have are now stored in computers or uploaded unto the cloud.  Facebook, Instagram, and many other applications have made it very simple to take a picture from our mobile devices which will be uploaded instantly on their platform.  The ease by which pictures are taken, stored and shared have made us rely heavily on these platforms to preserve our precious memories.

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, advised internet users to begin preserving digital data, such as photographs, or risk losing them forever.  “We stand to lose a lot of our history. If you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives which is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, all of the World Wide Web, then if you wanted to see what was on the web in 1994 you’d have trouble doing that. A lot of the stuff disappears,” he warned.

The internet is not the only problem.  Computers and hard drives crash all the time.  Smart phones and tablets get lost or destroyed.  “Digital files can never be as secure as something you can hold,” shares one user on Quora.

Lost to the Digital Graveyard

I came across several blogs and articles that talked about how the pictures get buried in the digital graveyard.  The words “buried” and “digital graveyard” were a resounding buzz word in these articles that date back to 2013.

It’s so easy to take and store photos these days that we can generate hundreds of pictures in one day alone.  But what happens after?  What happens after you’ve taken the picture?  Do you upload them to a social media platform?  Do you keep them locked away in your hard drive?  Will you look at those pictures again after a month?

To be perfectly honest, I have so many pictures stored in my computer that I haven’t looked at for a long time.  And even if I do want to look through them, there are now thousands of them so just the thought of going through all those photos is already quite exhausting.

In the days of photographic film, you had to choose the perfect shot otherwise you’d lose that moment forever.  You would invest a lot of care and thought for each photograph, because you had a limited amount of film.  Since it’s now so easy to take pictures, even the most random and irrelevant things get photographed.  Can you just imagine printing a roll of film filled with just your selfies and laying those pictures out on a photo album?  These “fluff” pictures take up a lot of your space and bury the most important pictures in your digital vault.  And the reality is that you never get to look at them anymore.

Print has an “actual” presence

Printing gives life to your pictures.  It’s hard to ignore a picture when it’s mounted on your wall or if it’s in a frame at your desk.  The memory stored in the picture adds character to wherever you put it, which is why many DIY home design articles include personalizing your home by framing your pictures and displaying them in different rooms.

Printed photos are inspiring.  In one of our recent blog posts, we talked about printing inspirational quotes and displaying them in areas of your home where it’s easy to view to give you a daily dose of inspiration.  Photographs have the same – if not better – effect.  Seeing the smiles on the faces of loved ones or having a visual reminder of that one specific memory is heartwarming and inspiring.

Source: Paulding County Area Foundation | Print your pictures and display them at home or at the office to keep you inspired.

You don’t need to print ALL of your pictures.  Just print the ones that you want to preserve and enjoy for a long time.  There are definitely a lot of benefits to print your pictures.  The ones that I have highlighted are just 3 of those that we have stumbled upon on the internet.  But they are also my personal reasons why I like printing my pictures.

Did you enjoy this printing tip?  Please subscribe to our blog to have access to more fun print activities, free printables, and printing efficiency tips from the Ink Toner Store team! 

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