pictage.com photos

My mother in law showed me her prints from wal greens and they were cheap and the quality was amazing as well! dont know anything about pictage.com

Yeah, Walmart, for example, charges 15 cents for a 4x6. Pictage is $8.99. The price difference is quite huge. I guess I'm not sure why.

A lot of places (wal-mart, walgreens, longs, cvs, costco) print great photos are AMAZING prices. BUT, typically after a few years the photos tend to fade DRAMATICALLY. I know it sounds like a great deal at the time, but you have to think about the long run. Do you want your children, grandchildren, etc. to enjoy your photos too? I don't know about pictage but from my experience as well as others, the photos don't last very long. They only look great in the beginning =(

**the cheaper photos don't last very long

Sorry! I should be in bed =P

As FutureMrsWelch said, there is a lot of difference in prints from a professional lab as compared to Squalor-Mart, etc. The lab I use is MUCH more expensive than those places as well, but it is on archival grade paper, and the inks are superior. They are going to last 100-200 years in proper storage. Prints from the cheapo printers are going to fade in 5-7 years, and less on your ink jet printer. There is a lot more that goes into a print than just seeing a nice glossy image the day you pick it up. Your wedding pictures might be buried away in the attic for 50 years, and your grandkids could be up there rummaging around and come across these stunning images, or they could come across some blank 4x6 sheets of paper.

Do you have any places you could recomend for the archival grade photo's matt? The photographer I'm looking into gives me the rights to my photos and doesn't print any for us (that way if we want to save money we can, or we can spend extra for better) and I would love your imput on who are the best places to send prints! Thanks!

Http://www.mpix.com/papers.aspx these guys are the "consumer" side of the house that I use for all of my printing needs. They do have a few offerings on archival grade papers/inks.

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense. I just didn't understand the price difference if it comes out looking the same.

You aren't paying for the print. You are paying more from the print because you are obtaining it legally - because the print has a copyright. A copyright is established on a print once the picture is taken. This means you don't have to file any papers or pay any fee's to establish a copyright on a photograph. So, the wedding photographer has a copyright on the photograph once he clicks on the shutter and takes the picture. At no time do you share this copyright (even though you are in the picture, you hired the professional, or they are your friends) unless it is given to you in the contract. This would be highly unlikely. In the event you have a copyright to the image, you would be able to print them legally on your own for .19 or .39 or whatever you want to pay. The reason you are paying $8.99 or $10.99 is because you don't have a copyright on the picture.

So, my studio charges $10.99 for a 4 x 6 print. The cost on my print is $2.50. So with that price, $2.50 is my cost

On the print and $8.49 is my profit for giving you a license to have a print. It's no different if you buy a picture at a store, or if you go to a market and buy a picture. You are paying for the right to have the picture in the form of a print.

If you take the picture and print them on your own, you not only are in essence stealing the picture, you are breaking US Copyright Law unless you have a copyright. If you don't believe me, go to Walmart or Costco and ask about their copyright policy. I guarantee you if the photo print place know what they are doing, they won't print them for you if they know it is copyrighted and that you do not have a copyright on the print. If they do, they are breaking the copyright as well. Just ask them if they will print an image with a copyright on it.

Now I'm not trying to make enemies here. I am telling you why print prices through a photographer are higher. Just like artists who make music, we're entitled to be paid for our creative

Work.

Now with that said, my studio grants a license for my clients to print copies of images for their own personal use. But even with that, I do get print orders because each print I sell through Pictage is color corrected, calibrated to the printer and printed on archival quality paper. The prints at Walmart and Costco are not. Take my print and theirs in 5 years and you will be able to tell a difference. That explains the price difference.

If you have a professional photograph your wedding, support him. Don't make illegal copies of the work provided to you. A good studio will give you a license to make personal prints. But don't right click on the photograph if you have it online and try to print it. Don't photoshop the logo or watermark out of the picture. That's not only uncool, that's stealing and it's illegal.