What percentage of your finished pictures become prints?

Fuddlestack

Regular
Location
Alsace, France
I'm doing a little research for an article, and I need to find out what percentage of finished digital photos are printed, either by the photographer or by an outside lab. By "finished" I mean pictures that require no (more) editing, and exclude those that get thrown away.

I'd be much obliged if members could provide an idea of this.

Cheers and thanks,

John
 
wow ... I had been going to be the first respondent in this thread but then was too embarrassed to admit to 0.01% ... thanks Peter!
 
Just for clarification does printing include photobooks? If it does my percentage will go from a lot less than one up to around 20% of my pictures from two years in Germany and probably 50% of my finished pictures (though almost all will be refinished for publication in the book/s).
 
Depends on what you consider 'prints' and percentage of what, total snaps or of the "keepers". Of total snaps, most of which are discarded, I'm sure the number is waaaaaay less than 1%. If you're talking about percentage of shots that I like enough to keep, I'd say it depends. In terms of actual prints on individual sheets of paper that I hang somewhere in my house or other people hang somewhere, still probably in the neighborhood of 1% or less. But I've done three photo-books already that commit photograph to actual paper and ink and, if you count those, I'd say it might be as high as 5%. But even if i consider 200-300 shots from that past year that made it onto some form of paper, that still really isn't much. Jeez, I brought about 3000 shots back from Europe last summer and I'd already culled a lot of the garbage each evening. Most of those didn't survive, but I took a LOT of photographs and keep maybe as many as 20% of them on the computer, and, of those, even 5% sounds high. So, I'm the single vote (at this point) for <5%.

-Ray
 
All i have is 3 prints that are on show. I really must get myself a decent printer and put a few more up. Trouble is i always need dosh for lenses. I'm surprised how few people print!
 
Ray, you are too analytical for me this morning.:D Andy, would you really print them yourself? This brings my thoughts back to this thread: https://www.photographerslounge.org...izing-digitally-print-blogs-albums-books-606/. So I don't want to derail, this poll thread for my questions.:redface:

John, I do hope you'll share your insights and your article with us once it's published. If it's available online, promise to give us the link, OK?
 
Yes BB i would providing i had a good enough printer. There are a couple good Canon ones that have been recommended to me. It's all down to spare cash! I NEED that winning lottery ticket!:D
 
I would say close to 20%. I print at home using an Epson 3800 printer. Most of what I print is printed on letter size paper and placed in ITOYA binders. For the year 2010, I filled 5 binders, which would be 190 prints.

I get the feeling I am not as prolific as some of the photographers who regularly post on this forum. I am also extremely backlogged with my post-processing, so I only process a small proportion of my shots.

I may be expressing a contrarian position, but I truly feel there still is nothing like a good paper print.

Regards,

Antonio
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "finished pictures," but I don't print much. However, I am making an effort to ramp that up. And it is great fun to hold prints in hand! I also find myself far more picky about what to print as opposed to put on Flickr or my blog. That's when the editing process really kicks in.
 
What I'm really after is what percentage of your photographs never gets beyond hard disk, CD/DVD, or one of the photographic sites on the web. So photo books would count as prints - and I think they're a great idea.

I have umpteen pictures I would love to print, but like Andy I lack the adequate printer - and the inks are so incredibly expensive that I couldn't print all that I'd like to in the sizes I'd like to. Come to that, I wouldn't have room for the printer, either.
 
I've only printed one so far in the last few years and that was an experiment using Whiteboard. I only exported the file as "screen sharpen" and not print so I was a bit disappointed. However, I've decided to use Snapfish and get an album printed for the photos I took in Seville last Autumn. The only thing is that it seems more complicated than I thought with me having to now re-export all the photos as large as possible and now I feel defeated before I've begun :(
 
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