Paper prints best way to keep prized photos

"The very best medium to preserve an image is still paper," says Mike McCoy of Bedford Camera in Little Rock, "Clouds can go down. You can lose integrity in a hard drive or a thumb drive. Even CDs or DVDs only have a life expectancy of 20 to 25 years."

Consumers have many choices for getting photo prints, ranging from the high-quality commercial services favored by professional photographers and one-hour photo services based in convenient locations such as Wal-Mart or Walgreens to uploading images to Web-based services and receiving prints by mail.

Those who choose to print photos from a home computer should be aware of the many factors that affect the quality and longevity of prints.

Resolution -- Check the resolution of the photos before printing them. Photos shot at higher resolution (300 dpi) yield the best prints. Photos that have been uploaded to social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram usually have been converted to a lower resolution and compressed by those sites and may not be printable.

Paper -- Use the highest-quality photo paper that is compatible with your printer. Acid-free and "lightfast" papers are good choices for making archival-quality prints.

Curing -- Allow prints made from ink-jet printers to dry completely before handling them; this process can take up to 12 hours.

Ink -- Most standard home printers use two or four ink cartridges (black plus a multicolor cartridge or cyan, magenta, yellow and black cartridges) and cannot provide the same depth of color that can be achieved with high-end home printers, which use 10-14 ink cartridges to provide the highest range of colors in prints. Also, most home printers use dye-based inks instead of the more fade-resistant pigment-based inks.

-- Nathania Sawyer

HomeStyle on 08/23/2014

Upcoming Events