With the rapid level of change in photography, one question that is now coming up is whether we have reached the end of the road for photographic printing. There are real changes in the way we handle photographic images with the switch to digital. The major suppliers of photographic films and papers are experiencing a drop in demand more rapidly than predicted a few years ago.
Companies like Kodak are shutting down plants making photographic papers and film throughout the world. In fact, the way consumers are now handling digital photographic images is very different to the manner in which they handled analogue photographic images. The ratio of prints produced versus photos taken is now very small and, in general, only a small percentage of images taken digitally are ever printed. A large proportion of those images that are printed are done so using desktop inkjet technology rather than photographic paper. It is only those images taken to chemists, supermarkets and photographic shops that may be printed photographically using digital mini-labs. These mini-labs come from a number of suppliers that include Agfa, Fujifilm, Konica Minolta and Noritsu, and up to now have mainly used digital imaging to produce prints on photographic paper.
However, what is really interesting is to see how other technologies are now becoming increasingly important and where traditional photographic papers have no part in these solutions. These are different forms of digital printing.
Digital boom
Recently, HP Indigo announced that over the recent two-month Christmas period, more than 2m photo books and calendars had been printed on HP Indigo presses. A photo book could be one where there are many pages with multiple images on each page. That is an awful lot of photo images that have not been printed using photographic paper.
Many of these products would have been produced through the Snapfish online photo service owned by HP where some printing is done using HP Indigo presses.
HP Indigo is not alone in this market. One of the major applications on the Xerox iGen3 presses is myphotofun.com. This is a photo book application developed in The Netherlands by Ted Gigaprint that, as well as operating in The Netherlands, is licensed to other iGen3 users around the world. I don’t know how many iGen3 presses are running full-time on this application worldwide but I would guess it is more than 20.
Kodak also has a number of its NexPresses printing photo books in different countries. This trend towards photo books is a major change for the photographic market as it allows users to create themed books of photographs in many cases with annotations, and then print as many copies as they want.
What is interesting is that, while we have seen developments in digital printing opening up new markets in photography such as photo books, in most cases digital printing has not really impacted in the in-store markets where the mini-labs and photo kiosks are established. This, however, is changing. At Photokina 2006 in Germany, HP introduced its Photosmart Express Station retail photo kiosk – a standalone kiosk for the production of 4x6in photo prints. This printer uses HP’s inkjet technology to produce images claimed to be as good as images printed using photographic paper.
The latest development in this area came as a joint announcement between Fujifilm USA and Xerox. They have aligned their expertise to provide retailers a complete photo print solution to create photo books, photo calendars, greetings cards and other customised toner-based photo products. The new photo print solution will be offered by Fujifilm and will include its digital photo systems and Xerox’s Phaser 7760 tabloid colour laser printer. This solution for the retail photo market offers seamless integration into a retailer’s existing Frontier PIC workflow so that orders can be received from a GetPix kiosk ordering station. The complete offer includes software, consumables, binding and finishing equipment and provides the retailer with a wider range of photo products to offer.
For Fujifilm to now put its reputation on the line with the quality of a Xerox toner-based laser printer says a lot for the quality that can be achieved by small low-cost colour laser printers. This tends to confirm that the days of photo printing using silver-based photographic papers and films are indeed numbered.
30-SECOND BRIEFING ON... PHOTOGRAPHIC DIGITAL PRINTING
• Digital is changing the way photographic images are handled. The major suppliers of photographic films and papers are experiencing demand dropping more rapidly than predicted a few years ago
• Only a small number of images taken digitally are ever printed.
If they are, then most are produced using desktop inkjet technology rather than photographic paper
• HP Indigo reported that over the recent Christmas period, more than 2m photo books and calendars had been printed on HP Indigo presses. HP introduced its Photosmart Express Station retail photo kiosk – a standalone kiosk for the production of 4x6in photo prints
• One of the major applications on Xerox iGen3 presses is myphotofun.com. This is a photo book application developed in The Netherlands by Ted Gigaprint
• The latest development in this area came as a joint announcement from Fujifilm USA and Xerox. Both have linked up to provide a complete print offer to create photo books, photo calendars, greetings cards and other customised toner-based photo products
Andrew Tribute is a journalist and consultant in digital and pre-press and pre-media technology. Visit www.attributes.co.uk
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