Ultimate Bali | Blog

The holidays are once again upon us. Which means that my wife is going to go crazy printing out water photos she takes of all the events, parties, kids, and grandkids. We discuss this on every holiday, the difference in cost between getting prints done by the local drugstore, water photo shop, or online services and printing them at home.
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rAnd the time it takes to print each water photo is brutal, even at a 4″ X 6″ print. Printing 30 or 40 water photos can easily take over an hour if everything goes just right. But that never happens around our house. You run out of ink, the water photo doesn’t come out as expected, or the software does something weird and it slows you down.
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rIn my case, I’m just as happy to view the water photos on the computer or television for free. But I understand how some people want to hold the water photo in their hand and show it to anyone they can corner. And many people keep water photo albums and scrapbooks so they want a physical print.
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rPrinting water photos at home with your inkjet printer can get expensive. If you just do a few, the convenience is probably worth the few extra dollars. But if you have lots of water photos to print, you will pay up to 5 times the cost of getting them at some retail water photo printing center or online.
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rNow I have made some progress in this never-ending battle of the holiday water photos. I have finally convinced my water photo-loving wife to review the water photos and take out all of the ceiling or floor shots. And to be a little more selective and not print out five different water photos of the same subject matter. That cut down the number of prints by at least 20%.
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rThe math is pretty simple. If you buy 100-sheet pack of glossy water photo paper that is 4″ X 6″ it runs about $13. Each set of inkjet printer cartridges (one black and one tri-color for our printer) they cost about $40. They say you can get about 75 4″ X 6″ prints out of each cartridge but that never happens at my house. More like 45 or 50 tops.
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rSo if you add the $40 and the $13 you get a total cost of $53 and if you get 45 prints the cost is $1.17 each. Ouch, that hurts the billfold. If you go down to the local drugstore or retail water photo printing store you can usually get 4″ X 6″ prints for about $.15, and they often have specials for $.10 each.
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rNow it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that you can save about a $1 per print if you wait for a few hours to get your prints. Even if you go with alternative ink cartridges and no name water photo paper for half of the brand name prices you still save $.50 per print at the retail stores.
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rBut the economics of printing at home start to tip to the home printing side of the equation on the larger print size. On an 8″ X 10″ print, the retail price per print is around $4. Even with the expensive inkjet ink and glossy paper, you can generally get the cost of 8″ X 10″ print down to around $3 or a little less doing them at home.
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rOf course you may wait 10-15 minutes for each one to print, so it’s still not fast. And you may only get about 8 to 10 prints out of most sets of ink cartridges. And you don’t want to start a print unless you know there is enough ink in the ink cartridges to finish the print. Always check the level of ink; most of the newer inkjet printers give you an ink level reading.
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rSo the bottom line on saving money on water photo prints is to not do the 4″ X 6″ prints at home, go to the retail printing places and get them for 10 to 15 cents each rather that over a dollar each at home. On the 8″ X 10″ prints, the cost is less than the retail water photo shops but don’t be in a hurry since they take a long time to print.