Other Costs of printing lots of photos

I've been asked to see which would be a cost effective way of printing sets of photos at home for events, i may need to print somee myself in the future for a wedding. I've wondered whether a colour laser printer could produce good quality prints at a cheaper price and higher ammount of prints before new toner is needed than inkjets, i've not used colour laser before.

 

Honestly, I've found that you really can't beat getting them done by whatever your local equivalent of Wal-mart is. Their $50,000 machine does a much better job and costs less per print than anything you can do at home.

 

You can compare the online printing services easily:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/free-photo-prints

Prints from any of them will be highly superior to a colour laser printer. Laser printers really aren't made for colour accuracy, they are made for office documents.

 

Are you doing this professionally? As in, someone paid you to shoot a wedding and you want to provide prints? If so, my advice is not to skimp on cheap home printing solutions. It won't be worth it in the long run.

 

I think it would be for that sort of thing yes, I may have the need to only do it once for my cousin so online might be the way for me. Thats what i wondered Atomic, If colour lasers aren't good for photos i'll let them know. Thanks ppl

 

I recently tested photobox. (they were running a offer for new customers; 30 free prints. The offer ended last week)

I was very impressed in the quality. I sent off 22 images for 6"*4" glossy prints. One thing to note though, I don't think they white balance your prints for you as some of mine came back with a colour cast. (Only the images that were taken inside a department store with their over-warm lights.) So it is worth calibrating your monitor as if you were printing at home anyway.

Photobox also offer discounts on bulk orders.

 

This is the original review that I read when researching online photo printing. Its a good place to start and sent me in the direction of photobox.

 

You don't buy a home printer to save money. It's cheaper to get them done professionally. You really only buy a home printer so you maintain full control from input to output.