Why Printed Images Are BETTER Than Digital Files

Have you ever walked into a home and saw a beautiful large wall portrait of the family, and thought "wow, that is just stunning!"?  Or... on the reverse side - have you ever walked into a home with bare walls and wondered... where are the family photos?

Do I really need to continue?

Okay, fine.  I will...

Printed images (professionally) will always look better than a digital image.  Even with the most modern technology, including 5K (not a typo, 4K has been one upped by apple) displays, viewing an image on a screen requires the use of electricity.  A light will illuminate the pixels on the screen, and BAM the image is there.  Sure, it may look AMAZING on the screen - but if that is the only place where it lives, then that means you have to access that screen, and that file whenever you want to look at it.  Not to mention, that a printed image will still look better.

Really?

Yes.  Really.  - Printed images aren't backlit from an electronic screen, which means that darks will always be richer, color quality will feel more real, tonal contrast will always be more magnificent, and the image will not have an over sharpened look (which HD, 4K & 5K monitors tend to create).

Aside from the nerdy tech jargon:

An image that is printed lives in the real world - it could be living in an album, or holding a wall space setting the mood of a room, it could be in an office, a home, a hallway, a staircase, a bathroom... no matter where the image lives, it creates a constant reminder of WHY the photo was made.  And that "why" is simple - to be displayed in real life, in a real place, in front of real people. 

One of the biggest advantages of a printed image is that it can be presented on a variety of mediums to complement the image itself.  For instance, the texture of a canvas, the shine of an aluminum print, or the subtle woodgrain that shows through a maple panel print can not exist digitally....these are actual, real life things.  There is just no way to create a texture - a physical, touchable texture - on a computer screen (without ruining the screen).

Another huge, Huge, HUGE, HUGE advantage is SIZE.  (Yes, I am saying that SIZE DOES MATTER).  Would you rather look at your wedding images on an iPhone's palm sized screen, or on a 24x12 inch spread in a wedding album?  Okay, so you have an 80'' plasma screen in your home.  Cool.  I'll bet you don't put your wedding images on that screen all day long for everyone to love and cherish, and won't pass it down from generation to generation.  (Not to mention, an 80'' screen cost as much as my last car...)  But, if you would have put your images up as a 4x6'' wall grouping, chances are that they are going to last and get passed down through your family.

For these reasons, an image does not actually exist in the real world until it is printed professionally.  A professional knows what textures, sizes, surfaces, materials, and labs to use in order to create a harmoniously beautiful finished print.  Aside from that, we have taken the time to color calibrate all of our equipment, from cameras, to computers, to printers, to specific calibration settings from a lab in order to ensure a perfectly finished image.  We take the utmost care in creating stunning, touching, emotionally captivating images, and the only way to present them is on a finished, timeless piece.  Sure - they may look good in the digital world, but that is only a small step in the process of creating the final piece.

So do the art form justice.  Finish your work, present it, and bring it to life on a wall!