I've never printed my digital photos out...

[WorkingItOutAsIGo]

...and I realise I am depriving my children of access to their memories. Suddenly matters a lot to me because my DF just died unexpectedly. So I want to print loads of digital photos, not just of him, but of all the things that matter - big and small.

How do I best do this? A friend who's a photographer said 'avoid those instant places' but I don't know how to find anything else these days, and if I am printing thousands want to make sure they are decent quality and not super-expensive.

I have them all on a hard drive so can upload them on the net, or put them onto CDs and take them somewhere. But where?

Thanks for any advice!

I use Snapfish and Bonusprint. I don't get prints as such though. Every year I d an annual photo book which highlights of our year. And I also do one after each big holiday too.

We also have all our photos backed up on a hard disk. And I have them as the screen saver on my laptop so we see them all a fair bit.

I also use Snapfish, there's usually a decent offer on and the quality so far has always been good.

Hula - interesting about the photobooks, one of my friends prefers those to prints, but the ones she has shown me have never been quite of the same quality - of 'sharpness', not sure how to describe it - as the prints.

Oh and OP, sorry to hear about your DF

Thanks ASB (love your books btw) and thanks Hula.

So have looked at these and Jessops which came up in a search - all of these are the sort where you order online and they post them - so presumably much better quality than the instant machines in Boots or whatever? I've never done this before but is this what people do now?

And all charge 5p a print for large quantities. Anything to choose between them?

And how long does it take to upload photos...I am thinking of just printing everything in one fell swoop...because the reason I never print them is because I never have the time to sort them and pick them all out...but will I break the Internet if I send thousands of photos off to one of these sites?

OMG I just checked the number of photos I have....28,000. So I can't just send them all to print as even with a discount voucher that would cost over £1000!! So I have got work to do to select some - I was expecting that I would have 3000 to print.

As with another poster mine are a random screensaver on my laptop, the kids just stop and watch them. They get viewed lots more that way than paper copies would.

Snapfish are very good and if you search about you can usually find several "XX prints free" offers. I once printed hundreds for free by using many different email addresses

You should get a digital photo frame. I got one for my dm who is 76. I put all the photos on a memory stick and I was also able to scan old photos too on to the computer and save them to the memory stick too.

I bought a large 10inch digital photo frame and plugged in the memory stick and set it to random. Then all day long my mum has it switched on and gets to see photos from her life constantly. My dd loves it too as she gets to see family and friends that live on other countries via the frame.

Frequently my mum will just watch the digital frame on the mantelpiece instead of the tv!!

if you keep them in a hard drive, one day it will crash. So backing up is essential.

The reason you have thousands of photos is because they are so easy and cheap to do. Probably one in twenty, or less, is good enough and meaningful enough to keep. I bet you've looked at wedding albums or holiday pics and trawled through dozens of pics that weren't worth looking at.

Go through them ruthlessly, set up directories on your PC called something (e.g. "Benidorm 2009" "Benjies Christening") so at least you'll be able to find things you're looking for, and back them onto CDs or DVDs like that. Use "thumbnail view" on the PC so you can look at them in bulk.

Identify your favourites for printing. One way is to copy the ones you want onto a disk and take it to Tesco, but you can also do it with online suppliers. The cost of printing will help you concentrate on the best or most meaningful pics. You will probably find some that you like so much you want to have enlargements and/or send to friends and rellies.

You may find, once you have printed the best, that you want to have a photo album or two. You can put a copy of the disk in the album.

I took out a calculator. You have 28,000 photos. Suppose you spent £1000 printing them off. You look at each for 5 seconds. Multiply 28,000 by 5 seconds ..... Do you serious think anyone will ever have that much time :)

I suggest you set up folders on your PC by year. Move en masse all photos from each year into these folders and then burn each year to dvd. Given the quantity you will need to have sub folders by month.

Realistically you won't have the time to review which photo can be deleted or which was from which holiday so don't try :)

I love the suggestion of a digital frame and setting them up as a screensaver...this would make them part of daily living and much more viewed, you are right. Off to investigate how to set up a screensaver!

Piglet and Pushed - it's precisely because I never seem to have the time to do that sorting that I had what I thought was a brainwave until I counted them of printing them all out...Obviously there is no way I would print or look at 28,000 photos so have to scotch that idea.

I did spend the weekend after my father died sorting all my photos into a complete set on my PC, sorted by year and by month. I think I have some duplications but am almost all there. I did it so I could find and print off photos from the last year of him for us all, which has been very comforting for us all to have. So it looks like I can't avoid allocating more time to sorting and selecting, but with the idea of online photo printing I think that will be easier, rather than taking lots of time making DVDs and marching them down to the store to print.

Thank you all, for really helpful suggestions which I can use to turn these thousands of files into some lovely memories for us all x

If you have sorted them into years why not start at the first year and pick 100 put them on disc and toodle off to asda or truprint.

If you do a year at a time get them printed and put them in an album and then write in the album who/where/when etc it will be easier and more organised.

If you wish to upload the photos and have them sent to you be prepared for a long wait most of the on line ones take ages to upload photos.

I am ruthless about editing my photos and delete loads. Then I print about 200 of the best photos each year, label them and put them in albums.

I generally put them on a cd and take them to boots (5p/print 200+), then I have the cd as a back up to my harddrive.

ASByatt - yes, some of the photobooks do lack some of the quality of the prints - although this can depend on how big a photo you make it and the quality of the prints in the first place. But for me the books work better. they are more compact and fir in my bookcase better. I don't really want big bulky albums lying around. I just like the books to flick through. The odd photo I may get printed out properly bigger for a frame though.

I have thousands of photos on my laptop and hard disk - I take thousands every year. I love photography. I do edit as I go. I probably take at least 2-3 times more than I keep! But I also take an awful lots of photos every week anyway. Most remain on my laptop and we see them on the slideshow screensaver - or some of the digital photo frame.

I do like the photobooks as a hard copy each year though. And DD loves to look through them.

I am also very anal about how I store them, lol. I have folders for different things - holidays, days out, friends, family, DD, etc. And within those I have sub folders - ie one for each holiday, one for each year of DD's like, one for each day trip, etc.

Fujifilm have an app called 'Fujifilm Imagine' which connects to your local photo print store for easy collection (or you can delivery straight from the app).

I like this because it's cheap, easy and really good quality. My local store also has a range of products like photobooks which is a really lovely way of printing and keeping photos!