5 Reasons Why You Should Start Printing Your Smartphone Photos

As smartphone cameras continue to improve with each new generation of phones, a cottage industry has sprung up around printing those photos. Not so long ago, there wouldn't have been much point in doing so, as older phones took shabby photos, but as tech companies continue to pack powerful lenses and even more powerful software to process images. Recently, we have reached a point where printed smartphone photos look good enough to pin on the fridge.

Printing smartphone photos has become something of a trend, with brands like Kodak and Polaroid offering some of the best mini photo printers that connect to a smartphone over Bluetooth and spit out freshly inked (or even ink-free) memories. Additionally, services like Google Photos offer printing services that, while not as instant, will ship your printed photos to you in the form of single prints or even entire photo albums.

However, some may question the value of gadgets and services, wondering what benefits there are to printing smartphone photos. After all, you've got access to those photos from your phone or computer whenever you like. But in fact, there are a variety of reasons you may want to preserve your smartphone photos in the physical realm, like hanging them around your home or creating thoughtful gifts for friends and family. So, here are the top reasons you should start printing your smartphone photos.

If you were born before the new millennium, you probably grew up in a world photographed by film cameras. Many of those photos still exist in albums or dusty boxes left in an attic or basement. Will the same be said of our digital photos? Will your children one day open your iCloud or Google Photos account to relive memories, or will they be forgotten to time? The truth is, whether you keep them in cloud or local storage, you can't guarantee the longevity of your most cherished smartphone photos without committing them to an analog medium.

There are many ways your smartphone photos might be lost. Your accounts could get hacked, deleted, banned, or you might just forget the password. And if you don't back your photos up regularly, they'll disappear when your devide does. That could happen in accidents, theft, or a hardware malfunction. Of course, you can back your media up to a computer or storage drive, but those things are subject to the same risks. At the very least, printing your smartphone photos provides another means of keeping safe the photos most personally significant to you.

Moreover, printed photos can last for multiple generations, whereas it's unclear how digital methods of storage will survive. Consider how many virtual storage mediums have gone the way of the dinosaur, from the floppy disk to the CD, rendering their contents inaccessible without a dedicated reader. The only thing needed to view printed photographs, by contrast, are your eyes.

If you're like most people, odds are you've built up an enormous library of digital photos over the years. Having a camera on demand in our pockets has meant that we snap photos of everything from big events like weddings and birthday parties to the smallest things like a meal or a sunset. Over the years, you may have accrued thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of photos, most of which you'll never look at again. Hidden among those forgotten pixels are some true gems, buried under a digital avalanche of forgettable imagery. One of the only ways to ensure that those photos stand out is to print them out.

Printing photos is a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff, collecting your most cherished photos into physical albums, or putting the cream of the crop on display in your home. You may even discover new details you never would have when flicking through your smartphone's photo gallery, especially if your photos are high quality enough to be made into large prints.

Printed photos can be a great way to show your friends and family how much you care about them. Many people have grown accustomed to digitally sharing photos of an event with those who were there with you, whether publicly on a social media platform like Instagram or privately through messaging apps, but when was the last time someone handed you a physical image of those special moments?

There are a variety of ways you can share printed photos to put a special touch on them. If you have one of the best mobile phone photo printers, you can snap photos with your bestie and hand them the prints as you say goodbye. Less tech savvy folks in your life may also appreciate a printed photo. If you've got older relatives for whom operating technology is a challenge, they may be grateful to receive a printed photograph rather than needing to figure out an app or file sharing service that might as well be Greek to them.

Finally, it's simply easier to share physical objects than digital ones. Assuming you're in the same physical area, handing someone a photograph is far easier than transferring a file. Additionally, photos tend to be compressed when sent digitally unless you're exceedingly careful about which sharing method you use, whereas a printed photo will never end up being pixelated after being shared ... unless you printed it that way, of course.

One more common reason many people have found for printing photos taken on their smartphone is to save them in albums or scrapbooks. Whether to keep as a physical object that reminds you of a special time in your life such as a vacation or wedding, or just to make memories from your day-to-day life, scrapbooks and albums can be a tangible way of bringing your memories from the digital to physical realm. Moreover, they're a great opportunity to express your creativity, as part of the fun is decorating and designing each page to reflect your personality.

Additionally, scrapbooks and albums are great ways to show off your photos to friends and family without making them swipe through your phone's photo library. Why not show off that trip you took in a format that will give it the pizazz it deserves?

You can also make scrapbooks or albums as gifts. Fill one with memories from a dear friend's wedding or that vacation you took with your besties, then gift it to them in a surefire bid to win even more of their affection. If you want to take things a step further for your significant others or closest friends, try making albums that catalog the history of your friendship, so they'll always have a physical item by which to remember the time you spent together.

Before the ubiquity of the smartphone, when film cameras were far more common, it was rare to walk into a home that wasn't lovingly adorned with photos of the inhabitants' and their loved ones. That practice has been stifled somewhat in the digital age, but it doesn't have to be that way. Now that it's easier than ever to print smartphone photos, you can make your own home look more like your parents' did by hanging photos of you, your family, and others near and dear to your heart.

The easiest way to decorate your house or apartment with printed smartphone photos is to fit them in frames, which can usually be purchased at your local hobby shops or dedicated frame shops, as well as online from marketplaces like Amazon if you know the dimensions of your prints. If you're a more whimsical type, you might even try something like fairy string lights with photo clips attached to create a bright and emotionally invigorating display of memories. This sort of decor works especially well in a small space like a dorm room or studio apartment.