Eric Nabos

Would you buy a digital image or a print?

I have started a small business with a friend of mine and I am building a pricing structure. We are a photography company and I wanted to know from as many people as possible if you would buy a digital image or a print of an image. If you buy the file you have the image, in perfect quality, for the rest of your life. A print not only fades, but if you lose it you can never get it back. On the other hand. Selling by the print means more money for the company. Please let me know what you all think? Thanks!

That depends on what you’re buying for.

If I’m ordering wedding photos, they’re going to go into an album and stay there forever. I may someday want more copies, but it will be in small volume and it would still be easier just to buy them from you than to do it myself.

On the other hand, if you do my family portrait and I want copies to send out with the family and friends newsletter, I might need a hundred or more copies. In that case, it would be a lot more cost effective to buy the digital print, and have them printed at a lab of my choice for a low cost.

You should offer both in your pricing system. HOWEVER, price it such that buying the digital file is only cost-effective for those who are ordering a significant number/total worth of prints. The price per file should be significantly higher than the price per print.

That way, you will make more money off those who just want things by the print. But, for those that may want copy after copy, the digital image will be more effective.

EDIT:
While Fishmeister has a point, it’s critical to acknowledge that printed images carry similar flaws. In the event of a fire, flood, or other disaster, any photos exposed will be destroyed forever, while a digital file can often be restored, if it is damaged at all.

Personally, I do not consider file types or compatibility to be an issue at all. Technology is generally produced in a backwards-compatible format — while an old file system may not open a new file type, it will almost always accept an old file type. In addition, conversion mechanisms will always be available, not only regardless of but especially considering the availability of new file formats.

As for corrupt hard drives, photos stored on a hard drive are no more susceptible than any other file type. As Fishmeister said, properly cared-for photos can last…but so can properly cared-for digital files. Assuming that the buyer should be responsible and care for their prints is no different than assuming the buyer should be responsible and back up their files.

In an ideal world, yes, photographers (and often consumers) would be better off with the standard sale of print files. But this world is inherently flawed, and not all photo damage can be avoided. Just as photos can be replaced, so can digital files…but a digital file is much easier to back up (assuming you will allow your clients to do this with your digital files) and less susceptible to unintentional — but still harmful — natural wear and tear.

Personally, I believe that while prints have their benefits, digital files have the best potential to last.

I do recommend that you offer both options. The only other advice I can offer you is that you are careful about what you allow — you can specify that your files are for use of printing only, not to be printed (in which case you should offer lower resolution images that cannot produce quality prints), and whether they own the rights to the file itself, or are simply allowed the use of that image for certain purposes.

EDIT: I re-read your question, and realize I may have misinterpreted what you are asking. I assumed that you were talking about selling the digital file, which a customer can print from. Are you going to allow customers to print from these files, or do they only have the right to view the image?

Fishmeister, yes, I do.

The issue I see in your perspective is that you assume that the print is cared for…but you do not assume that the digital file is cared for.

A digital file is less likely to be damaged in a fire or flood, and proper backups (if you assume that the print owner will be responsible, why do you assume that the digital file owner won’t be, as well?) can make the issue of accidental deletion or a hard drive mishap a breeze. In addition, not every print can necessarily be kept in a frame or a photo album — there is only so much wall space. I think it’s short-sighted to assume that the owner of the print will always be able to keep it hung on a wall.

As for the print vs. file test, if we assume that the party takes responsibility to care for both the print and the file, the file has no greater chance of deterioration than the print does. A print is much easier to damage than a file — one scratch during a move can destroy the integrity of a photo, while most hard drive disasters are salvageable. A photograph will be gone in the event of a fire — one relative even lost all of her photographs to smoke damage — but a digital file stored on a good hard drive will often be just fine.

It is easy to assume that everyone buying images is a photographer who will care for their photos properly, but in the real world, I have found it more realistic to assume that people can care for a digital file than for something so vulnerable as a piece of photo paper. I have less than one hundredth of my images on display, and I have more on display than most people.

To put this into perspective…a while back, someone’s computer was in their home during a fire. The majority of the computer was destroyed, and as they already believed it was a lost cause. They took it to a local tower, where they dropped it from the top. The computer was shattered. It was there for quite a long time, even through the Iowa summer heat and the drenching downpour of the storms…and then a man saw it there, and cleaned it up. He kept the hard drive, and there were still files on it.

That hard drive survived a fire, a fall from many stories up, and the elements. Show me a print that can do the same with absolutely no loss in image quality, and I’ll applaud.

But until then, it’s much easier to destroy pixels on a print than it is to destroy them in a file, and files are significantly easier to restore in my experience.

I’ve got a lot of faith in technology. I don’t have as much faith in the general population to care for what they will see as a sheet of paper as I have in technology. And if we assume that people will properly care for their prints…we can assume the same about people caring for their digital files.

Just the same, I can acknowledge the benefits of prints for people that aren’t much like myself. When you’re moving every few months and can’t hang up even a small fraction of your photos, digital files are the way to go. Now, someone who will keep that image on their wall for thirty years and just move it aside once a month to dust it behind it will have an entirely different perspective.

I’ll also admit that digital files are certainly not flawless. They have their flaws…but for my uses, and the uses of most people around me, they are an easier format. For you, that might be different. Different people have different situations and needs.

I stand by my recommendation of making both available. If done carefully (and assuming a cost-effectiveness balance is reached) it will not reduce profits, and it gives consumers a choice.

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