While digital cameras have largely shoved aside film cameras, the way we store and show off our snapshots has changed little since the heyday of Kodachrome. Overstuffed shoeboxes have simply been replaced with cluttered hard drives and Flickr streams, leatherbound albums supplanted by Facebook uploads.
Luckily, however, one perk of the digital age is the opportunity to use printing techniques and materials once reserved for professionals.
Some of these can take favorite photos and turn them into custom wallpaper, murals and decals. The services cost more than the one- hour photo processing places, but the results can be stunning.
Bigger prints Home printers tend to top out at 8-by-10-inch, or 20-by-25-centimeter, formats, but Shutterfly (shutterfly.com) offers bigger prints, starting at $8. Images are professionally printed on high-grade paper.
And Shutterfly is relatively foolproof — upload an image, crop it as desired and select a size.
Service is limited, however, in terms of professional help. Shutterfly’s paper sizes also have limits, so a photo with an unorthodox crop may come with a white border to be snipped off at home.
Instant Art
Some companies offer the option of printing onto a stretched canvas. One such company, Canvas Pop (canvaspop.com), specializes in taking everyday photos, including candids snapped with a camera phone, and blowing them up without losing detail. Canvas tends to work well with images that have a little motion in them.
The canvas is finished with a matte laminate, which guarantees against cracking, fading or bubbling for life. If the canvas ages over the years, the company will replace it free.
Collages
It actually takes a lot of planning to achieve that haphazard scattering of hanging photos. CollageWall, a Web service based in San Francisco, can help streamline the process.
The service, at collagewall.com, offers templates for dragging and dropping digital images, but custom collages are possible, too. The photos themselves…