Digital Photography - How To Save Money While Printing Photos At Home?

Also, can you recommend any online digital photography courses at the beginner to intermediate level?

For your 1st question -- A simple way to cut costs while printing photos is to print multiple pictures on one large photo sheet.

That is, instead of 4 separate 4R (4 x 6 inch) prints, you can simply print them all on one A4 sheet, and later cut them to size.

Many printer manufacturers now even bundle software printing applications that let you do that easily. This way, a pack of 15 sheet Photo Paper Pro media can give you 60 prints, which is comparatively more cheaper than the 20 sheet 4R pack.

For your 2nd question -- Check out David Peterson's site (Digital Photography Secrets) for an online course book on digital photography.

I am not sure about the saving money at home, due to the poor quality of my printer, I print all my pics at walmart.com

As far as the online classes, I found a few free ones.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer...

http://www.morguefile.com/archive/classr...

If nothing else, you can look at them for free and see if there is anything that might be helpful!

Good Luck!

Saving money by printing your own photos depends on the quality you expect to get. It is fairly difficult to reproduce lab quality prints on your standard all-in-one color photo printer as many don't come close. But there are printers, like the canon pixma ip90v for $250 that'll get you there. I prefer a epson R2400 for just under triple the price. You get yourself a color profile for the printer and monitor that is compatible with the cameras color profile and you can make great prints. But cost will still be a concern as you will have to buy paper and ink for the printer, a colorimeter to calibrate your monitor (recommended) and color management program for the monitor and printer, not to mention the time you'll put into ensuring that what you see on your monitor is what prints. It can be a pain. IMO, making your own prints is effective if that is what you want, but in the long run it will cost you more. Costco makes prints from your digital media (i.e., CD or SD/CF card) for 8 cents a print on 5x7 photo paper (real photo paper, not photo printer paper). I get prints from Costco all the time and they are loads better than what I can get from my canon pixma mp600. If I could afford an epson R2400, I'd love to do my own prints. But if I don't have the need, Costco is cheaper and I don't fuss about with color profiles.

There aren't many digital photography courses, like the one's I imagine you are looking for, on the internet. But there are plenty of online resources, offering comprehensive how-to's and tips all over. I'll link a couple below. If you want anything more in-depth than that, you're better off searching your local community colleges' art departments for classes and workshops. With spring coming, there are bond to be several offerings. Yahoo local search works wonders.

Printing from home can be pretty pricey! You gotta buy a printer, photo paper, and ink! And if it messes up then you just wasted your time and money. Send it to a print lab... they'll do a great job! Costco is pretty cost efficient.

As for photography courses... don't take them online. Just reading about it can be very overwhelming. Look into taking it at a photo studio, camera store, rec center, or community college.