The price of ink for home printers may be the one price besides that of petrol that frequently infuriates consumers.
It doesn't take long for the cost of ink-cartridge replacements to exceed the price of the printer.
A large format, hi-resolution photographic print can drain entire refills, if the printer is capable to handle larger formats at all.
Freeing digital camera users from the limits of their inkjet printer is a niche some professional online labs like are catering for.
Exposure to light, heat, ozone and air pollution causes the ink used in home printers to fade.
Recent research carried out by 'Wilhelm Imaging Research' found that "refilled cartridges often produce photos that begin to noticeably degrade in a number of months.
" Using real photographic paper on large format lab equipment, professional photo labs produce results, which tend to look 'richer', and are more durable with regard to handling by sweaty fingers, humid environments, and fading in daylight.
Unlike printed images which producea perceived colour through different coloured dots from a limited number ofbasic colours, lab processed images produce the exact colour for every pixel.
A test with a 1 MB jpeg at http://fotoinsight.
com produced a very well perceived, hi-res result on 30"x20"(50x75 cm) poster.
Online poster printing services also come handy when producing miniprint runs for advertisements, charts or logos for conferences orexhibitions.