Judging by the line of people at my local grocery store most digital photographers print their photos outside their homes. It never ceases to amaze me how long people are willing to wait in line for the person in front of them to painstakingly go through each and every shot on store photo kiosks when they could be getting the task done at home.
By using Pictbridge-enabled cameras and printers you can avoid the long lines at places such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, PictBridge is the single printing format shared by the majority of major camera and printer manufacturers. For example, if your Canon camera and your Dell printer speak PictBridge you will be able to print pictures in a single step. All you have to do is plug a standard USB cable (which should come included with your digital camera) into your camera on one end, and into your printer on the other. In most cases your camera will immediately recognize it’s connected to a printer and a screen will pop up asking if you want to print. When you are ready to print you simply press the print button on your camera, and your pictures come out of the printer.
Virtually every major printer manufacturer makes a PictBridge printer. Canon (one of the world’s leading camera manufacturers) makes more than 90 printers that speak PictBridge. Meanwhile, HP, another major manufacturer, features more than 30 PictBridge printers on its website. And as I mentioned earlier they are not alone, PictBridge is everywhere, though it wasn’t always this way. It wasn’t until recently that manufacturers realized they had to cooperate if they were going to make it easy for consumers to print out their pictures. A few years ago stiff competition in the digital camera marketplace made it next to impossible for photographers to experience such comprehensive coordination between companies.
Another fact to note regarding PictBridge: If the word PictBridge or Direct Print is printed on the box, your camera will speak directly to your printer, regardless of the brand.
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