In article , Ken Hart
wrote:

https://petapixel.com/2019/03/04/the...cos-photo-lab/

(Minor correction: the author of the article is female, so the subject
should be "Gal is right...")

The article misses the point that Costco is not the only option for
printing digital images, so Costco photolab closing probably should not
be considered a harbinger of doom.

it's a major lab that processes a lot of photos for a lot of people,
and they're not the first to see a big drop in demand.

the trend is *very* clear.

But I agree with the point that printed photos can be more easily
maintained and enjoyed by the unwashed masses.

it cannot, for a lot of reasons.

("Backup? what's a
backup?" "Stored in the 'cloud'? So if I want to see them, I can just
look up in the sky?")

technology is amazing.

My mother was the family 'snap-shooter'. She usually had double prints
made from her film. One print went in an album of the event, the other
prints were handed out to family and friends. Her years of negatives
filled a couple shoe boxes, and her albums filled a bookshelf. Those
photos, some 50+ years old, are still easily viewable and in reasonable
condition.

'reasonable condition' means degraded.

digital images do not degrade.

in fact, digital images improve with time because the image processing
software gets better as do the displays.

there are also no backups with film. if the house burns down or is
destroyed by a tornado or wiped out in a hurricane, all of those photos
are *gone* in a flash.

film copies are second-generation (or worse), very time consuming and
expensive to do, in addition to being completely impractical for all
but the most important photos, so few people bother.

digital images can be backed up an unlimited number of times in an
unlimited number of locations with each copy being *exactly* the same
as the original, available to view at any time from anywhere, and in
the event of a disaster, nothing is lost.