Why Should You Print Family Photos? (And How to Actually Start)

TLDR/Quick Answer: Printed photos protect your family's memories from tech failures, deleted files, and passcodes no one else knows — while giving your kids something tangible to hold onto. You don't need a perfect system to start: pick a trusted lab (Mpix is my go-to), choose a handful of favorites, and print a little at a time.

Your family’s memories deserve more than a little disk space on a hard drive somewhere - even your cell phone snaps. As parents, we walk around with thousands of memories stored on our phones. But when you think about photos from a kids perspective - our phones are not tangible to them, nor are they something that our kids can reach for whenever they want.

Whether you’re a busy parent that means to print family photos (believe me, I get it), or you simply don’t know how to begin printing photos, this blog will outline important reasons to print your memories - and how to get started without overwhelm. 

Hi, I’m Elise -

A family and documentary photographer in Bend, Oregon, capturing the authentic everyday across Central Oregon, including Sisters, Redmond, and Sunriver. I chase the kind of moments that deserve to live beyond digital nowhere.

What are the Top 5 Reasons to Print Family Photos Right Now?

Note: The following reasons have all come personal firsthand experiences, or experiences that people (friends, family, and clients) have shared with me.

Reason #1: Tech failures and changing technology.

The biggest, most important reason to print family photos is that tech failures happen frequently. Just look at all of the “uh oh” tech recovery programs available, and you’ll see there’s a huge industry for tech service. Plus as old tech dies off, there’s a constant need to update to new systems. Do you remember what floppy disks were? Exactly. 

Pro Tip: Printing your photos into a book or photo album circumvents the tech headaches.

Reason #2: Tech mishaps.

I'm even guilty of this one! I have a secure system to backup all of the photos I take with my pro digital camera. My everyday phone photos of my family, however, were another story. I thought I had copied years of photos onto a hard drive to back them up and accidentally deleted them instead. (Sadly, a very true story.) 

Lucky for us, I’ve been printing our favorite phone photos for years. The most important ones were safely stored in our photo albums and part of my account with MPix, which is the print lab that I trust with our everyday memories. Because those files had been printed, I was able to download them again to safely back up onto a hard drive.

Reason #3: Your kids want to see their memories (and an annual photo book on the shelf makes that easy).

When my son was two years old, I purchased a simple 4x6 photo album from a craft store. I started slowly filling it up with some core memories - starting with my big, pregnant belly and an ultrasound pic - and regularly added to it as time passed. My son was thrilled with this gift - and I quickly learned that it is one of his most treasured possessions. 

My son is now five years old, and still regularly takes the album out to flip through memories. He especially likes to point out pictures of us together and say, “look mama.” Moments like these are why I care so deeply about creating photographs where mothers are present with their children.

Pro Tip: Your heart will melt over your children looking through old memories, so print family photos. 

Reason #4: Printed family photos become part of your home life.

Printed family photos don’t just preserve memories — they become woven into your everyday life. Kids notice the albums on shelves, framed photographs on walls, and books they can pull out whenever they want. Unlike digital files hidden away on devices, printed photographs become part of your family culture and the visual story of your home. 

Pro Tip: This is a great bonding activity for bedtime that can be paired with reading stories.

Reason #5: Passcodes fail, but family photo prints endure.

Sadly, I know too many instances where a family member passed away and no one else in the family knew passcodes to get into hard drives or files. Thousands upon thousands of family memories have been lost this way. Don’t just think about printing photos as a task that takes up time today; think about it as an important way to preserve memories for the future.

Where's the Best Place to Print Professional Photos?

Finding the best place to print professional photos can feel tricky because many of the top-tier print labs in the U.S. sell exclusively to professional photographers. 

If you're one of my clients, then you will have a professional print lab connected directly to your photo gallery. The gallery shop seamlessly shows you examples of what your photos look like on products, and makes the process to use the print credit included with your collection simple, easy, and quick to get treasured moments shipped straight to your home.

An example of what the print shop looks like inside my client galleries.

If you're not one of my clients but still want professional-quality prints, my recommendation is Nations Photo Lab or Mpix. I actually put this to the test — I sent the same 10 photos to several different labs to compare color accuracy and print quality side by side, and these two consistently came out on top as labs who serve average customers (not just pro photographers).

Don’t let your family’s investment into professional photography sit in digital nowhere. Your photographer should guide you through product selection so those images actually make it onto your walls. If you already have digital files from a previous shoot sitting in gallery limbo, let this be your sign to order prints this week. 

If you want a photographer who helps you turn everyday connections into tangible heirloom pieces, I’d love to tell you more about my Bend family portraits.

How Do You Print Family Photos Without Feeling Overwhelmed?

If you’ve got a backlog of family memories that are sitting in digital storage (perhaps on your mobile phone), it can feel daunting to think about printing them out. The good news is that printing family photos does not have to feel overwhelming. In fact, you can pick a strategy and chip away at it a little at a time until you’re caught up. 

Step 1: Select your favorites to print for family photos - and delete the rest.

Not every photo is a winner - especially with digital photography making it so easy to keep snapping away. The act of choosing which photos to keep and which to let go is the single most important step in curating a clear story of your family's year. 

Quick Tips for choosing which family photos to print:

• Follow your gut reaction when you look at an image. If it’s “yuck, don’t like that”, then toss it.

• If you smile and think about that moment, it’s a keeper. 

• If a photo doesn’t pull an emotional reaction, it’s not that important.

Pro Tip: Instead of scrolling social media, set a timer for 20 minutes while you pick favorite photos from your camera roll.

Step 2: Choose how you would like to display the photos.

There are two main methods for printing family photos: placing them into an annual photo book, or printing individual 4x6 pictures that can be placed into a scrapbook or album. You can choose whichever method works best for you, or even take a hybrid approach. If you’re not sure about deep matte paper versus fine art paper, this guide will walk you through it.

After several years of tinkering around with how to print my own family memories, I landed on a method that worked for us: designed photo albums for our professional family photography shoots or special photo projects I take on throughout the year, and individual 4x6 photos that I add to large albums for everyday memories.

These aren’t the only options, though. For some photos, I like printing 5×5 square images on matte paper and standing them up in wood blocks. It’s easy to move them around the house or swap pictures in and out.

Step 3: Just Start - Print Family Photos one Piece at a Time.

If you’re sitting on years worth of photos, then do yourself a huge favor and give yourself grace. It took time to create those memories, so it’s also going to take time to print them out. 

Decide on a period of time to focus on, and that’s your starting point. For example, you could start with the current year and work your way backwards. Or, if you prefer chronological order - pick a starting point in the past that’s important, and work your way up to the present. 

Remember when I said I started my son’s photo album when he was two years old? There were two years worth of photos to sort through and decide what to put into the album. It took a bit of time, and then after that I just kept up with it about every six months. It’s okay to chip away at the task a bit at a time - preferably when the rest of life doesn’t feel as busy. 

Pro Tip: Slow winter months like January and February are an excellent time to start a photo printing project.

Where should you print photos from your phone?

If you’re wondering where to print photos from your phone, there are several good options available. My biggest piece of advice is to choose an online lab that allows you to save a project and come back to it. Being able to work on this project bit by bit will help cut down on overwhelm while doing it. A huge bonus is if the program allows you to easily upload photos from a mobile device - I typically use my phone to document summer family memories, so I also want an easy way to print those photos.

Please don’t use one hour print labs unless it’s so urgent that you actually need a photo in one hour (hello, forgotten school class projects). One hour labs like Walgreens, Walmart, or CVS (yes, even Costco) have lower quality printers that oversaturate photographs. While one hour labs promise quick photos for a low cost, ultimately it's not the archival quality your family memories deserve. 

Shutterfly, Chatbooks, and Snapfish are brand names commonly passed out in social media groups, but I personally don’t recommend using any of them for photo printing.

My top recommendation for an accessible consumer print lab is Mpix. And if you're looking for custom framing local to Central Oregon, popping into a local spot like Bend Picture Framing may well be worth your time. 

Why I love Mpix:

1) They are the client-facing side of a well-respected and well-established printing company in the United States 

2) Any photo uploaded to their system stays with your account (remember how I said I was able to recover cherished photos earlier?)

3) It’s possible to upload photos from your mobile device fairly easily.

I have used MPix, Chatbooks, Parabo Press, and Shutterfly to make photobooks also. Of these services, I would recommend MPix the most because of the photo printing quality. However, I plan on shopping around and trying different photobooks services to see which is my absolute favorite. (Next up on my list to try for photobooks are Artifact Uprising and QT Albums.) 

At the end of the day, print your family photos because they are meant to be lived with — not forgotten in digital nowhere. The blurry phone snapshots, the professional family portraits, the tiny everyday moments that didn’t seem important at the time… these are the pieces of your family’s story. 

You don’t need a perfect system or a weekend of uninterrupted free time to get started. Pick a handful of favorite images, print them, and let that be enough for now. Years from now, your children won’t care whether your photo albums were perfectly curated. They’ll just be grateful that the memories exist at all.

If this has sparked a desire to get updated family portraits, I’d love to talk with you about how I can best serve your family.