PUBLIC MARKS from multilinko with tags digital & photo

Nearly half of all households now own a digital camera, estimates Merrill Lynch in a new report I just got my hands on, and people are taking four to five times as many pictures as before, but they are printing less. The reasons for this are because 1) it costs nothing to take a digital photo, 2) you can view it immediately on your camera or computer screen, and 3) you can share it digitally as well (for free). Yet, for companies to make money from the digital photo boom, they will have to convince people to print more photos.

When Morgan's mother and a client recently took CDs with some of his shots to a printing lab, the photo technicians spurned them. They said that since the shots seemed to have been taken by a professional, printing the pictures might be a copyright violation.

When cameras used only film, consumers didn't have much of a choice about where to get their photos printed, unless they had a darkroom at home. Now, with 80 per cent of cameras sold this year projected to be digital models, consumers have more options than ever about where, or even if, to print their snapshots. One result is an all-out war among retailers, printer manufacturers and on-line companies like Snapfish for a piece of the $8.2-billion (U.S.) pie that the Photo Marketing Association International said consumers spent on printing photos last year