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Even entry-level and mid-range phones have great cameras now, and you probably have hundreds if not thousands of photos taken with your phone over the years. While we all love sharing these photos digitally, why not print them as well?

Photos Should Be Seen, Not Left In The Cloud

When was the last time you went through the photos stored in your various cloud accounts? Sometimes you might get an email from a cloud service about "your memories" from years ago, but other than having random old photos emailed to you, most of the photos you've taken are out of sight, somewhere in a lonely data center.

By printing your photos and putting them up for display, you can make sure the best or most meaningful photos you've taken are seen. They aren't doing anyone any good as bits and bytes on a hard disk somewhere.

Related: How to Order Photo Albums and Prints from Google Photos

Digital Photos Are Impermanent

Wherever you store your digital photos, whether in local storage or in the cloud, eventually, that data is likely to be lost. By physically printing and preserving photos, you create a new type of backup that doesn't require a specific file format or computer system to read.

Of course, physical photos degrade and eventually break down completely as well, but if you make high-quality prints and store them correctly, they're likely to outlast all of your digital storage devices and cloud subscriptions.

Photos Make Great Gifts

Sending friends and family a digital copy of a photo is convenient, but printing, framing, and gifting your most special photos to someone turns the photo into a special event. It becomes a physical object someone must find a place for in their home.

As gifts go, physical photos benefit from being both meaningful and unique. If you're always struggling with what to get someone, you may be sitting on a trove of shared moments that would make a great gift with a little extra thought and effort.

Prints Can Be Bigger than Any Screen

Most smartphone screens top out at around seven inches, and even the typical 4K TV sits around the 65-inch mark. Many high-end smartphones can take RAW images with resolutions high enough to look good on massive prints. Even standard compressed photos will look great as a poster-sized print.

Depending on the quality of your print,  your photos may show better color and detail by printing them at large sizes. Our screens have become incredibly vibrant and detailed, but there are still some things you can't quite achieve with pixels.

You Can Get Creative With Physical Photos

Physical photos are used as material in several other creative practices. Think of collages or scrapbooking as two prime examples. You can use your printed smartphone photos to present your photos in ways that aren't practical or even possible with a digital screen. You could even go big and get your photos printed on a blanket.

The Best Ways to Print Smartphone Photos

If you're keen to try printing some of your best smartphone snaps, the next step is (obviously) actually to print them. So what's the best way to do that?

Related: How to Print Photos From Your iPhone

One excellent option is to visit a digital print shop. While film development is essentially dead, there are still plenty of places that specialize in making high-quality prints of digital photos. Best of all, you can get your photos framed and printed at sizes that are just not available for home printing.

If you're OK with A4 or A3 as the maximum print size, there are many fantastic home printers on the market to choose from and excellent photo paper to use with them.

Perhaps a more interesting solution is a dedicated portable smartphone printer. These battery-powered printers let you send your photos wirelessly to a printer so you can immediately make a physical copy of your photo. This also means you can give that photo to someone before you part ways.