Does anyone keep a detailed log of the prints you make, listing which image, size printed, paper used, etc. in order to ascertain an accurate cost/print, avg # of prints/cartridge, etc? The organizational freak within me wants to make a spreadsheet for this to find my true costs, but I have a tendancy to go overboard with this kind of thing sometimes. What do some of you long time printers do?
I think Michael Reichmann had a couple of articles on his site with Excel sheets to help calculate some of these costs. Admittedly I'm too flaky to keep track of this stuff with any consistency myself.
I keep a sheet of graph paper next to the printer and everytime I print an 8.5x11 (my usual size) I put an X on it. If I print a larger size I'll put 2 Xs or something. And every time I change a cartridge I write it down and start a new row on the paper. Then when I want to figure out how much it's costing me I just add up the Xs and divide by the cartridges.
Not terribly exact but on the other hand it's easy.
Bill: at what cost-per-print will you claim that you've crossed the threshold and quit inkjet printing? If the answer is "never" or anything remotely near it, what exactly is the point of knowing and why in the heck bother with a spreadsheet?
Just email or call Epson and ask them for the number; they'll tell you. Use your valuable time for making and marketing your photographs
I agree with Michael. If you are printing in any sizeable quantity for the purpose of selling them, it is economical and you can make more profit from printing via inkjet than going the lightjet or similar route.
Michael/Youssef - I may have mistated my question, but I'm not asking to see what what point it becomes uneconomical to use an ink-jet; I was more interested in figuring out how many people keep a tab on their actual costs involved in printing.
I did understand your question, but it always brought up the question in my mind - Why? I mean my actual cost of printing with the inkjet is $X for paper, $Y for ink for any given time period, say one year. Total $(X+Y). That is what it cost me. Misprints, scarp, test prints etc... are irrelvant, as that is all bundled up in the total cost. I keep tabs on that, as it allows me to work out my cost of doing business at the end of each year. I think anything more detailed that that is just an excercise in mathematics interesting to those who like mathematics and have enough free time to figure it all out. I like math, but don't have the time to play around.
The Epson 7800 keeps track of the quantity of ink used on each print and the print size. It can give you a total of square inches printed and how much ink used.
Bill - - If you do find out all of this info what difference is it all going to make?
Are you going to quit printing?
Or are you going to settle for less quality and buy junk materials to work with?
The only records I would suggest that you keep are ones for how you created your final top quality image so that you can use that every time you print again and do not have to waste materials running tests again each time. Printing logs were always kept by serious darkroom workers, and should be done the same with digital. These are the only logs I keep.
Paul - I guess I'm a little baffled with the responses I've received to this thread. Granted I've never been a full time time professional photographer, but I've been a businessman for 35+ years, and can't understand how people can analyze or maximize profitability if they don't know their TRUE costs. Perhaps this is why there seems to be a revolving door of people getting in and out of the photography business, at least in my area. Wanting to know my costs has nothing to do with wanting to buy junk materials. I want the best possible materials, but at the best possible prices as well. As you know, your true cost/print is a heck of lot more than just the paper & ink used to produce that one print. I'm new at this - right now my cost/print is pretty outrageous due to testing different papers, trial & error, finding the best suppliers, etc. I'm really not trying to be a nit here, but one thing I have learned many times over the years is that you can't control your business if you can't control your costs, and you can't control your costs if you don't know what they are.
You also mentioned keeping a record of how I create the final print. I recently started that - why I waited this long before starting is baffling, it seems like a very obvious step. Just a brain fart on my part I guess. I now write down my 'recipe' as I process the image from opening to closing. I save the post processed image, unflattened, unsized, and unsharpened as a .psd file. I then create a print file for each size I plan to print. This file is sized, sharpened, proofed, and ready to print. It generally takes me 3-4 proof prints to get it just right, but once I do that and save it I will just have to open and print in the future. I don't know if this is they way most do it or not, but would be interested to hear how others go about the process.
Bill: there is no real way to bring inkjet printing costs down except for doing it not at all, doing less of it, or by using third party papers and inks. Alternatively, you can/should find an inexpensive (or less expensive) proofing paper that gives the same results (or very close to) as your primary paper.
I'm not terribly concerned with printing costs as there is sufficient profit built into each sale, but a simple way to track printing expenses is to either track all your annual purchases or use accounting software. I can see at a glance what I've spent in a year on inks, paper, or miscellaneous just by looking into my software.
Printing is not inexpensive, and it's definitely more costly when you're developing a print. Once you've got an image 'dialed in', your printing costs for that image should be almost nil and entirely wrapped up in prints that you might make to fill sales.
You're on the right track with your strategy. I have master files with layers and flattened/sized/sharpened print files. I do not create finished print files until I make a sale in a given size. There's no point in wasting the time making unsold print files, especially since I slightly tweak the master each time I open it to fill a sale, etc.
Alway keep notes! You have to in the traditional darkroom, you have to in the digital darkroom.
Bill - - I didn't mean to say that a person does not need to know their costs in order to price things, but for digital printing there are a lot easier ways to do it than by sitting and logging in every print you make.
First of all you already know your printer and paper costs when you buy them.
So all that is left is for the ink, and for the general print count, that is almost always stated by the manufacturer. So what exactly is a log needed for here?
Just pad the print count for safety sake and go from there.
That's your cost. So what is a log going to give anyone they already don't have with these few things?
We are only talking about keeping track of one thing here;,,, ink.
Everything else like electric, repairs, a new building to house your printer,,,
are all a part of REGULAR business cost counting. None of them need a log for making prints.
In the end you will never get a true cost anyway. The kind of log you are talking about above with recording every size etc, will never work anyway. It is the amount of various colors in an image that governs how fast ink gets used up, not the size of paper used to print on.
- The ONLY way to get a TRUE print cost would be to photograph a full color MacBeth ColorChecker chart, and then print one size paper with that image until all of the ink is gone. All of the inks would be used up evenly ,and you will have a count of how many prints you would get from a even/full color image. (A big waste of paper, ink, and time, but it will give you what you want) - (or think you need) Anything else will always give you different results every time you do a count. There will also always be problems that come up that will effect your count and make it off anyway, so take the manufactureres average count and pad it so you will always come out ahead. Then you will have nothing to worry about and nothing to count.
You can spend your time counting prints and measuring ink, or you can spend it making prints.
I just started a print log for some of the reasons outlined. I do not sell very much right now, but I'd like to someday. In the mean time I want to develop some business practices.
I print greeting cards, and do proofing on my printer. I do not sell enough to justify the capital expense of a large format printer (about 20-25 prints per year), so I get lightjet for prints that I am going to sell.
When I was going through the books at the end of the year, I realized I am spending a lot on ink and I really do not have a good idea how much it costs per print. I do not know how many proofs I make per print or card either.
I looked at the Epson sight, and they have some rough numbers I'll use for now for cost per print. I think I am going to keep the log though. I want to get a better handle on how much I am printing and why so I can get a better ahndle on the costs.
Discussion
12 repliesI think Michael Reichmann had a couple of articles on his site with Excel sheets to help calculate some of these costs. Admittedly I'm too flaky to keep track of this stuff with any consistency myself.
Guy
Not terribly exact but on the other hand it's easy.
Just email or call Epson and ask them for the number; they'll tell you. Use your valuable time for making and marketing your photographs
I did understand your question, but it always brought up the question in my mind - Why? I mean my actual cost of printing with the inkjet is $X for paper, $Y for ink for any given time period, say one year. Total $(X+Y). That is what it cost me. Misprints, scarp, test prints etc... are irrelvant, as that is all bundled up in the total cost. I keep tabs on that, as it allows me to work out my cost of doing business at the end of each year. I think anything more detailed that that is just an excercise in mathematics interesting to those who like mathematics and have enough free time to figure it all out. I like math, but don't have the time to play around.
Are you going to quit printing?
Or are you going to settle for less quality and buy junk materials to work with?
The only records I would suggest that you keep are ones for how you created your final top quality image so that you can use that every time you print again and do not have to waste materials running tests again each time. Printing logs were always kept by serious darkroom workers, and should be done the same with digital. These are the only logs I keep.
You also mentioned keeping a record of how I create the final print. I recently started that - why I waited this long before starting is baffling, it seems like a very obvious step. Just a brain fart on my part I guess. I now write down my 'recipe' as I process the image from opening to closing. I save the post processed image, unflattened, unsized, and unsharpened as a .psd file. I then create a print file for each size I plan to print. This file is sized, sharpened, proofed, and ready to print. It generally takes me 3-4 proof prints to get it just right, but once I do that and save it I will just have to open and print in the future. I don't know if this is they way most do it or not, but would be interested to hear how others go about the process.
I'm not terribly concerned with printing costs as there is sufficient profit built into each sale, but a simple way to track printing expenses is to either track all your annual purchases or use accounting software. I can see at a glance what I've spent in a year on inks, paper, or miscellaneous just by looking into my software.
Printing is not inexpensive, and it's definitely more costly when you're developing a print. Once you've got an image 'dialed in', your printing costs for that image should be almost nil and entirely wrapped up in prints that you might make to fill sales.
You're on the right track with your strategy. I have master files with layers and flattened/sized/sharpened print files. I do not create finished print files until I make a sale in a given size. There's no point in wasting the time making unsold print files, especially since I slightly tweak the master each time I open it to fill a sale, etc.
Alway keep notes! You have to in the traditional darkroom, you have to in the digital darkroom.
First of all you already know your printer and paper costs when you buy them.
So all that is left is for the ink, and for the general print count, that is almost always stated by the manufacturer. So what exactly is a log needed for here?
Just pad the print count for safety sake and go from there.
That's your cost. So what is a log going to give anyone they already don't have with these few things?
We are only talking about keeping track of one thing here;,,, ink.
Everything else like electric, repairs, a new building to house your printer,,,
are all a part of REGULAR business cost counting. None of them need a log for making prints.
In the end you will never get a true cost anyway. The kind of log you are talking about above with recording every size etc, will never work anyway. It is the amount of various colors in an image that governs how fast ink gets used up, not the size of paper used to print on.
- The ONLY way to get a TRUE print cost would be to photograph a full color MacBeth ColorChecker chart, and then print one size paper with that image until all of the ink is gone. All of the inks would be used up evenly ,and you will have a count of how many prints you would get from a even/full color image. (A big waste of paper, ink, and time, but it will give you what you want) - (or think you need) Anything else will always give you different results every time you do a count. There will also always be problems that come up that will effect your count and make it off anyway, so take the manufactureres average count and pad it so you will always come out ahead. Then you will have nothing to worry about and nothing to count.
You can spend your time counting prints and measuring ink, or you can spend it making prints.
I print greeting cards, and do proofing on my printer. I do not sell enough to justify the capital expense of a large format printer (about 20-25 prints per year), so I get lightjet for prints that I am going to sell.
When I was going through the books at the end of the year, I realized I am spending a lot on ink and I really do not have a good idea how much it costs per print. I do not know how many proofs I make per print or card either.
I looked at the Epson sight, and they have some rough numbers I'll use for now for cost per print. I think I am going to keep the log though. I want to get a better handle on how much I am printing and why so I can get a better ahndle on the costs.