Show HN: Easy way to print Facebook photos | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Easy way to print Facebook photos

printspace.me

32 pointszferland29 comments

Why would I want to print low res, highly compressed images from Facebook?

Maybe if they were from a friend's feed and they wouldn't email me the originals for some reason or for convenience... but when they are my own pictures and I have the originals... doesn't make sense to me.

It makes the photos you are tagged in available to print, I know for me at least, that most of those photos are not mine. And when I go to print some, I am printing photos from multiple friends. You can imagine how painful it would be to go to multiple people (especially if they are not your best friends) and ask them to find specific photos from some point in time and send them to you, then you still have to go and print them. In the end the photo quality maybe better but it would take much longer than a few minutes, if you even receive all the photos you want.

The older photos on Facebook are pretty low res, but they do now have higher res ones available and are the proper res for 4x6 prints, I believe they have had this since adding the full screen image viewer.

Yes, I've seen the "Upload in High Res" option in FB and usually use it myself - there is a big difference even viewing on screen and I've had some images grain very badly. I just checked the res is 2048 x 1366 - but I have no idea if that is good enough for print at that size. Guess it would depend on the image.

I very rarely print stuff these days but I can understand the convenience factor - I'm probably not your ideal demographic anyway since I very rarely print, it would not be that that inconvenient for me. Plus I only have one friend :(

As I mentioned in another reply, if you upload in high res, and your uploaded image is big enough for a decent print, you will be able to print photos at 10x15cm without an issue. Any bigger of a photo, low resolution issues will appear.

I work at a company that prints tens of millions of photos every year, and that has a Facebook integration app.

Actually, the image quality you get from FB through their API is dependent on both the photo size that is being uploaded, and the quality you ask facebook to save your photo at. A high resolution photo that is uploaded to Facebook in high quality mode is a good photo for a 10x15cm print. Any bigger print size and you start running into resolution issues.

The trick here is to show the user which photos he will have low resolution issues, and which he won't.

OT (and maybe worthy of a separate Ask HN), but how do you start a service like this that does physical printing of stuff?

Do you use a third party and just do the front end on top, or do you the whole site, printing and delivery yourselves?

For PrintSpace I used Pwinty, like @samwillis said in this thread and I couldn't agree more, Pwinty is a really easy to use printing API with a simple pricing structure.

What made them an easy choice over others was you can use them in the background like they don't even exist. Other services required users to login to their own service (or create account) before continuing which was less than ideal and created a really broken flow for a user.

Plus like @samwillis also said, they are completely white-label, putting your sticker on it if you want, making it look like it came from you.

Lastly they were very easy to communicate with, answering questions quickly and even willing to help with creating different packaging.

Some time in the future I may print my own (may be more cost effective), but for the time being this is a great choice for me.

I am using Pwinty for my site (http://www.posterhaste.com) and it is really easy to use. They do the printing and fulfilment and even stick a sticker on the packaging with your logo so that it looks like it is coming from you.

I assessed a few of the printing api services and Pwinty were the easiest and most others would ship under their own brand.

I would assume something along the lines of https://www.picplum.com/ with their API. I know Walgreens has an API for the US. There might be others, too.

Not sure what the OP is using but if you search for Pwinty or FujifilmAPI those are two printing APIs.

How much does this cost? How does it work? How long does it take?

I typically do not like "Connecting With Facebook" unless I have an extremely compelling reason to, but this landing page tells you almost nothing about what's on the other side of the authentication, apart from the end deliverables. Some more details would be great.

Edit: Ah hah, I found the price. :P Perhaps don't hide it in light grey text at the bottom of a lengthy paragraph towards the bottom of the page.

Yeah I really did hide the price down there hah, thanks for pointing that out! I think you nailed with what are the most important questions users will want answers to before going any further, and they would be easy enough to make more obvious on the landing page or before connecting with FB, I also completely forgot "how long?", which should definitely be added, thanks!

Do you charge for shipping? 50 cents per photo seems pretty high, unless you have free shipping. Or maybe that is just the right price and I shouldn't compare it with our prices here in Brazil (we print millions of photos at where I work, in an HP Indigo printer, for less than a quarter than that, though we charge for shipping separatedly).

Yes, the charge for shipping is a flat rate of $3 to anywhere in the world. I also agree 50 cents is a bit high, I would like to get it down at some point. I am using a fulfillment provider and currently at the mercy of their costs (this is very convenient though). It sounds like since you print your own and have a large volume you can get the cost much lower. I think printing my own in the future may be an option and would lower my cost a lot.

I want multiple prints of one photo, can't find a button.

Also, do you deliver to the UK?

I actually didn't think of adding multiple prints of one photo yet, good thought, I'll look into adding it!

And yes they can be delivered to the UK, the photos are actually sent from the UK

Have you thought about what if you want to send a copy to a friend but don't know their address. Maybe an automated way to capture your friends physical address or "easy to send" address like work. Although I guess I could see that getting to look like spam.

Will be sure to use post holidays - also what about printing them as postcards (photo on front, blank or typed message on back.)

Yeah, actually one of the first things I would like to add to this version is the ability to send packages of photos to multiple friends, family, etc. Haven't thought about how to handle it when people don't know a friend's address (although very common I'm sure).

Didn't think of postcards, good thought!

I did think of making it possible to add text at one point, and I can print on the back, so definitely an option.

I know the photo background at the top is blurred for effect and to make the text legible, but it makes it look like a bad photo. I'd just find something with less visual noise so you don't have to blur it.

It looks good at first, but when I tried to read it made my eyes hurt.

Nice - just make sure you handle the auth cancel event - if I click 'Cancel' on the Facebook auth popup, it's still going through to the next screen as though I have and throwing an error...

The pic of the pics on your landing page is gigantic huge.

Agreed. They're taking a 2292x2218 photo (INSANELY large dimensions for the web) and resizing it down to 445x431. I'd recommend simply using a web-optimized 445x431 image if that's all that's needed.

Thanks guys for pointing that out! Didn't realize/forgot I did that, must of added it quick, I'll be sure to fix it

Slows the loading of the site to a crawl.

and also pretty ugly with those grey spots... + please close the "h2" and "a" tags properly (at the end of the home page)

I noticed that quickly, too! Very poorly masked image.

I like the simple and direct Press Page. Especially the app screenshots. Great idea for helping a blogger/journalist that may want to cover this service.

Doesn't snapfish already do this fine?

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