The buzz at this year's PMA? Football, including allegiances and “where are you watching the game,” was a major topic of conversation. With the double whammy of being held just three weeks after CES and on Super Bowl week-end, can you blame anyone? Even PMA was running the football (no pun intended) theme with Kick-off and Ultimate Tailgate Parties.

As usual, PMA revolved around cameras, with printing as a sidebar – and I'm not certain that any one printing device item caused a stir. In recent years, photo kiosks and photo books have been the showcase items; and this year there was refinement and expansion of digital photo printing options. Booths still showcased the kiosks and photo books, but with the added emphasis of increased usability – allowing the consumer simple, straightforward printing of photos and related photo products (and easier and less labor-intensive for the retailer as well.)

Booth tours demonstrated photo book creation that was easy and fast (complete with some really neat and creatively styled templates). The user just chooses the photos they wish to have automatically inserted into book format and voilá! Hopefully, this intuitiveness and convenience will encourage harried and hurried consumers to print their photos.

Just a day prior to PMA, I spoke at the Lyra Symposium on the topic of Digital Photography Milestones and Challenges and reiterated the need for the printer manufacturers to diversify, offering consumers printing options in each of the photo printing markets – home/office, retail, and on-line – and how these three markets had become intertwined. With its increased collaboration with Fujifilm, Xerox joined HP and Kodak in doing a good job of demon-strating their comprehensive offerings.

Seeing these options addressed by an increasing number of vendors is encouraging; it is a confirmation and acknowledgment that future of photo printing depends upon continuing to offer the consumer more reasons to print with improved usability, including intuitive interfaces, increased speeds, and convenient printing sites (all without a loss of image quality, of course). Looking ahead, vendors will need to address the cost of photo printing, and long-term storage, along with the conveyance of available printing options and, surely, brand differentiation.

Catherine Fiasconaro
Vice President, Operations
Director, SpencerLab Digital Color Laboratory