The volume of prints of all sizes made from digital-still cameras increased by 46 percent for 12 months ending in January, according to the Photo Marketing Association.

Online ordering grew 114 percent during that time, while printing at retail minilabs and instant kiosks grew 56 percent and 48 percent respectively.

Growth in home printing is still below the market average, according to the PMA, but still is a healthy business: For the period of February 2006 through January 2007 the volume of prints made at home grew by 20 percent.

His sister, Jayme Schmidt, visited his Sioux Falls home during the Christmas holidays and shot lots of digital pictures. When she returned to Alabama, she posted them on Snapfish.com, a free online service.

Schmidt browsed through her pictures, downloaded the ones he liked and e-mailed them to his favorite local lab for prints. "It works out really well," says Schmidt, plant manager at Hutchinson Technology in Sioux Falls.

While people still like the standard 4- by 6-inch prints from the 35 mm film era and creative scrapbooking has a loyal following, there are many other ways to preserve and share family memories in the digital era, says Bob Hanson, president of six Harold's Photo Centers in South Dakota and two in Iowa.

The market is moving toward family and event pictures shared online, in custom-made books of all sizes, fine-art-style canvas stretched on wood frames, calendars and even on objects, he says.

The volume of prints of all sizes made from digital-still cameras increased by 46 percent for 12 months ending in January, according to the Photo Marketing Association.

Thanks to advances in high-speed scanning technology, Hanson offers the "Shoebox Special," a way to copy, share and protect those old paper pictures of any age, perhaps now stuffed in drawers, boxes and old albums.

"It's the same technology that legal offices and businesses used to quickly scan piles of documents, but now the resolution is high enough for good picture quality," Hanson said, demonstrating the new equipment behind the scenes at the 41st Street West location.

He can scan up to 400 prints and store the pictures on a CD for $59.99 Resolution is 300 dots per inch, and index sheets full of the images help users find specific shots.

"It's an excellent way to preserve treasured photographic memories, putting all those loose prints in one place," he said. Sizes can be from wallet through 8x12 inches. "It's also a good way to share a single set of old family pictures with several members of a family."

Computer savvy photographers who have a home scanner can do the same thing, but it's tedious work, he says, since the scanner holds only a few at a time and then each image must be adjusted. If you can't afford PhotoShop, try the free software from Gimp that offers photo retouching, image composition and image authoring (www.gimp.org).

And big computer companies like Microsoft are getting in on the business, offering free online photo sharing. The Internet-based Windows Live Spaces requires an initial sign-up but lets customers upload photos, and create and share virtual photo albums.

It offers parental and age controls and allows selected friends to visit online and comment on your photos. Users even can get Live Spaces pictures on their cell phones. But the service downsizes the images, which look good on-screen but aren't great for printing - keep the originals safe on a disc or hard drive.

If you don't like keeping your own discs and hard drives, there are services like ProtectMyPhotos, which helps safeguard your photo collection from PC failures, viruses, fires, floods and misguided hard drive cleaning. But it will cost you about $40 a year.

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