Reading print is still preferred to ‘on screen’ in new study

Submitted by: The Two Sides Team May 9, 2011

59 of 19 -30 year olds prefer to look at printed images rather than on screen revealed in a new study by RIT, “An Experimental Study of Presentation Medium Dependent Differences of Picture Consumption by College-Aged Adults”The use of digital technologies has forever changed how consumers are capturing, sharing, and storing their pictures. The long-term objective of Part I of this study is to obtain an overall picture of the current state of consumer photographers practices.While digital camera owners are taking more photos than ever before, most are not printing them. However, experiments conducted on the presentation medium dependent differences in picture consumption showed that a majority of the participants prefer printed images to images viewed on a screen.

Regardless of this preference, participants did not print images very often for a variety of reasons, including lack of time or money. In addition, results showed that the most commonly used printing tools included Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, and Flickr. Finally, participants cited Photoshop, Lightroom, and Picasa as the primary editing tools, with Facebook being mentioned as the main sharing tool go with the most reliable, future-proof, technology available to humanity at this point in time.

One of the conclusions of the research is that there is a preference for a medium with “A proven track record with minimum storage requirements. Its called paper”.

By

Franziska Frey, Ph.D, McGhee Distinguished Professor, School of Print Media Mariela Rodriguez Adames, Graduate Student, School of Print Media Ya-fang Tsai, Graduate Student, School of Print Media Frank Cost, Interim Dean, College of Imaging Arts Sciences; Susan Farnand, Staff Scientist, Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

A Research Monograph of the Printing Industry Center at RIT No. PICRM-2010-07.

Share this story