Along with the bookshelf of photograph albums in my household, there are several boxes of loose and sometimes crumpled photos and trays of transparencies we occasionally peruse.

That is one of the advantages of traditional photography. Images are readily accessible and easy to browse. By contrast, studies suggest that only a small proportion of the digital images taken these days are printed at all. Many images, if they make it out of the camera at all, languish on a hard drive waiting for the seemingly inevitable hard drive crash when they are lost for ever. (Do not forget to back up valuable files.) But there are alternative endings. One option is to turn your favourite digital images into a book using an online photo service such as MyPublisher (www.mypublisher.uk.com) or Photobox (www.photobox.co.uk). Unfortunately, this can prove expensive.