[Commentary] In our last editorial, we discussed Kodak’s unpreventable fall from the profits it enjoyed in the days of film and pricey photofinishing products: even the most successful company in consumer digital imaging is not making enough to counter those losses.

Digital imaging provides customers with all-but free enjoyment of photography: once a camera is purchased (or provided with a phone) each shot has none of the costs once standard with film, processing, and printing. Sharing those images with others no longer requires duplicate prints — just email, or better yet, a Facebook account.

Given that no one stands to make the money once garnered from analog photography, what can the industry do now?

Kodak announced that in its next incarnation it will again focus on output: both home photo printing and large-scale high-volume commercial reproduction.

These goals seem to more reflect the experience of CEO Antonio Perez during his years at HP than they do the best potential use of Kodak’s heritage.

Those goals are not the best bet on how people will use imaging in the future.

What should the company focus on? And is that area also a better option for many others in the photography industry?

Simply put: the future of any output is quite limited. Hard copy will never go away completely, but it is inarguably a declining market in terms of overall volume. Year after year, fewer photos will be put on paper. As everyone has a screen in their pocket on which to see pictures — their phone — as well as PCs, iPads, and who knows what else in the future — there is simply less need for a print.

Even seeing one’s best pictures in a large format no longer requires an 8×10 or larger print —now-ubiquitous big-screen TVs with HDMI connections to a camera can show everyone’s photos, and a 42-inch backlit color screen beats all but the best and biggest prints. Just think: all of us can now see our personal photos reproduced larger and with more brilliant color than anything short of top-end pro reproduction. Almost no one enjoyed that 10 years ago; now anyone can.

That trend of screens over prints is never going to reverse. This week, analysis from IDC showed even HP stands to make much less revenue on printer supplies.

So if the profits of the future are not going to be made on consumables — from where will they come?

As has been also argued to death everywhere, camera sales decline as everyone gets a smart phone. So image capture hardware is also unlikely to be the best bet.

Millions are finding that Facebook and the like provide almost everything else they need from photography: display, an audience, sharing, visual communication, feedback… Add in some full-resolution redundant storage, and what else do you want?

We have long argued the need for services. Perhaps such businesses do not scale as simply as adding another server, running the camera manufacturing line a bit longer, or, once upon a time, selling vastly more processing and printing consumables.

But what is scaling today is the number of images captured.

What is not growing are the options that allow average photographers to easily access and enjoy the thousands of photos they take.

It is no secret that most people take picture after picture with which they do nothing.

The industry’s response has merely been trying multiple ways to convince the would-be customer to pay to do something with their own photos.

Kodak’s original slogan points out the fallacy of this strategy. “You push the button, and we’ll do the rest.”

Today vendors — Kodak included – instead tell customers: “You push the button; then you have to get the photos from the camera to some other device; then you have to get the photos to a kiosk or online service; then you have to spend a lot of time organizing, editing, and enhancing those photos. Then you have to pay to do something with them.”

All that hardly translates to “We’ll do the rest.”

Imaging businesses: rather than complain today’s photographers don’t pay to “do something” with their photos — think about what you can do for them. (Yes, for a fee — we’re not advocating charity here.)

How does this scale?

Kodak itself is going after enterprise-level imaging services, just as HP has lately profited from focusing on corporate computing needs instead of home printer sales.

For smaller businesses, it can mean online imaging services.

For local retail shops, it can mean handholding customers through the image management, selection and enhancement that now stymies many from advancing onwards to photo output of any kind. Or, better yet, rather than handholding, take the task in hand completely and offer full-service imaging: customers bring in a laptop filled with photos, and leave with their best shots organized, enhanced, and even laid out into an onscreen and/or custom-printed photo book. Or calendars, slideshow videos on DVD, and other non-paper-based products and services.

Yes, any of these “solutions” have been available in some degree or another for years; the point here is not to proscribe specific actions or products, but to advocate for a return to “We’ll do the rest” — and away from what seems to be the current paradigm for the photo business: Self-service.

Just as Kodak made significant profits from simplifying consumer photography, perhaps other companies can now profit from further simplifying the consumer’s imaging tasks — or, better yet, eliminating those tasks altogether, letting the consumer “do” nothing but enjoy imaging.

“We’ll do the rest.”

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