Let's not kid ourselves, more and more of us are getting home printers that can pump out some amazing quality images. Granted, quality printers are relatively cheap because most manufacturers get you on the cost of ink. However, if you are trying to save a buck, it's still going to be cheaper for you overall if you print off your own photo quality image at 5x7 or 8x10. Even if you choose to use a more expensive paper, when you combine your ink and paper cost, it's still cheaper to go this route than to buy an art-print from a retailer. When you buy prints from a retailer, the main advantages are that you can get a bigger print than what your printer can do, perhaps better quality papers and inks, and maybe even a quality image that you don't have (of course, there's the convenience of not having to go through the work of printing yourself).
When you print yourself, it can often take a lot of trial and error to configure your computer, printer, and paper choice for optimal quality. However, once you get this potentially costly configuration down pat, it's the most cost effective way to go, assuming you don't want anything too fancy.
Problems you may run into printing yourself are lines appearing on the image, random dots, ink bleeding, and color tonality issues. In many cases, you need to go to your printer software and perform the regular cleaning/ maintenance/ alignment cycles that printers need sometimes to function properly.
Have someone else print it:
This may be the way to go if you want something bigger than what your printer can handle, if you don't want to fuss with printing configurations, or if you want something printed on a variety of papers. If you save the digital file to a flash drive or CD/ DVD, you can take it to about any print shop to get your image customized. Furthermore, if you want multiples of a print (say, for distribution), this is probably going to be more cost effective than trying to do it yourself. Then again, if you appreciate more the satisfaction of having done something from beginning to end totally by yourself, then print yourself.
