One of the biggest baby photo competitions held by a regional newspaper has been an overwhelming success – but it was only made possible because of the digital wizardry introduced to photo sales by digital photographic printing company dipinto.co.uk.

Nearly 5,500 images of babies and toddlers were taken in just two weeks in the competition to pick the Nottingham Evening Post’s Baby of the Year.

Dipinto is trialling its service with seven other titles in the Northcliffe Group including the Leicester Mercury as well as Central Independent Newspapers, The Observer Group, Essex Chronicle and Bolton Evening News.

The Birmingham Post & Mail Group, Express & Star, Midland Media Group and Leamington Courier are already using the system to benefit their own photo sales operation.

Carol Seal, commercial photographic sales manager for the Derby Evening Telegraph, who organised the competition for sister title the Post, said: “The service from dipinto was absolutely perfect – the speed, efficiency and quality of the prints was superb.

“The after sales have been amazing with over 1,000 extra orders placed by customers. We really couldn’t have wished for better!”

As well as purchasing prints of published photographs, through dipinto.co.uk readers can also have their favourite picture emblazoned on mugs, t-shirts and mouse mats.

Dipinto commercial director Declan Mellett said: “With our highly advanced processing lab, we can produce images four times faster than ever before. This is ideal where you need to produce thousands of reprints very quickly – such as a major baby photo competition.

“It also means reduced production costs, as our machine prints the image in four different sizes at the same time.

“With traditional processing, someone has to sort all the printed images into packs for the customers, whereas our machine does it for us.

“Some newspaper groups have seen our service as an opportunity to cut out a major overhead. But what we are additionally offering is a no risk income stream that benefits the readers.”

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