Monday, January 20, 2003

If holiday predictions panned out, many of you opened your first digital cameras this season and started snapping candid shots as friends and family came together to celebrate.

Now comes the big question: What do I do with these digital pictures?

Maybe you want prints. Maybe you're interested in an online photo album. Maybe you want to edit out the red eye, add a border or soften the focus of the photo.

Whether you are a PC user, a Mac fan or a complete technophobe, we have answers that will make your transition from film to digital a smooth one.

PHOTO EDITING

Thank goodness for photo editing software, which not only takes out red eye but can also crop photos, enhance the brightness, adjust the contrast and more.

You may have heard professionals or semi-pros talk about using Adobe Photoshop to make a photo sparkle. But did you know Photoshop software will set you back more than $600? Ouch.

Adobe realizes beginners don't need all the tools that come with Photoshop. That's why the San Jose, Calif., company offers Photoshop Elements 2.0 at about $89 (www.adobe.com/products/ photoshopel), a scaled-down version with the basic tools of Photoshop. Photoshop Elements has everything a beginner or intermediate user will need -- and probably more.

And while its a bargain, other products on retail shelves will cost you half that. Among them is Photo Center at $50 from Data Becker (www.databecker.com), a software program that not only offers the basic editing tools but also comes with more than 250 filters and effects.

Another option is SmartDraw Photo from SmartDraw.com, a $69 download that you can try free of charge for 30 days. The interface is easy to manage and the instructions are easy to understand.

But probably the most unique approach to photo editing is found online at Bellamax (www.bellamax.com). The free membership service charges users for each photo that is enhanced and varies the price -- from 49 cents to $ 2.99 -- based on the type of work you want done.

Users upload images to their online Bellamax account and request the enhancements. Within two days, the enhanced photo is sent to the user's account, where it can be viewed, printed or uploaded to a photo printing site. Bellamax doesn't do printing on its site and says it hopes to soon get return times down to minutes instead of hours. The site offers a free trial to upload one photo that needs some work.

PRINTERS

The big names in the printer business -- Epson, Canon, Hewlett- Packard and even Sony -- are making photo printing sans PC easier. Sony's $200 DPP-EX5 Digital Photo Printer (www.sonystyle.com) and Canon's $180 S530D Direct Connect printer (www.powershot.com) offer examples of what you can and can't do.

Sony's printer is compact and shoots out nice 3.5-inch-by-5-inch photos in less than two minutes. The unit's video out port allows connection to a TV for viewing and easy navigation. But the limitation of using photo paper no larger than 4x6 can be stifling.

Also, you need a camera that uses Sony's Memory Stick memory cards -- which limits your choices almost entirely to models made by Sony. You could also connect using an IEEE 1394 port, but few consumer cameras have such ports. Otherwise you're out of luck.

With the Canon and most of the other direct-connect printers, this is not an issue. While some allow a camera-to-printer connection via a USB port, Canon built a PCMCIA slot and includes a four-in-one card adapter to hold other types of flash media, including Sony's Memory Stick.

The $100 add-on LCD display -- a must for those without the computer -- offers crisp on-screen images and print previews. And the navigation screen is easy to maneuver and understand.

This is full home printer, capable of handling everything from plain text to envelopes and labels. But, on the downside, it's not nearly as portable as the Sony.

ON THE WEB

Web-based photo service companies know this, and that's why you can do far more than just order prints when you upload your digital photos to the Web.

Surf through Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com), Kodak's Ofoto (www.ofoto.com) and Snapfish (www.snapfish.com) and you'll quickly realize the Web can change the way you share your digital -- and film -- photos.

The best thing about all these sites: Membership is free. This is important because it won't cost you anything to examine the line- up of products, prices and promotions from one site to another.

Looking to turn your favorite photo into a mouse pad? Snapfish will do the job for $10. Need a poster-sized 20-inch-by-30-inch print for your special event? Ofoto will deliver for $23. Want to customize your photo, maybe by softening the focus, adding a border or putting a message on the back of the print? Try Shutterfly.

The sites also realize you may not yet have made the full leap to digital, so they provide mailers to send in your rolls of film and have them appear on the Web site within a few days.

Also, each wants you to create photo albums on their sites. With this feature, you can invite friends and family -- via an e-mailed link -- to view your photos.

You don't have to make a commitment to a single site. Keep a digital photo album on your computer or burn CDs of your digital images instead of letting the sites handle that for you.

But when you need prints or a customized gift, turn to one of the online sites. You can upload one photo at a time or 12 for a calendar. You can even have the photo shipped to the loved one across the country -- all with the click of the mouse.

GETTING ORGANIZED

In today's digital world, there are better ways to keep track of photos, captions and dates. But don't be overwhelmed by the selection of photo organization software on retail shelves or the Web.

While one product might offer an extra feature here or there, most come with the same basic organization tools. Sometimes, the only difference is the look of the program.

PhotoLightning (www.photolightning.com), available as a download for $40, is divided into two screens: the right side devoted to a larger view of the photo while the left side shows a vertical film strip with thumbnail shots of each photo.

A competitor, Picasa from Lifescape Solutions (www.picasa.net) at $30, also splits the screen but places names of the different albums on the left side and thumbnails of the pictures in those albums on the right. Larger-sized previews of the individual photos come up when you double-click on the thumbnail.

Buttons to create slideshows, print photos or to e-mail an image to friends are standard in most of the products.

One of the products that stands out is FlipAlbum 5 at $25 from E- Book Systems (www.flipalbum.com), a photo-album software program that uses a 3-D page-flipping technology to provide the look and feel of flipping through a traditional book-style photo album on- screen.

Some versions of FlipAlbum, as well as other products such as Photo Flicks at $30 from Data Becker (www.databecker.com), include CD- and DVD-burning software for playing slideshows on standard DVD players. Some also allow users to add MP3 music files to the background of the album or slide show. Others allow voice recordings for narration.

It's important to remember, however, that you don't have to store digital images in a photo album. You can simply save them to your hard drive and view them as you would any other file.

THE MAC EXPERIENCE

Apple's iPhoto (www.apple.com/iphoto) combines importing, organizing, editing and sharing in one easy-to-use program that comes standard on Macintosh computers.

Importing is as easy as plugging your digital camera into a USB port, clicking the Import button and watching as your photos appear in the iPhoto library.

The library is the hub of the iPhoto experience. Users create new albums by copying -- not moving -- photos from the library to the album.

Also on-screen is the date and time of the shot, recorded by the camera, the resolution of the image and its file size. The title can be customized and additional comments can be added. There also are buttons to start an on-screen slideshow, assign keywords to the image and or rotate it.

The editing tools remove red- eye, perform simple crops and allow for manual adjustment to brightness and contrast. Sharing tools let you e-mail the picture, post it to a Web site, turn it into the Mac's desktop wallpaper or pick one of your own photo albums as the computer's screen saver.

One of the best parts of iPhoto is the photo book feature. It allows users to organize an album into a book format, complete with captions and a few different layout styles.

Imagine: You can organize dozens of your favorite pictures of the kids into pages of a hardbound book with captions you wrote. The images are uploaded to Apple's Web site and, in less than a week, Apple sends you a professional- looking coffee-table book. At $30 for a 10-page book with about 30 images, the book won't break your bank and will be priceless to the grandparents.