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| Guide Series | Table of Contents For This Issue |
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| PC Today: CD & DVD Drives, Palm & Windows CE Software, Online Photography | |
| May 2001 Vol. 9 Issue 5 | |
Tips For Photo Preparation Learn To Edit, Share & Store Your Digital Pictures |
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[FLIPALBUM]
 You’ve wanted to get involved with digital
photography ever since you received your first holiday card by way of
electronic mail. You finally bought a digital camera and scanner, and
after taking your first set of photos, you promptly scanned them into your
computer and e-mailed them to friends and family. “They’re going to love
these,” you think, but instead of praise, you receive frustrated replies.
The photos you sent are too big for the screen, the files take too long to
download, and the recipients don’t have the right program to view the
files. These problems plague even those who have been using computers for a long time. You may even have noticed problems with your picture files before sending them. For example, you might have had trouble attaching the pictures to your e-mail because of the size of the file. Many e-mail services have restrictions on how large an attached file can be. This article will cover tools you can use to edit and augment your digital images and tips on how to store and share them. _files/pixblue.gif){kind=small} Edit Your Pictures.
You might find that you take more pictures with a digital
camera than you would with a regular film camera simply because you know
you can easily edit your digital photos once you’ve transferred them to
your computer. For example, you can remove parts of the image you don’t
want, lighten them if they’re too dark, and remove that annoying red eye
caused by the camera’s flash.
Paint Shop Pro is a good midlevel image-editing tool because it offers a lot of features that some of the high-level tools (such as Adobe Photoshop) have but is a lot easier for the casual user to use. For something a bit more intuitive and user-friendly, try PhotoSuite 4—Platinum Edition; it has a lot of step-by-step menus to help guide you through the editing process. Before you start editing your carefully captured photos, it’s a good idea to store an original copy in a safe place. This way you can start from scratch if you make a big mistake while editing. Trim down to size. One editing task digital camera users usually face is making their pictures’ file size manageable. Assuming you have a megapixel camera and you take your pictures at the highest quality, you can potentially end up with a picture that’s bigger than 8MB. Unfortunately, you will only be able to view a fraction of this image on the monitor at a time. That’s because the image resolution is something like 2,160 pixels across by 1,440 pixels down (2,160 x 1,440) and the average video setting on a lot of computers is only 800 x 600. (A pixel is the smallest part of an image that a computer printer or display can control.) To help reduce the size of an image, you should first try trimming, or cropping, the unwanted area around the subject in your picture. For example, a picture of your friends may have a lot of unnecessary detail in the periphery. To remove this extra detail from the image, use your image-editing program’s Crop feature to remove it. In Paint Shop Pro, for example, you would select the Crop tool, select the area of the photo you want to keep, and double-click inside the selected area. Paint Shop Pro removes all the extra detail outside the box you’ve double-clicked. If your program doesn’t have a Crop feature, use the Select feature, cut the desired area out of the main image, and paste it to a new file. Resize to fit. You can further reduce the size of your image by using the Resize feature on your image-editing tool to shrink the image. As we mentioned earlier, the most common video setting on computers is 800 x 600; therefore, if you want the most people to be able to view your images, you need to reduce the size of the image to at least 800 x 600. To be safe though, it’ s a good idea to reduce the image to around 640 x 480, assuming your image is wider than it is higher; otherwise it should be 480 x 640. This is just a recommendation. If you plan to put multiple images on a Web page, you may want to size the images even smaller. But if you plan to print these images on an inkjet printer or use a service such as a Kodak Print Center at the local drug store, you really don’t want your images any smaller that 640 x 480; the quality of your prints may not be as clear as you want. Store & Share Your
Memories. Now that you have a hard drive full of images, what
do you do with them? Do you store them on your hard drive for the life of
the computer? This storage method won’t last long; you’ll eventually run
out of space on your hard drive. This method also fails to protect your
photos in case something happens to that one copy. Just as you back up the
spreadsheets and word files on your hard drive, you should back up your
digital photos onto a different storage media. We’ve heard stories from
people who lost gigabytes worth of images because a computer virus
infected their computer, corrupting or erasing all the files on their hard
drive. Don’t let this happen to you. A good method for storing your digital photo files is to copy them onto a CD-ROM. This storage method also makes it easy to transfer your files from one computer to another because most computers now have CD-ROM drives. It’s also very easy to copy a file from a disc back to your computer. In order to copy the files to a CD-ROM disc, you will need to have a CD-R (CD-recordable) or CD-RW (CD-rewriteable) drive and software that can write the information to the disc, such as Roxio’s Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe ($99; http://www.roxio.com/). For more information about CD-RW products, consult the Hardware section of this issue beginning on page 5.)
One way to make viewing your images from a CD easier is to put them on Web pages first and then copy them to a disc. Programs such as Microsoft Picture It! Publishing Platinum 2001 ($49.99; http://pictureitproducts.msn.com/) have a feature that lets you make simple Web pages by placing your images in predefined Web page templates. You can add and change borders around your images, add sound, and add text to describe the photo. Once you’re done, write the files to a disc and people will be able to view your pictures from the CD through their Web browser just as they would if they were viewing them off the Internet. Another alternative program that offers a unique way for people to view your images off the CD-ROM is FlipAlbum CD Maker by eBook Systems($50; http://www.flipalbum.com/). FlipAlbum lets you arrange all your images into an electronic photo album, complete with thumbnail images (miniature representations of your images), a table of contents, image descriptions, and an index. Once you’ve organized your images the way you want, copy the images and the photo album to a disc; then you can share your images with everyone. The FlipAlbum runs right off the CD-ROM; your viewers only need to put in the disc and start viewing. The Web warehouse.The Web can be a great resource for both storing and sharing your digital photos. Many ISPs (Internet service providers), such as EarthLink and AOL (America Online), offer their subscribers around 5 to 10MB of free Web space they can use as their personal home page. You could store your images here, but assuming the average file size of each of your digital pictures is 500KB, you’ll be lucky if you can store 20 pictures online. Have no fear! There are alternative online storage resources that are also free. (See the “Digital Shoebox” sidebar for examples.) We found two good advantages for using such services. First, you don’t have to fiddle with designing any Web pages or thumbnail images. Just upload your images, organize them, and start sharing. Second, you don’t have the hassle of finding the negatives if people want reprints. Many of the photo sharing Web services have partnered with companies that will print your digital photos for you, your family, and friends (for a nominal fee, of course). Keep in mind that you don’t want to use a free online storage site for permanent storage or as the only place you’ve stored your photos. If that storage site goes out of business, your images will probably be lost as well. It’s A Wrap.
Digital photography can be fun because you get instant
gratification from sharing your images with people. And if you don’t like
the image, you can delete it. If you have extra detail in the picture that
you don’t want, you can edit it out. Use these tips to make the most of
your digital images and share the world as you’ve captured it with friends
and family. _files/pixgray.gif){kind=small} by David Jung
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