Here we are in the thick of the holiday season and thank goodness that the weather has been so nice. It was great getting the grandkids out on the beach this weekend - I love you Oak Island!
With the holidays upon us, photos are being snapped hither and yon, with many more to come as the actual day approaches. Anybody who gets a new digital camera (what else is there?) this year will go into snap-itis as soon as they open the box. And anybody who gets a photo printer will run to try it out. So, let's spend some time on photo issues to get you ready to manage and print your photos.
First of all, get to know your camera. Modern digital cameras offer a wealth of features and allow lots of creative control. A few minutes spent reading the manual (yes, Virginia, there is a manual although it may be on CD) and taking some test shots will help you when the time comes. For example: what do you do when your subject is against a strong backlight, like the sun? How do you handle a fast action shot? How do you make the background go out of focus on a portrait? How far does your flash unit work - what is its range? Oh, and don't choke up with those zooms; stay back a bit and make sure there is enough room in the photo to crop for printing.
Second, get a good photo editing program. All photos can be enhanced and made better, and if you care to print the very best a photo editing program that is better than what comes with the camera is in order. If you want free, Picassa from Google is great. For less than a hundred bucks, Adobe Photoshop Elements is really excellent. Spend some learning time here also.
Third, organize your photos. If you don't concentrate on managing your photos, you will end up with literally thousands of them and you will just be unable to eventually view or find what you want. There are lots of photo management programs around - my favorite is ThumbsPlus from www.cerious.com. Don't be afraid to cull the bad photos - I know it's difficult to do, but be firm.
Outline a process for yourself. I usually recommend first uploading your photos into a temporary folder then immediately culling the bad ones. If this process upsets you, write this folder to a CD before you start. Then move the remaining photos to a working folder where you will adjust any photos that need it. Finally, move them to the final folder for permanent storage and categorization.
When I crop photos for printing, I always use a temporary folder to contain the working image and always store the image in an uncompressed format (i.e. TIFF, BMP, etc.) so that further editing does not compromise photo quality. I usually put the cropped size (4x6, 5x7, etc.) into the file name.
Fourth, think about how to print or display your photos. There are lots of options here. You can just show the photos as slide shows on your PC, but to do this your probably need to organize the appropriate photos into a folder, so that the slide show repeats on just the photos you want.
There are lots of programs to create slideshows on CDs or DVDs that you can show on a TV; this method is very good for sending photos to relatives. The quality won't be as good as a printed photo, but viewing them on the large screen makes up for it. You can also add background music, titles, etc.
If you want to actually print the photo, you can either print them yourself or send them off (i.e. upload them) to one of the online photos services. Good ones are Snapfish, Kodak, or Yahoo Photo. These services print photos fairly cheaply (cheaper than you can with your printer), but you may lose some creative control. You can also organize slide shows on these services for your friends or relatives to look at online, but check to see whether they can download a copy of the photo if they wish. My wife did a collage recently on Kodak and it was so easy even a caveman could do it!
If you want to print yourself, a good quality photo printer is a must, but you should also invest in some good paper. In general, stick with the paper offerings from your printer manufacturer until you are ready to try some of the alternate offerings. The better the paper, the better the picture.
So, make the holidays cheery with lots of photos and may you have the happiest of holidays this year!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)