Where PC means Personal Care · February 2003 · No. 41
Digital Photography:
A Brief Overview
By Tom and Charlotte Kassens
Digital photography is an exciting and rewarding hobby. Your PC becomes your personal photo lab without the mess and inconvenience of an in-home darkroom. There are several essential tools you’ll need:
Camera: Get to know it. Digital cameras have a different “feel” than film cameras, with a slight delay from when you press the button until the image is captured. Since there is little or no sound when taking a picture, you must mentally adjust to your camera to know when you can relax after tripping the "shutter." Releasing too quickly can cause blurry images. Read the manual fully, and understand how to change settings, delete unwanted images, how to remove and re-insert your media card, etc., before offering to take photos at your cousin’s wedding. Always carry extra batteries – rechargeable are recommended, and an extra media card or two.
Your camera has several formats for saving images, JPG (or Jpeg), is a standard. This is a compressed format that causes very minor degradation of the image quality. Most cameras have multiple settings (such as low, medium or high) for image quality; experiment with each to find the one that best suits your needs. High resolution is not always the best way to take pictures, especially if you intend to share them via e-mail. Conversely, a low-resolution photo will not print well as an 8 x 10. Some cameras have the option to save images in TIF (or Tiff) format, which has less impact on image quality due to compression, but files are much larger, resulting in fewer pictures able to be stored on the digital film. Many higher end cameras allow images to be saved in RAW format, which is preferred by professionals, because there is no in-camera compression of the image, resulting in extremely high quality output.
Computer: Not all PC’s can handle digital photography. The PC must have a processor speed of at least 300 Mhz, at least 128MB RAM, at least a 20 GB hard drive, one or more USB ports, and Windows 98SE or higher. If your system is not up to these minimums, it’s time to upgrade, especially the memory. If the processor speed is slower than 300 Mhz, think about purchasing a new PC. If buying a new PC, get one with a good graphics adapter, 512MB of memory, a CD-Rom burner and at least a 40GB hard-drive.
There are several ways that cameras can be connected to the PC, or even directly to the printer, if so designed by the manufacturer. Other printers may have built-in card readers for several different media types.
Software supplied with the camera allows the use of a USB cable to move pictures from the camera to the PC. This method works well, and is very user-friendly. Follow the instructions in the camera manual to plug the USB cable into the camera and the computer. If you are using Windows XP, the operating system will usually detect the camera as new hardware, then, by following the prompts, you can move images without any proprietary software. You can also use the software supplied with the camera.
Featured in this newsletter:
· Digital Photography:
A Brief Overview
· TECH TALK with Gary Williams
· An Easy Way to Transport Data
Also:
Coupons
Income Tax
If you paid more than $30 to have someone do your income tax, why don’t you try an experiment? Get this year’s edition of TurboTax or TaxCut. Apply it to last year’s data. See how it does your taxes and just how close it is to your prepared tax return. You may be surprised at how easy the program is to use and how the results mirror (or beat!) what your paid preparer did. You may want to do it yourself and save some money.
Popups
You know those annoying pop-up ads that appear with many web sites? I have tried a couple of "pop-up stoppers" and finally found one I like. It is called "NoAds" and you can download this free program here. Once it is installed, any time a window appears that you don’t want, just open NoAds and add the title to the list of windows you don’t want. You can also add wild card text like "free credit" so that no matter who is advertising, the window won’t appear again.
A very handy web site
Do you have the Post Office hold your mail when you go on vacation? If you didn’t because it was too much bother, now you can hold your mail on line.
Digital cameras require a lot of power (batteries or line cord) to download, and much of the software supplied is proprietary. I use one of the many available Digital film readers (SanDisk and Dazzle are two popular brands—both use USB connections) that do not require additional software. In Windows Explorer, these devices appear as one or more disk drives. Once you remove the digital film from the camera and insert it into the reader, open your "Explorer" window(s).
Hint: To eliminate the chance of accidentally erasing photos, turn camera OFF before removing media. Some newer cameras have overrides to keep this from happening.
Use two separate windows, one pointing to the source (digital film reader or camera) and the second pointing to the destination (where you want to locate the pictures on the hard drive). Create and name (i.e.: date, name of event, subject) a new folder in the destination window, Highlight an image file name, and drag or copy it to the destination folder.
Hint: Use the "select all" feature in the "view" menu in the Explorer window, or highlight one image file and use the Ctrl + A ("highlight all" command) in the source folder to select all photos at the same time, then drag to your destination folder as a group.
After your photos are securely stored on the PC’s hard drive, you can safely reformat the media. Use the format function in the camera every time you download a card, to recondition the digital film. Over several uses without "wiping" it clean, the image quality will deteriorate, and you may even see "ghosting."
Photo Editing Software: There are many available choices, depending on what you wish to do with your photos. If you are only interested in printing one picture at a time, the graphics software packaged with your camera may be all that you need. This software might also allow you to print a "proof sheet" of all the photos in a folder, so you can more easily select those you wish to print.
I build scrapbook pages directly on my PC, so my current software favorite is "The Print Shop Pro Publisher," version 15, by Broderbund. It makes producing pages with multiple pictures, text and additional graphics easy. There are many levels (standard, deluxe, etc.) of "The Print Shop." All versions do an equally good job editing and using pictures. "The Print Shop" will also allow you to publish web pages (deluxe versions only), make business cards, greeting cards, CD labels and jewel case inserts along with many other useful projects, all using your own photos, or supplied graphics. This is a versatile product for the money ($34.99 - $79.99). There are many comparable products—Broderbund Print Master, Corel Print Artist and MS Publish-It—that do an equivalent job, and are in the same price range.
There is a fairly broad palette of photo editing tools in "The Print Shop," so you can crop images, fix flaws, including "red-eye," adjust brightness, contrast, and with Version 15, even gamma. There are a limited number of formats to use for saving your edited image.
If you want more professional results, opt for software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photo Deluxe or JASC Paint Shop Pro (price range: $40 - $1000). These programs are geared to the advanced digital photographer or graphic artist, with a learning curve that many casual users find intimidating at the outset, but the results are well worth the effort. All allow greater image enhancement, the ability to adjust individual layers, combine multiple images, and have a wider range of formats to select for your saved image.
Hint: Most photo-editing software will allow you to select a number of different file formats to save or export your image in. Experiment to find the one that produces the best results for your needs.
The key to good results with digital photography is to set yourself a standard, adjust it as you advance in technique and knowledge, and to practice with your camera and software on a regular basis. Keep in mind that developing costs nothing but your time and you don’t have to print (or even save) every picture. As with any worthwhile hobby, it seems the more you learn the more there is left to learn, and there are many books, manuals and classes available to help you in this pursuit.
Above everything else, ENJOY!
BILL’S NOTE: Tom is in the store most Sundays and Mondays.
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T E C H T A L K W I T H G A R Y W I L L I A M S
Let’s Back Up A Little
How important are the files you have on your PC?
Do you have the answer to "World Peace," or the "Cure for Cancer" on your computer? Probably not, but how about that family tree you’ve been working on for the last umpteen years? Oh yeah, the resume you just updated, or maybe the paper for your finals at the UW, or even your Email Address book. Well, the importance of your data is relative. If it’s important to you, then it is important.
I’m sure if you have used a PC (or Mac for that matter) you’ve heard the term "back-up." What you may not know is how or why you should go to the trouble and expense. I could provide you with a rather large list of our customers who have learned the "hard way." In the most extreme cases, data is unrecoverable. The next hardest to swallow is bringing your hard drive to a "data recovery specialist." This is very expensive. The "best-case scenario" is that we can recover your information at our shop, which can also hit the wallet hard.
But why go through any of the above? BACK UP YOUR DATA. This may seem like a lot of expense and trouble at first, but given the alternative it’s cheap and easy. So, let’s talk about how to do this.
First let me explain the two ways to back-up. The first is a "dynamic back-up" which refers to data that is changed frequently. An example would be a Quicken or Quickbooks file or maybe that aforementioned family tree. The preferred way to do this type of backup would be to a Zip drive or tape drive. The prices of the Iomega Zip drives have dropped dramatically in the last year. A 750MB external drive is less than $200.00. A 100MB drive is half that cost. This would normally be plenty of space for the average user. Tape drives hold a lot more data, but are slower and the media is much more expensive.
The other way to backup is to "archive" or store data that can’t be changed. This can be done easily and more economically with a CDRW. A CDRW (compact disk, readable/writable), which costs $60 - $100 and holds between 650MB and 800MB of data. The media is very affordable, especially if bought in bulk.
I suppose I should mention the ever-faithful floppy disk for smaller files. I regularly backup my Windows address book, web link favorites and smaller files to floppy.
Most Windows operating systems offer a backup program. Windows XP Professional has a particularly robust back-up program. If you opt for an Iomega product, the drive comes with a very comprehensive program.
I guess, the long and short of it is, how important is "Your Stuff?" If you use a computer long enough, it’s not "if" you lose data, but "when!" Stop by the shop and we will be happy to help find the right solution for you.
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An Easy Way to Transport Data
If you have a USB port on your computer, there are two really great ways to transport small to medium size files between computers (like your office and your home). "Memory Sticks" are about the size of a thick ball point pen. They come in sizes from 32MB to 256MB and plug into the USB port of your computer. The same compact flash that is used as "film" for digital cameras can be used the same way and comes in sizes up to 512 MB. You just need a USB (or PCMCIA for your laptop computer) reader. Your computer will see this as another disk drive.
Prices range from $90 for a 64MB memory stick to $240 for a 512MB compact flash card. The compact flash readers are $10 for the PCMCIA version and $25 for the USB version.
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