Getting Your Digital Photos Ready For Sharing

One of the main reasons why people buy digital cameras is that they can share their photos with others. Even if you are just going to print your pictures for you, you want them to look their best. Here are some tips to get your images ready for sharing or printing.

1. Organize your photos

Delete what you do not like or people who are close to the other duplicate. No point in clogging up your hard disk or CD with the trash. Use good software for photo management as ACDSEE 7, Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 or Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 5 to display, organize and name your images. The program also allows you to batch rename so that you can give a more descriptive file name for the group of photos all at once. You can add keywords and tags to find photos more easily. Specified in the description of your photos, not just "John and Laurie." You may have hundreds of photos of your children and more difficult to find what you are looking for. It is better to say "John and Laurie water skiing on Lake Powell, May 2004."

2. Save your ORIGINAL

Errors can occur. It is a good idea to back up all images to a CD before starting to edit or modify. Thus, you always have the original to return to deliberately save the image or change your photo then decide you do not want. CD store a lot of photos, so that cheaper insurance.

3. Rotate image

Try looking at one side of the picture is boring. Use your photo management or editing software to rotate the photo required. If you have an image that is a little crooked, you can solve this problem by using your editing software. Most photo editors have automatic function "straighten out", or you can manually rotate the image by a few degrees to straighten the horizon.

4. remove red eye

Even with automatic red-eye reduction on your digital camera, your subject's eyes may still have red eyes. Use your photo editing software to remove it. Focus on the eyes and it will be easier for you to fix red eye. I tried a number of red-eye correction tool, and found that what comes with a photo editor ACDSEE 7 is among the best. It zeros only on the red eye and does not darken the surrounding looks like any other software does not.

5. crop your image

Background Cut unnecessary or intrusive and focus on your subject. Most photo editing program will maintain the aspect ratio, so that when you draw a rectangle around the area you want to focus on will be cut as a 4x6 or that you specify. This way you will not end up with a strange image size. Ofoto, an online photo printer (now called Kodak EasyShare Gallery) also has a good cutter to maintain the appropriate print size. It comes with free photo editor.

6. adjust the lighting and contrast

Some of his photographs have been eased out or too dark. You can automatically adjust the color, brightness and contrast of your photos. The best programs such as Photoshop Album 2.0, ACDSee and Jasc also have the tools to make manual adjustments to enhance. Be careful not too good, or the image may come out rough.

7. prepare to share

There are a number of ways to share your photos. Some programs, such as Roxio Photo Suite 7, ACDSEE7, Photoshop Album and Paint Shop Photo Album allows you to create digital photo albums or slideshows with music, transitions, and captions. You can burn them to CD or resize and optimize e-mail directly from the program.

Online photo services such as Photoworks, Shutterfly, Snapfish and Kodak EasyShare Gallery (Ofoto) also allows you to share photos online for free. Simply upload your photos to your server in their own photo albums and add a description if desired. Then send your friend with a link to your album. With the online service most of your photos remain on their servers, as long as you have an account with them, free of charge. Sign up for a free account, you only pay for the pictures that you choose to buy.

For hardcore photo of participants, there are also sharing application dedicated to photos, such as PiXPO v1.5.0, which allows you to share photos directly from your hard drive. It is a peer software application that allows you to connect directly with their friends and family to share and view photos online without the addition of a peep. Unlike traditional photo sharing service, you have unlimited storage and you do not need to upload your photos to a remote server or wait for friends to connect to photo sharing sites. The application is easy to install and use and cheap, about $ 30 PC Magazine Editor's Choice in its rankings, January 2005 edition 3.