Photo tips for Digital BEGINNERS

Welcome to my Digital Photography tips page!

I have written for those of you just now getting into digital photography. Photography has been my hobby for 40+ years and I'm a gadget nut, so digital cameras and computers certainly hold my interest.

Number one rule for getting good people pictures. Get close! Move so close that just the people nearly fill the entire view finder.

If a child is bonding with a new puppy, don't take the shot from across the room. Get down to the child's level (or the puppy's level if you're more flexible than I am) and get close, really close, or use a zoom feature if your camera has it.

The best picture of the puppy and child scene probably would be taken so close that even some of the puppy and or child will be cut off. (If taking the picture to be made into a photo cutout, then you don't want to cut anything off like arms or feet or tail.)

Want a SIMPLE way to resize your pictures? Try EasyImage!
Really easy to use little software program that only costs $10, or $20 if you want to resize lots of photos at the same time.

And you can even try it for 10 days before you decide to buy it! Do people hate to receive your photos in an e-mail because they take forever to download and then the picture is so large it won't fit on their monitor? This software is your easy answer! Yeah, you can do the same thing with Photoshop, but that costs $650! EasyImage screenshot-1 EasyImage screenshot-2

Why would I want a digital camera? I like mine for three main reasons:
1. I can take A LOT of pictures of the same thing without worrying about the cost of film and processing. Just by taking more pictures, I get BETTER pictures because I have a choice of which to keep. If I take a group shot of 10 people,
at least one will be in mid-blink. If I take 4 shots instead of one, I will probably get one with everyone's eyes open.

2. With the editing software that comes with most digital cameras, I can lighten, darken, crop the junk away, etc., all before I print the photo, or send it via e-mail.

3. My wife's 2 megapixel camera will take about 140 high resolution ("high resolution" means a better quality image that can be enlarged without severe image degradation) pictures before it runs out of memory or battery power. You don't have to stop and change film every 36 pictures!

Camera helps with the PLUMBING!
I was installing a new kitchen sink a while back and needed to buy pipe fittings to hook up the drain. I had to match some of the original drain pipe with the new.

Rather than try to remember what the stuff looked like when I got to the Home Depot, I took a picture under the sink and took it to the store with me. I could then search through the thousands of fittings at HD and still remember exactly what I needed to hook up with.

Christmas decorating - photograph EVERYTHING for next year! If you have tons of Christmas decorations all over your house like we do, you'll love this idea.

Before you put away the decorations, take a picture ( doesn't have to be digital of course, but it's cheaper) of every area of your house showing where each decoration is placed.

Then store those photos with your decorations and next year you won't spend time trying to remember just where the silver bells go because photos of last year will guide you right to their special place.

You can even save money by printing the pictures on plain paper, because they don't have to be top quality images.

Quickly sharing new-baby pictures on the web
My son's wives keep having babies, which I think is really cool!

I take my camera to the hospital, then when I get home, I post the pictures to my web site, then send the web site address to all the family in an email. They, in turn, can send the address to their friends.

This is all done within a few hours of the birth, and no one has to receive an email with tons of pictures in it. They simply get an email with a link in it.

You may already "own" space for a web page yourself where you can do the same. Check with your ISP, or go to Yahoo.com, etc., where they give you space to post your own web pages for free.

What is a Mega pixel? How many do I need?
Remember the term, "halftone"? A few years ago newspapers printed all photos in halftone, and if you looked very closely, you could see all the dots that made up the picture.

Magazines had much better photos than newspapers because they used much smaller, and therefore many more dots. (They also used a different printing process, but I don't know how to work that into my story).

Well, think of a pixel as one of those dots. The more you have, the better the picture...sort of! Having a camera with a gazillion mega pixels is like having a car with 800 horse power in Los Angeles traffic.

If you want to take pictures and e-mail them to Grandma, or put them on your web site, or print them for the family album a 2 Mega pixel camera will do fine. Okay, so 2 Mega pixels is enough, so why would anybody pay extra for more dots?

Let's suppose you take a picture of your basketball star making the game-winning shot. Now, unless you are very close to the action, your hero will only fill a small portion of the whole picture.

When you go to print that picture, you will probably want just your star in the photo, so you crop the image to include just the hero. THIS is when you'll want lots of dots!

Your hero used, say 100,000 dots of your 2 million in the original image. Now, you cropped away all the dots except those of your hero, but now you are asking those 100,000 dots to fill the space previously filled with 2 million dots.

Your software does it! Except now you still have 100,000 dots, they just have lots of space between them. Your software knows this looks bad, so it guesses what color dots belong in those empty spaces and gives you 2 million dots, of which only 100,000 are "real".

The moral of this story is if you are going to enlarge a small portion of your picture, you better have lots of dots. If not, save your money.

Digital vs Optical zoom: what's what?
When shopping for a digital camera you will find a choice of zoom abilities. Every camera on the market seems to list optical zoom and digital zoom as part of their specifications.

If you plan on doing any photo editing on the pictures you take from the camera in question, COMPLETELY DISREGARD THE DIGITAL ZOOM SPEC.

You will get the same effect, and with much better control, with your software than with the camera. The only thing digital zoom does is make the image bigger and show you a smaller part of it. It DOES NOT capture any more detail.

Digital zoom is a great marketing ploy. The only zoom spec. to be concerned with is the OPTICAL zoom. The more the better. The more optical zoom you have, the closer you will be to having a telephoto lens.

Use your camera to fix your computer
My computer had a blue-screen-of-death this morning which, if you've ever seen one, is full of error codes to help diagnose the problem. And, at the time you have the BSOD, you can't print it or save it.

All you can do is write down the full screen of information...unless you have a digital camera! Just take a close up shot of the screen, reboot your computer, and download the image from the camera. Now you can use it to research the problem, knowing you got the all the information correct.

My camera won't auto focus in low light
Just because your camera doesn't indicate that it's been able to focus, doesn't mean that you can't take the picture. It's probably focused pretty well, just not well enough for it to turn on the "all focused" light.

If you use flash, it will probably be focused just fine. Hey! It's digital! Just take the pic and see what you get. It won't cost you anything!

What's with the delay before my camera takes the picture?
Top of the line digital cameras take a picture immediately upon pressing the shutter release button, but most of the entry level digitals delay what seems like half an hour to actually flash the flash and open the shutter. It's really about a second or less, but when you're taking action shots, like a 2 year old boy sitting still, the proverbial "Kodak Moment" is long gone before your camera responds.

What works well for me is to hold the button down about half way (which causes the camera to figure out the light requirements and focus on whatever it's pointed at) and then wait for the perfect pose. When I press the button the rest of the way down, the camera responds immediately.

What is a scanner?
Think of a scanner as a Xerox machine, that instead of putting an image copy on paper, it sends it to your computer so you can modify the image, print it, or send it to someone via e-mail.

Unlike Xerox machines, a home office scanner is about 2 or 3 inches tall and not much bigger than legal size paper. And since you can print the image the scanner makes, it can also imitate a Xerox machine! Put your document on the scanner, and when it's done print the image. Your own personal copier! Or, instead of printing it, you can send it in an e-mail, or if your software is set up, you can send the image to any fax machine. Here's a good article about how scanners work

How do I know if my computer has USB ports?
Go to this page over at How-stuff-works to see a good picture of what USB ports look like on the back of your computer. Some computers have them on the front also. If your computer has them and you have Windows 98 or later, you're all set.

How many dpi should I use when I scan a photo?
dpi=dots per inch In general, if you will be putting the image on a computer monitor, either to enjoy on your monitor or post it to a web page or send to a friend in an e-mail, you only want 150 dpi. More than 120 is not used by monitors and more dpi only adds to the download time.

If you are scanning a photo to be printed, then you normally want 300 dpi. The human eye can not discern detail finer than 300 dpi. even if your printer can produce more. Dots add up real fast into a file that's so large you'll wonder why your computer slowed to a crawl. As an example, if you scan a 4x6" photo at 600 dpi, you will end up with a 24 MB file!

If you are going to scan a small portion of a photograph and then enlarge the image, you will want to scan with more dpi, maybe 600 or more.

#1 Scanning tip!
CLEAN the glass and the photo! If you scan at 300dpi for printing of the output, an invisible speck of dust will print like a large snowflake! People have sent me photos scanned on dusty glass and they looked like they were taken in a snow storm!

I like to use a micro-fiber cloth to remove the dust from both the glass and the photo surface. Of course, the glass can be cleaned with any good glass cleaner to remove finger prints, etc., but ALWAYS use the micro fiber on both the glass and photo.

Online-Photo-album software
Thumba Wumba

It's FREE! I like it because it allows me so set the size of the large image (which displays after a visitor clicks on the thumbnail they want to see) larger than other album programs.

1. To make an album you put all your photos in a folder (the input folder)
2. Make a new folder (the output folder)
3. Tell the program what sizes images you want and where the above folders are.
4. Click run

To see an album made with this program go here;

How to find and organize photos on your computer
If all you want to do is be able to find your photos on your hard drive, Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) is all you need, and if you have Windows on your computer, you already have it.

To explore the files on your computer, RIGHT-click the START button, LEFT-click EXPLORE and navigate to the folder where you saved your photos. If you don't see little photos like these, click on VIEW at the top of your window, then Thumbnails or Filmstrip.

How do you attach photos to an e-mail?
I have quite a few customers ask, "How do you attach photos to an e-mail" so I made up this page . Hope you find it useful.

Photo editing tips, tricks, and software
Hey, Mom! Look what I did with this picture...no hands!

Let's talk about how (in layman's terms) we fix and manipulate digital photos.

Photo editing software can be very intimidating if you look at all the software is capable of. To the BEGINNER, remember, you won't need or use 98% of the stuff. Don't let it scare you!

Using just 2% of it's features will make you LOVE what it can do for you.

Your photo editing software has about a zillion tricks it can perform on your photos, but if you learned how to do just 3 of them, you can make a HUGE improvement in many of your snap shots.

BRIGHTNESS Just what it says; fix over and under exposed photos.

CONTRAST Adjusts how dark the dark areas are and how bright the bright areas are.

CROP Pick the best part of your photo and make it the entire picture.

If you adjust just the brightness and contrast and crop away the unnecessary part of your photos you will be very pleased at the improvement!

Use YOUR photos as a SCREEN SAVER
Ever wanted to have your photos as your Windows screen saver? It's EASY!

Put the photos you want to use in a folder by themselves. Name the folder something like "MY screen saver"

Click START, click SETTINGS, then CONTROL PANEL. Double-click DISPLAY, then click the SCREEN SAVER tab. Use the down arrow in the box till it says "My Pictures Slide show" Click SETTINGS button, then BROWSE to the folder with your pictures. Change any of the options you want, then Click OK.

Software for making LIFE size photo cutouts
With this software, YOUR printer can make LIFE size photo cutouts, also called stand-ups or standees. Pretty cool!

Does Costco chop off your images?
I took hundreds of picture files to Costco for printing (MUCH cheaper than I can print them at home) but many of the prints showed headless people!

Here's why. When I did my photo editing, I cropped my images down to the subject without worrying about the 4x6 or 5x7 standard shape and sizes (known as the aspect ratio). They looked great on the monitor!
So, if I had a picture of a person standing, and I cropped to not much more that just the person, Costco's equipment decided that the tall skinny image should fill up the full width of the paper so it enlarged my image to do so. The only problem is that also made my person taller than the print! Smart machine, right?
Here is a wonderful article about understanding aspect ratio by the guy who wrote the software I use to print your photos.

Here's two solutions:
1. Do NOT select the "crop-to-fit" option when placing your Costco order

2. When editing your pictures, make sure the "canvas" upon which your image sits, is standard paper size. For 4x6, that's 1310 W x 1964 H pixels
For 5x7, 1626 x 2276
For 6x9, 1940 x 2910
For 8x10, 2580 x 3226
For 11x14, 3556 x 4526
For 12x18, 3876 x 5814

An almost automatic, almost never misses red eye fixer
Every photo editing software has a red eye fixer function, but some require you to fiddle with the controls a lot to get good results.

I found a single-purpose program that does nothing but fix red eye. And does it ever work! In almost every case, it's a one click fix. Now, after doing all the editing I want on a photo with my editor, I save the file and reopen it with Red Eye Remover from VicMan software I just checked, and Red Eye Remover was $19.95 USD.

Is your printer cutting your image in half?
First of all you want to stop using your printer to see if you are setting things up correctly...photo paper and ink is too expensive for trial and error!

You will want to set your printer software to give you a PREVIEW of how the image will print so you can go back and change settings without wasting paper and ink.

Click START, CONTROL PANEL, PRINTER & fax, select your printer, then Preferences or Properties. Look for a little box that says, PRINT PREVIEW or just PREVIEW.

Click the box so it is selected. Click OK and close the control
panel. Your printer will now always wait for you to approve the preview.

Print previews show how the image lines up on the paper very accurately, but don't worry that the preview doesn't look as "good" as you expected. The print quality will be better than the preview.

Whereas the above setting will effect every print job this next setting will only effect what you are about to print. After you tell your software to print a photo it will give you a chance to set things such as what kind of paper you are using, etc.

What you want to look for is an option that says something like, "Crop to fit". Try un-checking that option and see if that helps. Remember, now your printer will wait for you to approve, so you can go back and try another setting as often as you want.

Can't find 5x7 photo paper?
You can do two things;
1. Cut an 8.5x11 sheet in half and tell your printer it's 5x7

2. Use Window's Printing Wizard to print two 5x7s on a 8.5x11 sheet and cut it after printing.

Here's a tip to save 1/3 on 4x6 prints
If you make a lot of 4 x 6 inch prints, and If you don't mind cutting the paper after printing, you can save about a third on the cost of photo paper.

Instead of buying 4 x 6" paper, buy 8.5 x 11" and print 3 4 x 6 on each page. Windows XP (and maybe others) comes with a neat print wizard built in. Here's how you use it:

Right click START
Go to the folder that has your photos you want to print
LEFT click on the pics you want (hold down Ctrl key for multiple photos)
Now, with your cursor on any of those selected files, RIGHT click and select
PRINT. Follow the simple screens (don't forget to set printer for photo quality with the Printing Preferences button)

The software lets you decide if you want wallet size, 4x6 5x7 etc. It then decides how to layout the pictures on your 11" paper.

Here's the numbers;
50 sheets of 11" premium glossy paper is $29.99 (Staples Web site)
100 sheets 4x6 -same paper as above is $29.99 (Staples Web site)

4x6" prints on 4x6" paper 29.99/100= .30 each photo
4x6" prints 3 to a page on 11" paper (29.99/50)/3= .20 each photo

What about photo paper?
The paper your photos are printed on makes a HUGE difference in how vibrant the colors are, how sharp the image is, and how long it has to dry before it's okay to stack the photos.

My advice would be to start with the cheap stuff and buy small quantities. Then try a premium paper and you won't go back.

There is a premium photo paper that's actually coated with ceramic particles. It dries instantly, and is water resistant! Get it here.

What kind of printer do I need? All you need to think is "INK JET" For the home user, especially for a BEGINING home user, ink jet or bubble jet is the only type of printer to consider.

You can buy them new from as low as about $50 up to many hundreds of dollars. The under 150$ printers do a fine job
printing photos and documents. Only if you are selling high end photos will you need a high end printer.

If you are going to also buy a scanner, you might consider buying both printer and scanner of the same brand. Not imperative, but it will make it easier to get the same color to come out of your printer as what went in your scanner. Again,
it's NOT a big issue, just something to consider.

In 1978 I was an IBM technician working on one of the first ink jet printers: It weighed 800 pounds, cost $50,000, and only printed in dark brown! Now ink jets weigh about 8 pounds, cost about $50 and print millions of colors!

How hard is it to refill ink cartridges?
It's pretty easy! The refill kit has a vile for each of the colors your printer uses, such as black-magenta-cyan, etc., and a hypodermic needle and syringe for each color.

You get to play nurse and suck the ink into the syringe and then inject it into a little hole in the cartridge. It can be done without spilling a drop.

It is very important, though, that you refill a cartridge as soon as it runs out of ink. Set it aside for a day, and ink will dry in the ink passage and it won't recover. You won't know until after you have refilled the cartridge and try it.

You can save a LOT of money refilling your cartridges. Here's a good source

What's a dye sublimation printer?
Whereas an ink jet printer sprays 3 colors of ink directly ON the paper and your eye/mind blends those 3 colors into what you perceive, a dye sublimation printer works by vaporizing the dye with heat.

The dye is absorbed INTO the special paper (that's where it gets it's name SUBlimation) A dye-sub printer uses a ribbon with 3 colors. The ribbon is as wide as the printer can print and each color section, plus clear coat, is as long as the paper the printer can print.

My printers print 8x10s, so my ribbon is 8" wide and each 8x10 requires 40" of ribbon: 10" of each color plus clear coat. Actually a little more ribbon is used to be sure the full 8x10 is printed.

Dye-subs do a great job of skin tones where there are very subtle shifts of color tone. If you look very closely at an ink jet print of someone's face, you can see the ink dots. Not so with a dye-sub.

A print made on a dye-sub printer is indistinguishable from one made in a regular commercial photo lab.

Dye-sub prints will outlast ink jet prints many times over
because the color is actually IN the paper, and the clear coat protects from water and UV radiation fading.

Surprise! Dye-subs cost more than ink jets! See my Kodak 1400 dye-sub printer here.