[N174]New Digital Photo Frame

One good available option is Kodak Gallery, which allows you to store and share you pictures for free, as long as you buy at least one print a year. Other good available options are flickr and shutter fly, which are both free and offer extra services. There are great tools to edit your photos and create cool slide shows. You can use the software that comes with your camera or you can use other photo editing software. Picasa by google is a good free option, and for more advanced users photoshop may the way to go. So have fun with your photos already.

In earlier times, you took your snapshots with your trusty old Brownie, removed the film cartridge and dropped it off at the drug store for developing. After about a week, you picked up your prints. What you got was exactly what the film was exposed to. No cropping, no sharpening, brightness or contrast adjustments were available unless you had your own film processing and print studio. With the onset of digital photography, it has become possible for everyone to learn and perform successful photo editing. There exists a plethora of digital photography software that allow differing levels of image manipulation. With a decent digital camera, a computer with a quality printer, and one of the many versions of photo editing software, you can produce stunning photographs. You can crop for closer views of your intended subject, darken or lighten the exposure, adjust the contrast, sharpen the image, change it to black and white, sepia, or grayscale.

In order to edit pictures successfully, one must have the proper tools, just as when processing photos in a darkroom. In the latter, chemicals, exposure times, and certain materials can affect the outcome of a photograph. In today's darkrooms, photo editing programs, one must know how to use the tools at hand to create the results wanted. Using photo editing programs makes editing much easier. It is far less expensive than working in a traditional darkroom and far less time-consuming if you wish it to be. However, you may also take your time editing to come out with the best results. Mistakes are not embedded in stone, for there's always the "undo" button to rely on. Using your software, you can improve an image, or change it to something completely different.

Cropping is a good tool to use when you have a picture that has too much going on, or perhaps too little. In the former, you would want to cut the image down to just the subject of your picture, essentially eliminating all the distracting surrounding objects. In the latter, you would do the same thing, in order for your subject not to look too solitary. Once you begin cropping, you'll find there are many different creative ways to crop your pictures; every picture is different, and you'll find different ways to improve your pictures with cropping. If you have a rather plain photograph, or a black and white picture, there are ways to manipulate the colors to make the picture more interesting. Your editing program will probably have a way to enhance the color of a picture, or you can completely change the color of an object. If you learn to use the tools well, you could be able to convert a black and white picture to color. You can also create aged effects, or make a picture grayscaled. Experiment with your program and find out what you can do to improve the coloring of your pictures.

In earlier times, you took your snapshots with your trusty old Brownie, removed the film cartridge and dropped it off at the drug store for developing. After about a week, you picked up your prints. What you got was exactly what the film was exposed to. No cropping, no sharpening, brightness or contrast adjustments were available unless you had your own film processing and print studio. With the onset of digital photography, it has become possible for everyone to learn and perform successful photo editing. There exists a plethora of digital photography software that allow differing levels of image manipulation. With a decent digital camera, a computer with a quality printer, and one of the many versions of photo editing software, you can produce stunning photographs. You can crop for closer views of your intended subject, darken or lighten the exposure, adjust the contrast, sharpen the image, change it to black and white, sepia, or grayscale. Add a good scanner and you have the ability to edit your old standard photographs. That old faded photo of you as a child can be brought back to life with a few clicks of your mouse. With the right software, you can place objects from one photograph into another. Create a montage of any person containing their pictures from birth to present. That beautiful old Ford you took a picture of at the cruise-in brings back fond memories?

Look sharp. Be sharp. But keep your hands off the "sharpening" menu. You'll notice that I did not tell you to sharpen the image in the list of things to do above. Why? Because that's how most pictures get ruined. Sharpening can't be undone. Sharpening should be the very last thing you do to an image before you print it or place it in an on-screen album. Do NOT sharpen an image before saving it. If you decide you want to return to the picture later to edit it some more, you'll be in a pickle. Do all your sharpening on temporary copies that you are planning to print or send to the Web. Don't be judge and jury. If you're not sure whether one of your images looks better or worse after editing, ask someone else to take a look. Show side-by-side versions, before and after your editing. Don't start a family argument if your spouse (or, worse yet, your 9-year-old) says you have no talent. Be honest about what others see.

With a photo-editing program, you can "fix" or change images acquired from a scanner, digital camera, or the Internet and print them, import them into another document, post them on a Web page and use them for desktop backgrounds. To make the choice that's right for you, check reviews in computer magazines and on the Internet to narrow your choices; look for a program that can directly import images from a scanner or digital camera; make sure the program can crop, resize, flip and rotate images; compare color adjustment capabilities of programs. You should be able to adjust contrast, brightness, sharpness, hues and color-saturation levels; change a color; and convert color to black-and-white or grayscale; and compare the ease of using the various programs available.