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Digital photography is taking the photography market by storm — and with good reason! To be able to take pictures and view them in real time is a true technological wonder! Digital photography may just be one of the most convenient “photo organizing” tools available — allowing you to immediately purge bad photos and keep only the highest quality photos.

But before you let yourself get swept away by the excitement; we want to give you a gentle nudge and encourage you to remember the old standby . . .printed photographs. Do you think we’re being unrealistic . . . .acting purely from a state of unbridled nostalgia?

Ask yourself this…how many of those digital photos have you actually printed?

Are they sitting on your hard drive waiting until you “have time” to print them, “have time” to get them into albums?

When was the last time that you grabbed the family and cuddled around the computer together to view those precious images? (You must admit that nothing beats a traditional album for sitting down with your loved ones and reminiscing over those
special memories.)

And what if your hard drive were to crash today? What would become of your family’s most prized possessions? Would all be lost in just a matter of minutes?

Okay, so maybe you have taken the time to download them onto a CD. Well did you realize that if that CD gets scratched, you have lost the entire contents of the CD?

Furthermore, did you realize that writable CDs have a significantly shorter life span than you may have imagined, and that they can be susceptible to breaking down after just a few short years?

So what’s the solution?

Well, we’re certainly not recommending that you abandon the concept of digital photography. But we do recommend that you set realistic expectations for the technology, and perhaps shift your perception of the concept. Think of it as a means of taking photographs and processing film. It is a means to an end . . . it is not the end!

Take the time to actually print your favorite photographs so that you don’t have to rely solely on technology to preserve your past!

Excerpted from “Save Your Photos and Your Sanity: How to Organize and Safeguard Your Entire Photograph Collectionin as little as 10 days, without losing your mind!”

Christine Sutton and her business partner, Tracey DuBois have helped countless people organize, protect, and enjoy their precious photographs. As authors of “Save Your Photos and Your Sanity” and producers of “Treasure Your Memories”, they take a unique and FUN approach to organizing photographs. They offer a FREE Photo Organizing Idea Kit at http://www.organizedphotos.com

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Scanning paper photo prints is rare but sometimes you will need to do just that. Scanning is a process in which paper photo prints are converted to digital photo files. There are a few things to know and a few tips to follow when scanning such paper photo prints. This article lists the important ones.

There are three types of photo prints that you can scan:

Paper photo prints: The most common, usually in sizes of 4X6 and 5X7. Photo paper prints are easy to scan. You can scan them yourself at home using a home scanner. Home scanners that can do the job are relatively cheap and usually cost less than $100. You can mail them or hand them in person to a professional service that will scan them for you. After they are scanned the service will mail you back the originals and a DVD with the digital photo files - alternatively the service can provide you with online access to the digital photos (examples are services such as www.digmypics.com, www.digitalpickle.com, www.britepix.com and many more) There are advantages and disadvantages to home scanning or professional scanning services. If you have a small number of photos scanning at home is easier. If you have plenty of photos using a service can be easier but it can be more expensive. If you decide to scan at home you should pay attention to:

Negatives: Negatives are also known as film. Negatives are developed film usually in 35mm format from which paper photo prints are printed. Scanning negatives is harder than scanning paper photo prints. In most cases it is easier and also cheaper to use a professional negative scanning service (example are services such as www.slidescanning.com, www.myspecialphotos.com, www.pixmonix.com and many more). Standard home flat scanners are not good enough for negative scanning and you will need to spend money and purchase a special film/slides scanner. Negatives are small high resolution sources and thus require scanning at higher DPI than paper prints. In most cases 2400DPI or higher should be used. Negatives also need to be lit in a special way when they are scanned. Flat home paper scanners project light on the paper from the front and then scan by capturing the reflected light. Negatives on the other hand need to be lit from the back and scanning is done by capturing the light the goes through
the negative.

Slides: very similar to negatives used for projecting photos on large screens. The same considerations and tips for negatives scanning also apply to slides.

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on http://www.printrates.com - a site dedicated to photo printing.

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Did you know that in many cases digital photos are cropped by the time they reach paper? If you have never “cropped” your photos manually, you may not be aware that it is happening.

What is cropping?

Cropping is the process of trimming portions of the digital image so it fits in the shape of the paper. Let’s say we have a 5″ x 7″ photo. The problem is, the frame we want to display is 4″ x 6″. One of our choices is to take scissors and carefully trim away the least important edges of the photo until it fits into the 4″ x 6″ frame. What we have accomplished is “cropping”.

In the world of digital photography, cropping is performed with software. When the photo is comprised of bits of data, there is no need to crop for size alonethe software and printing process can stretch the image to fit. We do, however, have to crop digital images to fit the paper’s shape.

A more detailed look

Let’s look at an example. My Canon camera has a sensor size of 1536 x 2048 pixels. Dividing these numbers by the highest common denominator of 512, we get an image shape of 3 x 4.

How many print sizes do you think fit this shape? Not many. If we want 4″ x 6″ prints, the shape of the 3 x 4 digital image will not fit. It is possible to stretch the image into the 4 x 6 shape using software, but this will distort the image, which we don’t want.

Our only option is to crop the 3 x 4 image into the 4 x 6 shape. If you are thinking, “I never had to crop my images and they always looked fine,” then chances are the cropping was done for you automatically. Who would do such a thing behind your back?

Don’t be alarmed, cropping was always done on our behalf, even with film photos. When we drop off our digital photos at a lab to have them developed, or insert them into our printer, the images are loaded into the computer system and are automatically cropped. How does the computer know which sections are OK to crop and which ones are not? It doesn’t. When the decision is left to the machine, it will trim an equal amount from two edges.

Have you ever received a photo from the lab and something important near the edge was cut off, but when you saw it on the computer screen it was there? That is a result of automated cropping.

Do your own cropping for maximum control

Under most circumstances automatic cropping produces good results with our snapshots. In cases where we want to control precisely where the image is trimmed, we need to take the cropping under our own control.

Cropping can be accomplished in several places such as your photo editing or printing software, online developing services, or the kiosk machine available at many local labs. I find that the best place to crop your photos is on your own computer using the software you are most familiar with. If you have never used this feature of your photo editing software, I urge you to learn how to use it. The other two cropping methods are typically more time consuming. You may also be rushed during the delicate cropping procedure if a line forms behind you at a kiosk machine.

Charles Kerekes is an amateur photographer and maintains the Flying Sam Digital Photo Guide (FlyingSamPhoto.com) web site to help others find fun and unique digital photo finishing products and services.

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