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

1. ORGANIZE YOUR PHOTOS

Delete the ones you don’t like or those that are near duplicates of others. No sense in clogging up your hard drive or CDs with junk. Use a good photo management software program like ACDSEE 7, Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 or Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 5 to view, organize and name your images. These programs also let you batch rename so you can give more descriptive file names to a group of photos at the same time. You can add key words and tags to make finding your photos easier. Be detailed in your photo descriptions, not just “John and Laurie.” You’ll probably have hundreds of photos of your kids and it will be harder to find the one you’re looking for. Better to say “John and Laurie waterskiing on Lake Powell, May 2004.”

2. BACK UP YOUR ORIGINALS

Mistakes can happen. It is a good idea to back up all your images to a CD before you start editing or changing them. That way you always have the original to go back to if you accidentally save over an image or made changes to a photo that you later decide you don’t like. CDs hold lots of photos, making it cheap insurance.

3. ROTATE IMAGES

Trying to look at a sideways photo is annoying. Use your photo management or editing software to rotate photos as needed. And if you have any images that are a little crooked, you can fix that using your editing software. Most photo editors have an automatic “straighten” function, or you can manually rotate the image a few degrees to straighten the horizon line.

4. REMOVE RED-EYE

Even with your digital camera’s auto red-eye reduction function, your subject’s eyes may still have red-eye. Use your photo editing software to remove it. Zoom in on the eyes and it will be easier for you to correct the red-eye. I’ve tried a number of red-eye correction tools and find that the one that comes with ACDSEE 7’s photo editor is among the best. It zeros in just on the red eye and doesn’t darken the surrounding eye area like some other software does.

5. CROP YOUR PHOTOS

Crop out unnecessary or distracting backgrounds and focus in on your subject. Most photo editing programs will keep the aspect ratio, so when you draw a box around the area you want to focus on it will crop it as 4×6 or whatever you have specified. That way you won’t end up with an odd size photo. Kodak EasyShare Gallery also has a very good cropping tool for maintaining the proper print size. It comes with its free photo editor.

6. ADJUST LIGHTING AND CONTRAST

Some of your photos may have come out washed out or too dark. You can automatically adjust the color, brightness and contrast of your photos. The better programs like Photoshop Album 2.0, Jasc and ACDSEE also have tools for making manual adjustments for fine-tuning. Be careful not to overdo it, though, or your picture could come out grainy.

7. PREPARE TO SHARE

There are a number of ways to share your images. Several programs, like Roxio Photo Suite 7, ACDSEE7, Photoshop Album and Paint Shop Photo Album allow you to create digital photo albums or slide shows, complete with music, transitions and captions. You can burn them to CD or resize and optimize for emailing directly from the program.

Online photo services such as PhotoWorks, Shutterfly, Snapfish and Kodak EasyShare Gallery also let you share your photos on line, for free. You simply upload your images to their server into your own photo albums and add captions if you wish. Then email your friends with a link to your albums. With most of the online services your photos stay on their servers as long as you have an account with them, for free. Signing up for an account is free, you only pay for photos you choose to purchase.

For hardcore photo sharers, there are also dedicated photo sharing applications such as PiXPO v1.5.0, which lets you share photos right off your hard drive. This is a peer to peer software application that allows you to connect directly with your friends and family to share and view pictures online with no uploads. Unlike traditional photo sharing services, you have unlimited storage and you don’t have to upload your photos to a distant server or wait for friends to log onto some photo sharing site. The application is easy to install and use and it’s inexpensive, around $30. PC Magazine rated it an Editor’s Choice in their January 3, 2005 issue.

Valerie Goettsch publishes the digital photography website http://www.digitalphotos101.com featuring reviews of photo editing and album software and digital photo printing services.

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You may have joined the photo-sharing craze to share your family vacation photos, but have you thought about other uses for photo sharing?

Here are just a few ideas:

Scrapbooking:
Show off your creative projects. You can design scrapbook pages and enhance them with clipart using software like Paint Shop Photo Album or FotoFinish and then upload them to a photo sharing site for everyone to enjoy.

Hobbies:
Perhaps you belong to a cross-stitching club or the other end of the spectrum, a motorcycle or classic car club. You can share your best cross-stitch projects or pictures of you with your Harley or ‘57 Chevy with other club members.

Class Reunions:
What better way to share reunion photos with former class members across the miles than in an online photo album, so all can view and reminisce.

Arts and Crafts Portfolio:
Do you design jewelry, paint or make woodcarvings or other crafts to sell? A digital photo gallery is a great way to show off your pieces, and you can add your own captions, prices, etc.

Genealogy:
If you are in charge of recording your family’s history, organize old family photos in a digital album to share with distant family members. Chances are, old photos will need some repair for cracks, fading, spots, etc. You can easily repair photos yourself using photo software like Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro.

School Events:
Create an online album for pictures of football or basketball games, proms, graduation parties and other school events to share with classmates.

Weddings:
You can design an elegant photo album and let those who couldn’t attend the wedding see the bride walk down the aisle and “virtually” experience the conga line at the reception. Weddings were made for photo sharing!

Rubber Stamping Designs:
A photo gallery of your rubber stamp creations is a great way to showcase them for fellow stamp artists.

Okay, you get the picture. Use your imagination and you’ll find dozens of opportunities for sharing your photos.

PHOTO SHARING SITES AND SOFTWARE

The next step is how do you do it? That’s easy too. With the digital camera craze comes a proliferation of photo sharing sites and software. The top sites include Ofoto, Shutterfly and Snapfish, which give you simple, free software so you can make basic edits such as adjust the contrast, crop and remove red-eye. You can quickly upload your images to their website and put photos in different albums, name the albums and add captions. Then you just email your friends the link to your album. The good news is it’s free; the down side is that some sites limit the number of photos you can share. These sites, of course, will also print your photos for as little as 22 cents each and mail them to you; those who view your albums can also order prints.

There are some great services dedicated to photo sharing that offer unlimited photo storage space for a nominal fee. These include Pixagogo, which is a web-based service for sharing, organizing and storing your digital photos inside instant albums that can be viewed by anyone you want. It’s an easy way to share photos with others, and an excellent means of backing up valuable photos or publishing illustrations on a web site or a market place. For a $5 monthly membership fee, you get unlimited secure storage of your original images of any size for as long as you want. Pixagogo’s features include easy drag & drop photo uploading, the ability to create elegant online albums and full screen slide shows, share selected album links with family and friends via a simple email link, and a self-organizing photo timeline. You can also order prints on Fuji paper at competitive prices.

There are also several inexpensive software applications for photo sharing on the web, including FotoFinish and the SendPix sharing feature of ACDSee 6.0. With both programs you can email photos directly from the application at sizes you specify. FotoFinish also gives you 20MB of free personal web space to upload and share your albums or individual photos. ACDSee lets you share up to 50 photos in an unlimited number of albums on their server at no charge for up to 30 days. It also has an HTML photo album generator so you can create web page photo albums to upload to your own site.

Whatever method you choose, sharing your pics on the net is a great timesaver with lots of opportunity for creativity.

Valerie Goettsch publishes the digital photography website http://www.digitalphotos101.com featuring reviews of photo editing and album software and digital photo printing services.

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