If we don't learn our options we may end up with dozens of media sticks or a camera full of photos and no way to use them. Emailing is great but prints are forever.
You've mastered the digital camera your grandkids gave you for your birthday. Now, what do you do with all those wonderful photographic images? Here are some quick tips on how to save, process, print and store your family treasure in this electronic age.
- The easiest thing to do is visit your local photo center - whether at a drug store, kiosk or mall, and run your digital media through the printing machines you'll find there. It's easy to follow the directions on the machine. If you find yourself intimidated or floundering a little, ask for help. Mostly those photo stations are manned by people who enjoy the process. They'll help you over the learning curve. You can print images in a variety of sizes, make enlargements to give as gifts, or simply get the pictures saved to a disk.
- The most convenient thing to do is to purchase a printer and learn to use it. Go right ahead and grab one of the low end photo printers produced by major manufacturers like HP, Epson, or any number of other name brands. The machines can cost as little as $45 - often with a rebate in the equation. The supplies - ink and paper - are a bit pricey if you do a lot of printing. Even so, you'll probably net down to less than the cost of shooting and printing photo negatives in the old days.
- Try an online photo Web site. There are many: Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery and Copycraft.com are just three. These services offer free photo storage. Again, it's a piece of cake to step through their directions for uploading your images. Once you create a virtual album and fill it with pictures, you can email a link to your friends and family. They follow the link and can see your images. The services also offer, for a reasonable fee, paper prints by mail. The quality is good -- surprisingly good, in fact, even if the original image isn't perfect. Storage is free and theoretically lasts forever. Any search engine can show you dozens of these services. Just look for "digital photo storage" or "printing digital images."
- Transfer your images from your camera media (the storage chip, stick or disk in your camera) to your computer's hard drive. Sort and edit them with the software provided with your camera or any of the excellent and easy photo imaging programs for MAC or PC. You can, of course, store them on your computer - MACs make that a good option with their image friendly environment. Or, be safe and transfer the images you care about to CD or DVD. Show them as a slide show on your television. Keep them as backup, even if you save them on your computer, too.
- Buy small sized camera storage media. They have become amazingly inexpensive. You can shoot a few dozen pictures on a 256 or 512 size, label it, and file all of them in small boxes. This is a good way to create permanent backups, but not very convenient, compared to other options, if you use your photos a lot.
No matter what method you choose, protect digital media from heat, cold and strong direct sunlight. Store CDs and DVDs in labeled plastic cases. Keep a permanent record of your passwords for any online sites you choose to patronize. Take tons of pictures for sharing and for memories. Photography, once a cumbersome, expensive hobby, has become, simply, a digital delight.
The copyright of the article Printing Digital Photos in Senior Leisure Activities is owned by Maryan Pelland. Permission to republish Printing Digital Photos in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
