Free Digital Photography Programs and Tools

MediaChance.com has some great free digital photo programs. They are very specialized tools, but they work great. IrFanview is a great program for viewing images of almost any format. It reads most camera RAW files as well as proprietary and universal image formats. Paint.NET is a free program that is designed to compete with Photoshop and CorelDraw. It works well, but is not the most intuitive. Gimp is another free...

Solution for computer that can’t change desk...

This solution WILL fix your problem, but don’t run away afterwards and forget about us. HelpMeRick.com contains hundreds of tips (and video tips) that YOU can use as a reference for yourself and especially as a reference to send links to your friends/family so you don’t have to write out or explain the steps yourself! I ran into this problem earlier this week and found the solution. The customer could not change...

I am a man, I have needs

This article is a repeat from the newsletter last week, but I thought I would post it all by itself for two reasons. First, I have had a lot of comments on it this week. Second, all these tech names will create more yahoo search terms and we will make a few cents from it. Here it goes… I bought a new computer last week. The new system is dual core, 1 GB of RAM, 200 GB hard drive and DVD burner and card reader. I...

Amazing Photoshop Elements: Layers

Everyone always seems mystified by Photoshop's layers features. While layers are very complex, I believe that they are often viewed as being more complicated than they actually are. A layer is simply a picture or transparent layer placed on top of another picture. Think of it as placing clear plastic wrap on top of a photo. By creating a layer, you prevent any damage or change to the base photo. Here is a quick list of...

How to open strange email attachments

One of the most common email questions we get is along the lines of how to open email attachments. An email attachment is a file that is sent along with a regular email message. The file or files can be photos, PowerPoint presentations, documents or just about anything else. Here are a few tips for opening strange email attachments. 1. Don’t do it unless you know it’s safe. There are still a few viruses out there...

The embarrassing dangers of Picasa

I have learned to be careful when loading Picasa onto a client's computer. Picasa is one of my favorite digital photography programs. Once you install it, it scans the entire computer for all digital photos. It catalogs them and displays them as thumbnails in order of date created. The fact that it looks for and catalogs all of the photos on a computer has led to a little bit of embarrassment to a few of my...

Amazing Photoshop Elements: Toolbox

The Amazing Photoshop Elements Toolbox There are so many wonderful things you can do with Photoshop Elements. You will find many of our tips in our notes from previous meetings. Photoshop Elements Part I Photoshop Elements Part II Photoshop Elements Part III This time we will spend most of our time discussing the Magical Photoshop Elements Toolbox. There are three kinds of tools in the Toolbox: Hover your mouse over any area...

Another reason to use Picasa

I mentioned in yesterday's Shotgun that I took nearly 900 photos on my recent vacation. You have read and heard us hype the free Picasa digital photography software from Google many times. The features and execution of the features are nothing short of wonderful. I use Picasa to upload and organize my photos after a trip. Then I usually upload the photos I want to print to my favorite online photo developer (Shutterfly )...

Unplugged and loving it!

When I talk about wanting to live in the 1800's, people are always surprised. A tech guy, an expert wanting to live in a time when the Pony Express was high tech? It's true I tell you. As much as I love technology, I also see how much time it can eat up as well. On our old fashioned road trip vacation, I took my laptop (used it twice for a total of about fifteen minutes), my GPS (used it once), my beloved Treo (used...

A friendly reminder about Snopes

It seems that late summer is one of the busiest seasons for email forwarding. People forward jokes, photos, inspirational stories, and political content to their friends. Before you send that forward on to a friend or family member make sure to check it out at www.Snopes.com . Snopes is a database of all email that gets forwarded around the world. The folks and Snopes work extra hard to research the truth (or untruth) behind...

Sharing Photos Via the Internet

Sharing Photos via the Internet When you have a lot of photos that you would like to share with a lot of people, there are several great sites out there that let you share several photos at once with a simple link. Sharing photos this way prevents you from having to send a large email to a lot of people. It also prevents people from having to download a large email to view your pictures. RESIZE YOUR...

How to Email Your Digital Photos

Emailing Your Digital Photos A few things to remember: Always save a copy of the ORIGINAL photo You can always go down on resolution, but you can never go up. 72 dpi for email and web – 300 dpi for printing Never email more than 150k of attachments Black & White takes up less space How to do it:   Outlook Express Create a new email message. Click ...

Retouching Photos

Touching up your photos Before you begin touching up your photo, you should decide what size you want to print it and what programs you are going to use to do the job. There are several tutorial sites out there that will help you learn how to do basic touch ups but the true techniques must be learned first hand using lots of practice. There are the basic tools you will use: l Clone tool: This is my favorite...

Photo Restoration

Digital Photo Restoration Restoring old photos is one of the coolest things you can do in digital photography. The best part is that anyone can do it. All it takes is a scanner and a nice image editing program. Important Photo Restoration Tools There are many several tools that you just can't do without when it comes to restoring photos. Cloning tool This is my favorite tool. Depending on the program it may go by ...

Organizing and Viewing Digital Photos

Organizing and Viewing Your Digital Photos The key to organizing your digital photos is sorting them from the beginning. I begin by saving a folder to my desktop called "Camera pix," but it can be named anything. Inside this folder, I put a folder for each month. Inside each of those folders I make new folders as I need. For example, In my Camera Pix folder for last year I had a folder called...