Desktop Darkroom
You've taken a ton of pictures with your digital camera. Now what? Here's a step-by-step guide to transferring, enhancing, and sharing your photos.Edited by Grace Aquino
So you've bought a digital camera, or you're about to make the leap--no film, no negatives, no fuss. But there's another side to digital photography: the downloads, the tweaking, the printing, the archiving.
Sound complicated? It isn't, if you know the ropes and have the right tools. We show you the simplest and best ways of transferring your pictures to a PC, enhancing them, sharing them online, and ordering prints.
So take that digital camera to the ball game, to your sister's wedding, and to your buddy's Fourth of July barbecue. And read on for a bonanza of tips telling how to make the most of your desktop darkroom.
Still shopping for a digital camera? Check our Top 10 Digital Cameras for feature-by-feature comparisons of the best models in the current crop priced at $500 or less.
Grace Aquino and Melissa Perenson are associate editors, Alan Stafford a senior editor, and Harry McCracken an executive editor for PC World. PC World Test Center performance analyst Robert James conducted the card reader tests.
Transfer
Nearly every digital camera comes with the cable and software you need to transfer your photographs (which are usually stored on an included CompactFlash or SmartMedia card) to a PC. But using the bundled cable consumes a camera's battery power, and the process can be tedious--if the cable is too short, for example. For an easier and faster method that doesn't drain your camera's battery, invest $10 to $100 in a memory card reader.
Many card readers plug into a desktop's USB or parallel port and behave like any other external storage drive. Cable-free card readers are also available: For example, you can insert a FlashPath floppy disk adapter right into a computer's floppy drive. Another cable-free option is a PC Card adapter that allows you to plug a memory card first into the adapter and then into a notebook's PC Card slot.
After a card reader is installed, Windows assigns a drive letter to the reader (except in the case of floppy adapters, which retain the floppy's A: drive designation). As a result, you can easily access stored images on your CompactFlash or SmartMedia memory card through Windows Explorer and other standard applications.
Almost every memory card reader we evaluated outperformed a USB cable hookup from a digital camera to a desktop system. Most of the readers transferred digital photos at speeds ranging from one-quarter to one-third faster than the camera's bundled USB cable did.
The PC Card adapters performed the best, but only by an eyelash. The only exception to the memory-card adapters' speedy results: FlashPath floppy disk adapters for SmartMedia cards were far slower at the task than any other transfer method.
For this card reader evaluation, we tested 13 readers with various interface and media combinations. In determining our top choices, we looked for speedy transfers and a reasonable price. If your digital camera uses CompactFlash memory cards and your PC has a USB connection, we recommend using the $30 SanDisk CompactFlash ImageMate. But if your USB port is on the front of your PC rather than on the back, go with Microtech's $30 ZiO, a compact, cable-free reader.
If your camera stores images on a SmartMedia card, try the $40 SmartMedia USB Reader from Lexar Media. If you need to handle both CompactFlash and SmartMedia, consider using Microtech's $50 CameraMate USB or Lexar Media's $60 Universal Digital Film Reader USB.
Finally, if you use a notebook, the fastest, most convenient option is to use a PC Card adapter. Check out the $10 SanDisk PC Card Adapter for CompactFlash or Lexar Media's $12 version. SmartMedia card users can obtain the Olympus PC Card adapter for a steep $100.
--Melissa J. Perenson and Grace Aquino
Enhance
When you see an eye-popping photograph in a magazine or on the Web, you may wonder how the graphics pros do it. In most cases, they spend hours tweaking pictures using state-of-the-art programs. Here, we show you how to use an affordable, effective image editor--Adobe's $99 Photoshop Elements--to perform common enhancements with minimum hassle. Though this step-by-step guide is based on Elements' features, nearly every photo editor offers the same capabilities.
Remove red eyes. We're all too familiar with the red-eyed look of demonic possession that people and animals may acquire in indoor photos. Here's how to banish it.
Step 1: Zoom in on the red eye until you can clearly see the boundary between the pupil and the iris.
Step 2: Select the Elliptical Marquee tool, and draw a circle over the red or orange portion of the eye (see FIGURE 1). Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge the circle until it's in the proper position.
Step 3: Open the Select menu, choose Feather, and type in 5 for the number of pixels. This option blurs the edge of the selection so the effect won't produce a hard edge.
Step 4: From the main menu, go to Enhance, Color and choose Hue/Saturation. In this dialog box, decrease the saturation to its lowest possible level (such as the negative-100 setting shown in the example below), and lower the lightness setting slightly. This process will eliminate the red and restore the appearance of a dark pupil, yet the eye will retain the glint of a natural look.
Merge two photos into one. Want to combine two separate photographs of, say, yourself and your house into a single picture? Simply follow these steps.
Step 1: Choose the two photos you want to edit. Make sure that they have similar brightness, contrast, perspective, and (most important) resolution. If you're scanning printed photographs, scan at 300 dpi or higher to establish a margin for error (so both images have the same proportions in case you later need to enlarge one of them).
Step 2: Open both of the image files. The first picture should contain the object that you want to copy and paste onto another scene (the second photo). Select the Magnetic Lasso tool to snap the selection to the edges of the subject's body, such as the snappy dresser shown in FIGURE 2.
Adjust the Magnetic Lasso's tolerance setting so that it can pick out the edges without straying from the proper boundaries. If the object is easily discernible from the background, increase the Width and Edge Contrast numbers in the toolbar. If the object blends into the background, decrease the settings.
To fine-tune your selection, switch to the standard (nonmagnetic) Lasso tool, and zoom in on problem areas. Hold down the Shift key to add to your selection or the Alt key to subtract from it. Make sure you select any areas that need to be transparent (such as the section in the crook of the subject's arm).
Step 3: Go to Select, Modify, Contract, and type 2 for the number of pixels to shrink your selection by. That step eliminates unattractive fringing around the edges of the photo. Next, go to the Edit menu and choose Copy.
Step 4: Switch to the second image. From the Edit menu, choose Paste. This command creates a new layer containing the full body shot from the first image. Select the Move tool to resize the pasted object. On the corner of the object, drag the handles inward to shrink the object or outward to make the object bigger while holding down the Shift key to maintain the proper proportion (see FIGURE 3). Then press Enter.
Ready for the Web.To ensure that the images on your Web site load quickly, try to make them small yet color-rich. Here's how to accomplish that task without a hitch.
Step 1: Select the Crop tool, and use it to trim all useless background space from an image.
Step 2: Resize the image to make it large enough to appear legibly on screen. For Web posting, we recommend sizing images at 640 by 480 pixels. Go to Image, Resize, Image Size and check Constrain Proportions. Under Pixel Dimensions, change the larger setting (which is either width or height) to 640. The smaller setting automatically changes to the appropriate dimensions.
Tip: Since this operation discards pixels essential for high-quality printing, you should save this new, lower-resolution version as a copy.
Step 3: In the File menu, choose Save for Web, and select JPEG format in the box on the right side of the screen. Then check the Progressive box to see the image displayed as a low-quality preview that gradually improves as it loads on a Web page. To set the level of quality, use the preset buttons or the slider bar under Quality. This lets you see how the image degrades as you reduce its quality setting. Aim for an image size of 50KB to 60KB.
Step 4: Save your Web-bound photograph as a copy of the original. Omit spaces in the file name. 'Bob the Marketing Manager', for example, would appear as 'Bob%20the%20Marketing%20Manager' on a browser's status bar if you included spaces. To avoid this result, use underlines for spaces instead.
--Alan Stafford
Share
Digital photos differ in many ways from their film-based forebears, but one thing sure hasn't changed: They're meant to be shared. Though it's a snap to do that sharing online, the printed photograph is far from obsolete. When was the last time you heard of someone cherishing a file attachment or preserving it for generations yet unborn?
We tried five leading photo sites, all of which provide tools for online sharing, and services for producing glossy prints with the look and feel of film-based snapshots. Most sites give away Web-based sharing services and charge for prints. But at press time, PhotoPoint was the first to convert to a subscription model, with annual fees starting at $20.
Our favorite photo site is Ofoto, which Kodak is in the process of acquiring as a wholly owned subsidiary. With an intuitive interface, convenient sharing options, and good-quality prints, Ofoto has something for everyone--from casual picture takers to dedicated shutterbugs.
Learn to Share
Uploading your photos to the Web is easiest if the site lets you browse your hard drive's folders and view thumbnail images on the fly. Ofoto and Zing do this particularly well. Once your images are online, you can label them, sort them into albums, and send e-mail alerts to friends and family so they know that your work's available for their enjoyment. Ofoto, Shutterfly, and Snapfish target folks who don't own digital cameras, too, by offering film-processing services: Send them your rolls of film, and they'll develop them and post digitized versions online.
Ofoto, Shutterfly, and Snapfish stick to simple album sharing; PhotoPoint and Zing provide a broader range of possibilities. Both, for instance, let you choose to restrict album access to visitors you specify or to leave them open for perusal by anyone who happens by. They also let you dress up photos with graphics and text, and then send them as e-greeting cards.
PhotoPoint goes furthest, with features such as mini-albums for Palm and Pocket PC handhelds. But PhotoPoint's user interface needs work; its cluttered look makes the site difficult to use.
Ofoto, Shutterfly, and Zing also let you use your browser to perform basic photo editing tasks, such as removing red-eye. This can be handy, but it's no substitute for using a dedicated image editing package like Adobe's Photoshop Elements. A site's browser-based tools tend to be bare-bones in features and sluggish in performance.
Prints Charming?
At first blush, these sites' photo-printing services might seem superfluous if you already have a color ink jet printer that handles photos well. But their photo-finishing process beats ink jet quality, and the resulting prints aren't susceptible to fading or smearing--two common problems that beset ink jet prints. In addition, unlike single-purpose photo printers, each site's photofinishing service can produce prints in a range of sizes, as well as such novelty goodies as T-shirts and coffee mugs. (For a roundup of photo printers, see " Farewell, Photo Lab?")
Digital photo prints can look blocky if the image's resolution is too low for the print size, so all the sites here analyze your images and recommend maximum print sizes. Our 2-megapixel images looked crisp at sizes up to 5 by 7 inches; 8-by-10-inch prints weren't bad either, though some of them looked slightly blocky, grainy, and murky.
With our test photos, differences in print quality from site to site weren't striking. Overall, we liked our Shutterfly pictures best: Colors were consistently vivid, and details remained crisp. Output from Ofoto, PhotoPoint, and Snapfish was not far behind. Zing's prints were more likely to suffer from minor but noticeable image problems, such as washed-out color.
Prices are similar at all five sites: A 4-by-6-inch print costs 50 to 60 cents, 5-by-7s are a buck apiece, and an 8-by-10 costs $3 or $4. Shipping costs (which range from $1.50 to $3 per set of 20) are extra. That's more than you'd pay per print for conventional film processing at a store such as Ritz Camera or Wolf Camera.
Don't forget, though, that you pay only for photos you know you want to keep--you'll never again waste money on prints that show Cousin Chuck chewing with his mouth open. And these online printing services are a particularly appealing option for enlargements. The cost is reasonable, and you avoid the hassle of having to store, identify, and handle negatives.
Ink jets and photo printers provide an easy, inexpensive way to generate printed mementos of your cherished moments. But how long will those prints last? To find the best options for maximizing the life of your prints, check out Top of the News.
--Harry McCracken and Melissa J. Perenson
Photo Prints: The Best and the Rest
Every photo site produced acceptably crisp and colorful prints. Shutterfly delivered the highest-quality photos of the five sites we checked out, with accurate color and sharp detail. Even so, the runners-up were close behind. Zing, which finished at the bottom of our list, turned in prints with slightly faded and murky color.
Photo-Sharing Sites: Features Comparison (chart)
| Site | What's hot | What's not | Print quality | Print costs (4 x 6/5 x 7/8 x 10/ shipping1) | Photo storage capacity/ time limit |
| Best Bet Ofoto (http://www.ofoto.com) | Easy to upload via drag-and-drop or with downloadable applet; friends can add comments to your photos; prints come neatly packaged with an index print. | Lacks advanced password protection; no online greeting cards; can't display large photos at full size. | Good | 50¢/$1/$4/$1.50 | Unlimited/none |
| PhotoPoint (http://www.photopoint.com) | Tons of features; excellent print quality with a wide range of available sizes; large photo-sharing community lets you show off your work to other PhotoPoint users. | Cluttered interface; uploading photos is clunky; no film-processing service; only service here that charges an annual fee (starting at $20). | Good | 50¢/$1/$3/$3 | 1GB/1 year |
| Shutterfly (http://www.shutterfly.com) | Simple to use; easy to upload multiple images via drag-and-drop or with separate program; prints come neatly packaged with an index print. | Guests can't add comments on photos; no online greeting cards; photos displayed at rather small size and can't be enlarged; overnight shipping is pricey. | Very good | 49¢/99¢/$4/$1.49 | Unlimited2/none |
| Snapfish (http://www.snapfish.com) | Convenient Web-site design; slick drag-and-drop uploading of photos, with thumbnail view and no need to download a separate application. | Lacks advanced password protection; no online greeting cards; can't display large images at full size; no express delivery option; no wallet-size prints. | Good | 59¢/99¢/$3/$2.49 | 60MB/none |
| Zing (http://www.zing.com) | Ability to let others contribute photos and links to your albums; good tools for uploading images and controlling access to photos; e-greeting cards. | Some features aren't optimally easy to navigate; prints could be packaged more securely for shipping; no wallet-size prints; no film-processing service. | Fair | 50¢/$1/$3/$2 | Unlimited/none |
Archive
Sure, with a digital camera you no longer have to clutter your closet with shoeboxes full of unlabeled photos. But archiving digital pictures has its own issues. Contemplate, for instance, the effect of a hard-drive tragedy (knock on wood). Unlike film-based prints, digital photographs give you no negatives to fall back on. So protect your images by adopting one or two of the following storage options.
The best precaution against a multitude of catastrophes--including data corruption, operating system foul-ups, hard-drive failure, and computer viruses--is to back up your photo data at least once. Multiple backups will prevent data loss in the event that catastrophe strikes both the original and a backup.
Though many photo-sharing and online storage sites let you store your images for free or for a reasonable fee, risks accompany this strategy. If, for example, a site goes under--as ECircles recently did--you could find yourself with only your memories of those picture-perfect moments.
The easiest and most affordable way to back up your files is to use CD-RW discs, each of which can store up to 640MB of data--that's enough for hundreds of digital photos at a typical 3-megapixel resolution. And according to manufacturers, CD-R media (which currently cost as little as $1 per disc) can last for up to 100 years, although actual longevity depends on the storage environment.
CD-RW drives are reasonably priced as well. Pacific Digital's 8X/8X/32X drive, for example, is a great value at $119. If you're willing to spring for a speedier but slightly more expensive CD-RW drive, consider the $220 Plextor PlexWriter 12/10/32A. For more information, see our latest Top 10 CD-RW Drives chart.
Other backup options include Iomega's Zip disks, which hold either 100MB or 250MB of data. A Zip drive costs as little as $100, and a 100MB Zip disk runs about $10. Unfortunately, a Zip disk's smaller capacity means that you can store fewer pictures per disk, and working with a Zip is slower than using optical CD-R media. Still, even CD-RWs won't replace the shoebox entirely. And who knows if we'll even have devices that read CD-RW discs 20 or 30 years from now?
--Melissa J. Perenson