Digital Focus: Photo Presentation Tricks

Find out how to show photos on a TV and add captions to photos.

Dave Johnson

Showing Your Pictures on TV

No one likes to admit it, but many of us spend the best hours of our lives in the family room within a stone's throw of the television. So while the Web and framed enlargements are two good ways to show off your pictures, nothing beats viewing them on the familiar old television. Heck, I can even think of a non-couch-potato reason to show your pictures on a TV: It's the biggest screen in the house, so everyone can see your photos without craning their necks.

Connect Your Camera

Thankfully, showing your digital images on television is surprisingly easy. Most digital cameras have video-out ports built right in that can directly display the contents of your camera's memory card on a TV screen. Don't lose the video cable that comes with your camera, though; one end is a standard RCA jack for connecting to the video-in port of a TV or VCR, but the other end is a specialized connector for your camera. It's expensive to replace, and it's only available from the camera manufacturer.

Speed Tips

Most digital cameras are designed to display any image stored on them--even big 3-megapixel ones--on the TV screen. That's fine, but it can be slow, because the camera has to read a lot of useless data from the memory card, pack it down to a smaller image size, and finally pump it to the TV.

If you want to make a faster slide show, use your PC to convert the images to 640-by-480 resolution images and then copy them back to a memory card. Insert the card in your camera, and you're ready to rock and roll. TVs can't take advantage of all the pixels in high-res pictures, so anything over 640 by 480 is wasted anyway.

Display Anything

You needn't be limited to showing only the pictures that you took with the digital camera on TV. Most cameras will output any image on the memory card to the television. That means you can convert PowerPoint slides, graphics, and other images to JPEG images, store them on a memory card, and display them on a TV. That makes your camera a portable general-purpose projector system.

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Dave's Favorites: Microsoft TV Photo Viewer

This week I've got a gadget that fits in perfectly with the feature article--Microsoft's $159 TV Photo Viewer. Not all digital cameras have video outputs, and if you have one of those video-deprived models, it can be difficult to show your pictures on the big screen. Microsoft's TV Photo Viewer is a cool little device that looks like an external floppy disk drive. It plugs into your TV's video port and displays pictures from floppy disk.

The gadget comes with Windows software that lets you drag and drop images on your PC into a custom slideshow. You can arrange the images, rotate them, crop them, and even add captions. When you're done, the images are copied at 640 by 480 resolution onto a standard floppy, which you then insert into the TV Photo Viewer.

With the holidays looming, I'm thinking about buying one for my parents. I'll be able to create slideshow floppies and send the disks to my folks for their effortless viewing pleasure.

Q&A: Adding Captions to Photos

I am in the process of putting together my life history for my kids and grandkids, and I am including a number of pictures. That's where the trouble comes in. Using Paint Shop Pro, I am unable to get a clear space under the picture for the caption; instead, I have to type the caption on the picture itself. I am sure there is a way to include a space below the picture. Could you tell me how?

-- Dave Morken, Idaho Falls, Indiana

Actually, I think there's a fairly simple way to do this. Simply determine the size of the image you're currently working with (by visiting the Image, Image Information menu) and create a new, blank image that's a little bit taller. Paste the old picture into the top of the new blank image and add a caption in the resulting blank space at the bottom.

If you want to work with a collage of pictures, create a new blank image using the File, New menu command. Specify a new 8.5-by-11-inch sheet (at an appropriate dots-per-inch setting for your printer) and click OK. If you plan to print with an ink jet printer, for instance, you can create a new, blank page that's about 1700 by 2200 pixels. Now just copy and paste the pictures into the new page (you may need to reduce the size of the images first so they'll fit) and add your text to any blank area on the new image.

Send your questions to question@bydavejohnson.com, and please be sure to let me know where you're from.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We're disqualifying some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions aren't following the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in the e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter:

Send us your photograph in JPG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels, to hotpic@pcworld.com. Entries at higher resolutions will be disqualified immediately. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo, along with a short description of the photo and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This Week's Hot Pic:

Sister, by William Bruce Bach, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

William says:

"This is an aerial shot, taken from a helicopter in mid-January, of the Middle Sister Forest Service lookout in Northern Idaho along the Montana border. On the roof are solar panels, encrusted in snow and obviously not operating. In the building are radios that are vital to Idaho's Fish and Game management, which were not working properly. We landed in over 45-mph winds and air temps around 10 degrees Fahrenheit to restore service to the site. Mission was accomplished."