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Chapter 4. I've Taken Great Pictures, Now What? > Basic Survival Skills
4.1. Basic Survival Skills
You've just returned from a great two-week vacation, and your memory cards are bursting at the seams with photos and digital movies. Now what do you do?
Before you spam every friend and relative you know with mega-megapixel masters, take a few minutes to learn about sampling down images so that they have smaller file sizes. You'll also want to archive your pictures so that you can find them again months later, when you want to relive the great memories. And what about those video snippets you have on your memory card? With a little editing, you can turn them into short movies.
In other words, this section will discuss basic computer techniques that can help you keep your friends happy and your pictures organized.
Keep in mind that many of these survival techniques are also components of full-service photo management applications. Some of these—such as iPhoto, Aperture, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom—I cover later in this chapter. But what if you don't have those applications? (Or want them!) Don't worry, you won't be stranded. These basic survival techniques are time-tested and require only the software you most likely already have on your computer.
4.1.1. Send Pictures via Email That Will Be Warmly Received
One of the first things that new digital camera owners love to do is send a batch of images to family members or friends. As you may have already discovered yourself, the warmth of reception is inversely proportional to the size of the images that land in your recipients' inboxes.
All too often, budding photographers send full-size 4-, 6-, or even 12-megapixel pictures as email attachments. Unfortunately, these files can be awkward to view comfortably as email attachments and take up unnecessary space on the recipient's hard drive.
Indeed, you should shoot at your camera's highest resolution, but remember not to send those full-size images to others. All parties concerned will be much happier if you create much smaller email versions of your pictures and send those along. This technique is called sampling down.
Figure 4-1. Some photo management applications, such as iPhoto, enable you to simply choose a picture and then click on the Email button (on the lower right) to resize the image and add it as an attachment.
You have three basic options here. First, you can use the export function of modern photo management applications such as Adobe Lightroom to export a smaller copy of your original photo that you can attach to an email. Or some email applications, such as Apple's Mail.app, allow you to change the size of a photo attachment right there while you're composing the email message. If neither of those options is available to you, you can use the tried-and-true sample-down method with an image editor such as Photoshop.
Here's how it works:
Use your image editor (either included with your camera or purchased separately) to resize a copy of the image for easier handling. To do so, use the Save As command. The largest size you should send as an email attachment is 800×600 pixels, and 640×480 pixels will usually do the job.
If you're lucky enough to have Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) as your image editor, use the Image Size function to resize the picture. (Other image editors have similar functions.) When you first open the Image Size dialog box, you'll see the current width and height of the picture. In the settings in the following image, those dimensions are 2816 pixels wide by 2112 pixels tall. This shot was taken at full resolution with a 6-megapixel camera. If you sent this picture as is, the file size would be far greater than 2 MB, even after compression, and a full 17 MB when opened. That's not the kind of attachment you want to send to friends and family.
Figure 4-2. In Photoshop, the original dimensions of your picture will appear in the Image Size dialog box under Pixel Dimensions.
Use this dialog box to reduce the width and height settings to 640×480 pixels (or thereabouts). In the preceding example, these changes shrank the compressed file size to less than 300 KB—just a fraction of the size of the original image!
Make sure you have both the Constrain Proportions and Resample Image boxes checked when preparing image copies for email. With the Constrain Proportions box checked, Photoshop will automatically change the height dimension for you when you change the width. Photoshop users can also take advantage of the Bicubic Sharper algorithm, which you can select from the drop-down list next to Resample Image. Since sampling down sometimes softens your pictures slightly, many photographers feel the need to sharpen the images after resampling. You won't need to use that two-step process if you select Bicubic Sharper. Photoshop will resample and sharpen for you in one step.
DEFINITIONResampling is probably one of those words you've heard before but you don't quite understand what it means. In simplest terms, resampling means that the image editor is either adding pixels to the image or subtracting pixels from the image. Usually you'll want to avoid sampling up (adding pixels), because that degrades image quality. But sampling down, or subtracting pixels, is a great way to reduce the file sizes of image copies that you want to send via email or post on the Web. In other words, when you change the width and height dimensions to smaller numbers, such as 320×240, you're sampling down, and both the picture and the file size will be smaller. |
Figure 4-3. These are appropriate dimensions for emailing pictures entered into the Image Size dialog box in Photoshop. Make sure the Resample Image box is checked. Notice that Bicubic Sharper is selected for resampling. This sharpens and samples down at the same time.
If you have a choice, the best image format to use for email attachments is JPEG (.jpg). When you save in this format, your computer will usually ask you which level of compression you want to use. Generally speaking, medium or high gives you the quality you need.
| Type of recipient | Suggested attachment dimensions | Don't go bigger than this |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Dad and Megapixel Mom | 800×600 | 1200×900 |
| AOL Aunt and Cautious Cousin | 640×480 | 800×600 |
| Newbie Nephew and Dial-Up Daughter | 400×300 | 640×480 |
Remember to keep your original image safe and sound so that you can use it later for printing and large display. To help eliminate confusion when dealing with these different sizes, you might want to save two copies, calling the original something like vacation_6742_hirez.jpg and the more compact version vacation_6742_lorez.jpg (hirez being short for high resolution and lorez denoting lower resolution).
If you send friends and family smaller, more manageable pictures, you'll hear more about how beautiful your shots are and less about how much space the darn things took up on their computers.
4.1.2. Share Pictures on the Web
A popular way to electronically share pictures these days is via online photo services that publish web page galleries of your images. Only a few years ago, setting up an online gallery was a cumbersome process requiring some knowledge of web page design. But easy-to-use online services such as Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) have streamlined this process so that anyone with an Internet connection can publish photos.
In addition to sharing pictures, these services allow you to write short captions, fine-tune your pictures, add titles, and even include tags that serve as keywords, allowing you to easily find specific types of photos, such as landscapes. Once you've uploaded your pictures to the online service, you can notify all of your friends and family via email. The advantage of this method is that you're sending them only a text link to your photo web page, not actual images that they'll need to download. Also, since the photos are on the service's computer, they won't take up your viewers' valuable hard disk space.
Figure 4-4. Flickr is an easy-to-use online photo community that makes it easy to share your pictures with anyone who has an Internet connection.
Another advantage of this approach is that viewers can often post comments to accompany the pictures for everyone to read. So, for example, if you've published images from your sister's wedding, everyone in the family can remark on how beautiful she looks and which ones are their favorite shots. This type of photo sharing lets people all over the world participate in the experience, just as though they were all sitting together around the kitchen table with an open photo album.
Some printing services provide free online sharing with the added benefit that visitors can order prints from your galleries and have them shipped directly to their homes. They can even use those images to create calendars, personalized coffee mugs, and greeting cards. For a list of online photo services, visit www.thedigitalstory.com/dpc.
Online photo-sharing services have become as easy to use as taking the pictures themselves. If you find yourself spending a lot of time emailing photos to friends and family, take a look at these and other offerings.
4.1.3. Present a Digital Slide Show
Slide shows are an age-old photographic tradition. Digital cameras make it easier than ever to present your images to many people at once.
Most digicams have a "video out" capability that lets you connect your camera directly to a television for playback on a large screen. If your camera has this functionality, it most likely has a slide show mode that allows you to choose images that are stored on the memory card and present them on the television in timed intervals. All you have to do is turn on the stereo for some background music, add a little witty commentary, and you'll have a full-fledged multimedia presentation to share with others.
Another option is to use the software that comes with your camera to assemble slide shows on the computer, and then either show them on the computer monitor or connect the computer to a television for big-screen presentations. Computer slide shows have the advantage of letting you add transitions and special effects to your presentations; plus, you get to select the actual photos you want to show, unlike slide shows on your camera that display everything on the memory card. They can also be saved and played long after the memory card has been erased and reused.
| Degree of difficulty | Display device | Suggested software |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | Digital camera connected to TV | None, camera does all the work |
| Moderate | Computer with monitor or laptop | Apple iPhoto, Adobe Photoshop Elements, QuickTime Pro |
| Getting serious | DVD played on standard TV, HDTV, or computer with big monitor | Apple iDVD, Boinx FotoMagico, Photodex ProShow |
You can also use independent software that didn't come with your camera for your slide show. For instance, Boinx Software's FotoMagico (http://www.fotomagico.com) (Mac only) not only enables you to make slide shows from your digital images, but also allows you to incorporate music directly into the presentation. You can even save the show as a QuickTime movie and send it to others.
Figure 4-5. Dedicated slide show software, such as FotoMagico, provides you with tremendous power to create broadcast-quality productions.
Regardless of which method you use to create your presentations, keep in mind these basic tips that will help make your shows engaging and leave your audience begging for more:
Include only your best images.
Tell a story with your pictures as well as with your words.
Keep your presentations short—3 to 10 minutes is all the time that's usually needed, or wanted, by your audience.
Add music and anecdotes for more interest.
Be creative. Add close-ups, distance shots, low angles, and high angles for variety.
Never apologize for your pictures. If you don't think a picture is good enough to be in your show, don't include it.
Slide shows have never been easier to create, and people do like them when they're done well.
