Digital Photos: From Pixels to Print
By: Amy Greber Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2007-02-02 16:29:00-05:00
“Oh… thank you!?” My mother's reaction to the digital camera I gave her last Christmas was equal parts joy and trepidation. She loved how its slinky shape snuggled into her purse pocket. Best of all, she could wield her new toy as wildly as she pleased without the guilt of “wasting” film.
But she balked at the baggage that came with it: the CD, the black USB cable, the menacing manual with tiny print. After a few months, she confessed that she'd been buying additional memory cards instead of figuring out how to store and print the pictures. We agreed that if she truly loved her digital photos, she needed to set them free.
Getting Set Up
We sat down to develop a photo library on her computer for safekeeping. With a quick right click on the Start Menu, I selected “Explore” and sought out the dedicated picture folder under “My Documents” as our destination. Right clicking into the white space, we created a family of vanilla-colored folders in which to organize mom's expanding photo collection.
Since her computer runs on Windows XP, we didn't need to install the CD which contained driver programs that enable a computer to communicate with the camera. Earlier operating systems like Windows 2000, however, usually require CD installation before the camera is connected to the computer.
Making the Connection
The USB outlet resided in the back of her PC, so we both hunkered beneath the computer desk to locate the outlet smaller than a dime slot. Two head bumps later, we'd plugged the longer end of the cable into the computer and the smaller end into the camera. A green-arrowed icon suddenly appeared in the bottom right utility tray, signaling that it recognized the camera as "new hardware" and was ready to transfer data from camera to PC. A pop-up window asked us what we'd like to do, and we selected "copy pictures to a folder on my computer." Then we simply selected one of the new folders in our "My Pictures" photo library as the final destination, and watched the hourglass' virtual sands count down the transfer.
Love at First Site
With the heavy lifting behind us, we adjusted our chairs into offense mode and ventured onto the Internet. My mother, a former retail buyer, has always been the savviest shopper I've known. Her eyes gleamed when I prepped her for the latest online deals in photo development.
First of all, did we prefer to pick up the photos or have them mailed to us? Online photo services like Snapfish and Shutterfly will mail the prints to a home address, while retail stores like Walmart and Walgreens will print photos and have them ready for pick-up.
We settled on a friendly clicks-and-mortar site that was wooing new customers with 20 free photos after signing up. Within minutes my mother had created an account and followed instructions to “upload photos” and select her pictures. The site prompted us to download special browser tools that would help speed up the file transfer process. Since we didn't want to commit too much the first time around, we opted for the manual photo transfer. The computer magically opened her computer's Start menu and we simply clicked on our favored snapshots from the “My Pictures” folder.
The site also offered free photo editing tools like cropping and color enhancement. We watched a quick step-by-step demo to get acquainted with techniques for improving our photographs. After mastering the red-eye reduction tool to zap Uncle Chuck's glaring pupils, we congratulated ourselves on a graceful learning curve.
Then the real fun began.
Did we want 4x5 or 5x7? Picture borders or customized titles? Did we just want basic glossy prints, or did we want to add personalized mugs, calendars-even a coffee table picture book-to our order? A medley of family gift ideas smiled at us from the monitor.
In the end, she settled for 20 free prints, but vowed to return when she could garner weigh-in from Dad. Even though I crossed my fingers that she'd lose interest in the family photo calendars, I was thrilled with our victory. “Oh, thank you!” This time, all joy.
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