Simple ways to get most out of camera

By Heather Newman
Knight Ridder News Service

Digital cameras are frankly amazing pieces of technology that can benefit almost every family — if the photos you take actually make it into print or to the friends and relatives who want to see them.

Surveys show that the vast majority of digital camera owners print their own photos, but a hard look at the numbers shows that most pictures never see the light of day after they're taken.

That's a shame, considering that most digital photos are pre-edited (the ones where people blinked often get deleted right on the camera) and can be easily touched up to be some of the best images you have in your collection.

There is a better way.

Start by using all the capabilities of your camera. Newer models let you tag pictures for e-mailing or printing right on the camera itself, so that once you plug into your PC, the prints spit out or head out over the Web automatically. Check your owners' manual for details.

For the rest, here's the drill:

Start by culling out pictures that are plainly awful (the flash didn't fire, someone looked away, etc.) right on the camera. That'll make it easier to file everything else later. All cameras with screens offer the ability to sort through the pictures you've taken and delete selected images.

Then connect the camera to your PC. Either use the software that came with your camera to transfer the pictures to your hard drive, or open up the camera in My Computer, select all the pictures, and use the Edit/Cut and Edit/Paste menus to stick them in a folder (like My Pictures, which typically hangs out in the My Documents folder) where you can find them.

Assuming you've installed the software that came with the camera, you probably have a basic picture editor and maybe even some fancy software for organizing or printing your shots. Use it to fix red eye and other correctable problems.

Again, discard the images that don't make the cut — the ones in which you couldn't see the fatal flaw on the small screen. Once you've copied the photos to your hard drive and edited them, consider renaming them to describe what they show.

Then open up your e-mail program and send off the ones that relatives and friends should see. Generally, that's as easy as starting a new message, clicking on the Attachments button, and telling the program where to find the photos you want to send.

Keep in mind that some people have incoming e-mail size limits.

Ask the person who's getting the pictures what they prefer first, or use that basic photo editor to crop the photo or save it in a smaller size.

If you have a digital camera, there is absolutely no excuse for not having at least a few frames in your home that make it easy to add and remove pictures.

You can use the Windows photo printing wizard to print your favorite shots quickly in the size you want.

Just fire up My Documents, open the folder where your pictures are, click on the picture you want and click on "print this picture" in the left margin.

That way, you can have a new photo of your family beautifully framed hours after you take it — and isn't that what digital cameras are all about?

If you don't like your printer's output, consider investing in a better-quality printer (HP's PhotoSmart line is particularly good) or taking a floppy, CD or even the camera's memory card to photo kiosks like the ones in Kinko stores to make instant prints.

Finally, consider using a program such as Photoshop Album — version 2.0 just hit the streets for $35 after rebate, and it's grand — to organize all your prints. The software makes it a snap to find images by date, by subject and by keyword.