003 - Feb.11, 2010 --- Sorting your pictures for viewing and printing
So far you’ve been taking lots of pictures and know how to transfer the picture files from the camera to your computer and – very important – back them up onto CD or DVD. Now let’s start getting your pictures ready for viewing. The first step is to sort out the good ones. Why? Your observations are valuable; try showing a series of 500 bad picts to your best friend and watch their expressions. Enough said? Besides, printing those 500 bad picts will likely cost more than $100. Kind of expensive to throw away that many bad picture prints. I don’t know about you, but depending on the job, I may reject 9 out of 10 of my shots; that could be a lot of wasted printing costs.
Here’s a quick and easy way to sort your picts for viewing or printing – we’ll copy only the picts we want to use into another folder. In the last article, we downloaded our picts to a folder named <1001NewYearDay>. Create another folder on your desktop and give it a name similar to the first – call it maybe <1001NewYearFav>. In this case “Fav” tells us that this folder only holds our Favorite photos from the first folder (ie. the good ones). Use whatever suffix you like to designate your best picts, but be consistent – over time, you’ll potentially have lots of these folders. If you were looking for a certain pict from your July vacation, a glance at the folder name would indicate don’t bother looking in the <NewYearsFav> folder.
Open both folders and place the folders so you can see the contents of both of them, with the view set so you can see the slideshow view in the original pict folder (you need to see the original picts at full screen to determine sharpness). Pressing <Control>, click-and-drag each pict that you like from the Original folder into the “Favorites”. (*Note – holding <Control> makes the computer copy the file to the new folder.) If you would like to drag more than one file at a time, hold down <control> while you click on as many thumbnails as you like, then still holding <control> down, drag them to your Favorites folder. [Illustration 003-1]
Take a last look down through the Favorites folder, just in case a couple of not-so-good picts slipped in. Any picts you don’t want in the folder, simply delete this file; you’ve backed up these picts, so you haven’t lost them – the files are still in the original folder and backed up on CD/DVD. Picts in this Fav folder can easily be set up as a slideshow display on your computer.
To print pictures, we have two basic options: print them on a desktop printer or take them to a print service (drug store, department store – even a camera store – and there are lots more print service choices). My own preference is to use a reliable print service, especially for the prints that I need very high quality. Admittedly, $200-$300 home printers have reached a very high quality, but probably not quite to the level of the print service’s $50,000 system. Also, when I figure in time, the cost of buying special paper, ink cartridges and the speed of printing, I’d rather let the print service do it, but that’s just me.
To get those favorites to a print service, we have two basic options. The first is a little more complicated, so I’m only going to mention it: upload the files on line, then have the prints delivered to a local store or mailed to you. The second, more preferable at this time, is to take them to a print service on a disk or removable memory card. To take them on a CD, simply burn the Favorites folder onto a CD (clearly label this CD and save it as a backup to the original photo CD), take the CD to the photo department, feed it into the kiosk, select the photos and sizes and any other options, then go shopping while your picts are being printed (kind of an insidious way to support the rest of the economy). Many places offer 1 hour printing, although it’s usually a little cheaper if you order over-night printing. And of course, the people who work at the photo centers can help you if needed.
When I take files to a print service, I usually copy my favorite picts onto a USB thumb drive [Illustration 003-2] or, using a card reader, copy the favorites folder to a spare memory card. The thumb drive or memory card can then be erased after the picts are printed.
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Tip #1: Backup Your Files. Typically, my first backup is to DVD and second backup to an Auxiliary Hard Drive. Only then do I erase the camera’s memory card. My third partial backup is of my selected favorites burned to DVD. At the print service, don’t bother buying their photo CD; you already have the files on CD probably at a higher resolution than they will provide.
Tip #2: If you develop any of your pictures, save the altered file as a variation of the original file number (<pict001> is saved in altered form as <pict001A>). [Illustration 003-3]
Tip #3: When I take files to the photo department for printing, I’ll copy only the files I intend to print at this time onto a removable memory. Most photo kiosk work more “clunkily” than your computer (and are often more complex) for sorting and editing pict files. The files I take for printing are edited, cropped and developed ready for printing.
Tip #4: Develop a method to name your files/ folders and be consistent. I suggest using a variation of the original file name on any changed pict files so you can quickly determine where to find the original file.
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Next article: ISO, f-stops, and shutter speed. Why do I need to know this?
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