PHOTOGRAPHS

Preserving and saving photographs is a lot easier today than it was say 15 or 20 years ago. In this age of digital media, the options have improved significantly.

The first option is the simplest. Go into your closet or reach under your bed and start grabbing shoeboxes. Once you've ascertained that they contain photos and not shoes, take them to your nearest photo shop. The clerk there will be more than happy to convert them on to a DVD. That certainly was easy. The hard part is when you have to pay for your 1,000 photograph conversion.

There is a less costly way of preserving those precious memories, and that is to do the work yourself.

The first step is to get the photos safe and sound on your hard drive. Don't worry about using up a lot of your hard drive space. One thousand photos will use a little over 1GB of space. If you do have limited space however, invest in an external hard drive, or even a flash drive if you don't have a lot of photos.

Hard drives are fine for storage, but recordable DVDs are better. Why? Because DVDs will last longer. Keep them on your hard drive, where you can continue to add to them, and also put the images on a DVD. Now you have a backup, just in case.

But first, you have to get them there. As most of you know, it's easy with a digital camera. Hook up the camera to your computer's usb port or take out the memory card and put it in the proper slot.

Photos need to be scanned. There was a time, not long ago, when scanners were a separate unit and the size of a small ironing board. They were not only big and awkward, they were slow. Most scanning today is done with a printer/scanner/copier combo unit. They are faster and certainly take up less space.

Assuming you have a scanner, the next step is to begin scanning the photos. If your scanner is like mine and a few feet away from the computer, you might want to make this a two person operation. One person to work the scanner, one to scan them into the PC. If you haven't done so already, start a new folder. Name it what you want then move the scanned photos there.

Depending on your number of photos, this could be a time consuming project. My suggestion would be just do a few, let's say 1/4 of the shoebox, at a time. This will keep you from getting upset when you realize that you're scanning a picture of your Uncle Joe yawning while you're missing the football game.

Once all your photos are scanned and the shoeboxes put back in the closet, take a breather. They're safe for now on your hard drive. Before you put them on a DVD, you might want to do some editing.

If you don't have an editing program on your computer, you might want to invest in one. They're inexpensive (Microsoft's 'Picture It' is a good program for twenty some dollars) and most are user friendly.

With an editing program you can crop the picture, thus eliminating relatives you're no longer talking to, brighten or darken it, take out red eye, all kinds of neat stuff. Remember, once your photo is on a DVD it can't be modified.

Now your images are edited and ready to go on to a recordable DVD. If you want them in a slideshow format, and you will, you'll need a slideshow creator program. There are many of these programs available on the internet or any store that sells computer software. Most of these programs give you a 'special effects' and 'add music' option. If your family is a little boring, you might want to add some special effects or rock music to keep your company awake during viewings. Or just leave the photos alone.

If you watch your slideshows on your television, as most people do, you can use your remote to pause or fast forward pictures. Slideshow programs also give you the option of the amount of time you want each photo displayed.

Cap off the DVD with some nice cover and label artwork (I'll be writing more about this subject soon) and you're good to go.

 

       NEXT: HOME MOVIES ON TAPE