Tips and Tricks

 

These are my own opinions from my experience and education.

I hope you find them helpful.

 

 

Best Tip

Sign up for my Newsletter! As a subscriber, you are automatically entered into any drawings we have for free products! Also, I will send out a newsletter blast when a really hot coupon comes out. I try to send out a newsletter about once a month depending on the season. To signup, just go back to the Home page.

 

You should have a photo book ready to purchase at any moment because sometimes the great coupons only last a couple of days. I also put these short coupons on my facebook page so LIKE that page to get the latest hot coupons!

 

How to Load Photos onto Your Computer

 

There are two ways to get photos from your camera onto your computer.

 

1. Using a Media Card - Digital cameras come with a media card to store the photos. And some computers have a media card reader. I prefer to remove my media card from my camera and insert it into my computer. If you do this, your computer should automatically start to copy your photos onto your computer. Read the screens carefully as they appear and you will be successful.

 

2. Using a Cable - Digital cameras will come with a cable to hook into your computer, either USB, or Firewire. Hook the cable into the camera, then insert the other end of the cable into your computer. Match the symbol on the cable to the same symbol on your computer. If you need help, read the camera manual, or go to a computer store to have a salesman show you, or ask a friend. Once you hook the camera to the computer, turn the camera on, and the photos should start to load automatically. Just try it, it will probably work.

 

3. Make sure to note where the photos are being stored. You can create a new folder to store your photos during the upload.

 

How to Digitize 35 mm negatives

 

I'm hesitant to post this because the demand may drive up prices, but, a friend just told me that she took her negatives to our local Target to have them scanned into digital pictures. One CD holds 100 pictures and the cost is $1.99!

 

This means that I can take the negatives of my kids from 10 years ago (the negatives I get back when I get my film developed) to Target, have them scanned to a CD, come home and put them on my computer. Then I can use them to make a photo book! Wow!

 

Where to Store Photos

 

I suggest putting the photos into the folder called "My Pictures". I create a sub folder for each year, then each quarter to store my photos. I can find photos easily. I do not like to use the date as the folder name because then I get to many folders and I can not remember the exact date when trying to find a picture. Remember, each file has the create date as a reference.

Example of the folder structure:      My Pictures
                                                                         Year 2007
                                                                                          2007 1 qtr

                                                                                          2007 2 gtr

                                                                                          2007 3 qtr

 

Sharing Your Photos

 

Shutterfly has a new community web site.

We use this for our Neighborhood Watch community web site where we can post photos of neighborhood events, send out alerts, or just announce all the happenings in the area.

I also used this site to share football photos with other team parents. We had a map of the game locations, weather, emails address. It was great!

You could use this site to post your photos for family members to keep in touch. Best of all its FREE!

 

  

Backing up photos

Disk space is cheap and we usually have a lot of it. So keep your photos on your computer PLUS make a backup onto a CD or DVD. Unfortunately CDs and DVDs do not have a long shelf life, about 5 to 10 years. However, new technology is coming out for archival CD's and DVD's. These would be worth the investment.

To start your backups, make a backup of all your photos and label each disc. Then each time you make a new backup of your new photos, backup the last several years worth of photos also, until they no longer fit on one disc. I will backup years 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 when backing up 2007 onto a DVD. If I don't have room in my backup, I will remove the oldest year.

 

Tips on Making Photo Books

 

Here are some simple tips to make a great Photo Book.

• Use your best photos. Don't use photos that are blurry, dark, or ugly.
• Use a template. The publishers will provide templates that have coordinating colors and styles.
• Keep the eyes looking in. When you have photos of people, make sure they are looking towards other photos in your book, not off the page. Put distance, or other photos, in-between two photos looking at each other. Your eyes will follow where they are looking.
• Keep the photo as the focus of the page, not the background.
• Use one or two fonts only. One for titles, and possibly another for journaling.
• Use easy-to-read fonts.
• Journal photos and events where appropriate.
• Kiss Kiss. Keep it simple stupid. The most beautiful books can be very simple.
• Proof read, proof read, proof read before purchasing!

 

Digital vs a Hard Copy Photo

 

I love digital photos. However, I believe that if you really want to save a photo, it should be made into a hard copy photo using a professional service.

One day my husband brought home his old movies of when he was a baby. His father had sent down the old 8 mm projector. We cooked some popcorn, found a blank wall to project onto, and started up the projector. We saw him just learning to walk, and  then,  the projector light went out! We had only seen about 1 minute of film!  We finally found a replacement bulb, but did not want to spend $100 for it. So we still have not seen the rest of the film. My point is, a hard copy photo does not require any special technology to view it, digital photos do, and always will.

 

Printing Photos on a home printer vs. using a professional service.

 

My cousin has done a lot of research on this topic. He has found that most home printers do not have inks that are archival quality. Therefore, most of our beautiful books we have made from our home printers will eventually fade. However, I feel (and hope) that if a page is printed on acid free paper, stored in acid free sheet protectors in an air conditioned (temperature controlled) house, protected from the sun, my pages "should" last a long time. But, I no longer printout my pages with my computer. Instead, I make Photo Books, or Scrapbooks with real photos.

However, my cousin loves to print out his pages. He has found that the Epson R800 has inks that are considered archival quality. An 8x10 page costs about $1.85 to print out plus about $1.00 for the acid free paper. He prints out his pages using Scrapbook Factory Deluxe and uses a thermal binder to make books. He loves it.

Check out the Unibind Photo Book Creator which creates books using your own paper. Binds in 90 seconds using up to 55 pages per book. 

 

Digital Scrapbooks

 

There are so many wonderful programs that allow you to create digital scrapbooks (these are scrapbooks on your computer that you print out when completed). If you read the article above, you may wonder about your printer's ability to print an archival quality scrapbook. I am so excited to tell you that some publishers will allow you to send them your digital scrapbooks for printing. Currently, the easist one I recommend is Picaboo. You need to save your 8.5 X11 scrapbooks as a jpg file. In Picaboo, you can take any image and make it a background or a single full bleed page. Click on Digital Scrapbooking for more information about Picaboo.

If you use Photoshop then Shutterfly has templates that you can download. They offer digital scrapbooks in many different book sizes and you can put your image on the outside of the book. They look beautiful. Print your digital scrapbook. Layouts by you. Photo Book by Shutterfly. Learn more.

 

You can also make a digital scrapbook by designing scrapbook pages in Microsoft Powerpoint, then save each slide as a jpg image. Make sure the image is at least 300 dpi. Of course, Digital Scrapbook programs would be the best option to use.

 

How to digitize old photographs

 

There are three ways this can be done. 

1. Buy a scanner and scan each photo. Scan each photo at least at 300 dpi. Much more and performance degrades because the file is so large. My husband told me his copier at work will scan a photo and email it to him.

 

2. Use a (nice) digital camera to take a photo of the photograph. This really does work well, but you have to test this out first. Use natural light only, if you use a flash you will get a glare. The best days are overcast, cloudy days, or at noon. Find a spot where a lot of light comes into the room. Setup a tripod (not in the glare of the sun) as high as it will go and steady the camera pointing down at the floor. Use a black mat to put the photo on.  Set the camera to fine. Zoom in on the photo framing it appropriately. Take a couple of pictures and see how they turn out by viewing them on your computer. Make the necessary adjustments in the settings. I had friend who digitized all their old photos doing this, and it worked great.

 

3. There may be services in your area that will scan old photographs for a fee. I found these services online:

Preserve and protect family moments
Transform old photos and videos to digital with iMemories.
20% off at iMemories 

 

 

 

Are generations of your precious memories sitting in boxes?

 

 

 

 

A Note about Photo Paper

 

Not all inks and papers are the same. Some inks and papers will last longer than others. Please see Wilhelm Imaging Research  for complete information. They have published permanence ratings for 4X6 photos.