Microsoft Launches Digital Photography Site
It's got less content than this site, but Microsoft has launched its new Windows XP Digital Photography site, a comprehensive resource for digital photographers of all levels to find helpful and fun information--from tips and tricks on how to edit photos to making a professional quality print. The Windows XP Digital Photography site is a product of Microsoft and leading digital photography companies. The site offers a wealth of resources and information around digital photography and the PC that will help everyone from the amateur to the professional be more productive and creative with their photos.. The site includes how-to and tips/tricks articles, ongoing photo and "test your skills" contests and many great third party offers around digital photography applications and services designed to work with Windows XP. Source: Microsoft, May 2, 2002.

Microsoft, Foveon Push New Digital Photography Technologies
At the Photo Marketing Association annual tradeshow in Orlando, Florida recently, Microsoft participated in a Foveon press conference to demonstrate their support for Foveon and its new X3 sensor technology, a new technology which will enable people to capture color photographs like never before. As Great Digital Media with Windows XP readers already know, XP is the foundation for new digital photography experiences on the PC - providing awesome digital photography capabilities that give people the ability to easily manage and share photos. With Windows, people will be able to use the most sophisticated digital software available including Foveon's X3 technology, to help them create high quality images of surprising quality and provide them a world of options for editing, printing, and sharing. Together, Microsoft's Windows and Foveon's X3 sensor technology hope to kick off a new generation of innovation in both the digital photography and PC markets. Source: Microsoft, February 25, 2002.

Apple iPhoto for Mac OS X
Apple has focused on a digital-hub strategy since Steve Jobs' January 2001 MacWorld keynote address, but until this month's introduction of a new digital-media tool, logically dubbed iPhoto, the strategy wasn't complete. The company had racked up an impressive number of design wins for its movie-making, DVD-authoring, and digital-music applications�iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes, respectively�but the software Apple bundled in Mac OS X for digital photography�the misguided Image Capture�was light on features and capabilities. With iPhoto, however, the company now has a credible alternative to all Windows XP's digital-media capabilities. Source: Connected Home Express, January 30, 2002.

How to Share Digital Photos
Digital photography lets us share and manage our personal experiences in ways that are impossible with standard photo film, thanks to the ubiquity of large hard disks, the Internet, and other modern technologies. But the sheer number of ways you can publish digital images might seem a bit overwhelming, especially if you're just starting out. So let's look at some of the best ways to enjoy your new digital freedom. Source: Connected Home Express, October 25, 2001.

Making the Transition to Digital Photography (Part Two)
After you've settled on a camera and storage media, it's time to evaluate the computer and OS you use, as well as the various concerns that arise when you use a PC to store your digital photos. Let's examine those concerns. Source: Connected Home Express, July 20, 2001.

Making the Transition to Digital Photography (Part One)
If there's any digital-media task that makes sense on the PC, it has to be digital photography. Let's look at the issues you should consider when you make the move to digital photography. Source: Connected Home Express, July 6, 2001.

Paul Thurrott on Connected Home
An index of digital media articles I've written for Connected Home Express and Connected Home Magazine.

Photography & Imaging Tips From Connected Home Magazine

Fun Photo Slideshows
Windows XP users can create fun photo slideshows pretty easily using freely available tools. Microsoft has a free tool that lets you make cool CD-based photo slideshows. Dubbed the CD Slide Show Generator (part of the company's Windows XP PowerToys), this tool integrates with the CD burning capabilities of the underlying OS. Here's how it works: Insert a blank recordable CD in your drive and select "Open writeable CD folder" from the pop-up window. Then, drag in any photos or other pictures you'd like to be part of the slideshow. When you're done, select "Write these files to CD" as you would normally to launch XP's CD Writing Wizard. But with this tool installed, you get an additional choice during the wizard that lets you add a slideshow application so that you can share your slideshow with non-XP users. Once the CD is created, you can distribute it to friends and family: XP users will utilize XP's built-in slideshow capability (via the Windows Picture and Fax viewer), while other Windows users (Windows 95 and higher) will see the auto-generated slideshow.

You Can Never Have Too Much Memory
Whether it's your home PC, digital camera, or portable digital audio device, you can never have too much memory, or RAM. Today's PC-based digital media tasks--editing video, ripping CD audio, or processing digital photos, takes up a lot of RAM, and while a faster processor will help, you'll probably get a lot more mileage out of your system if you upgrade the RAM. For PCs and Macs, I recommend at least 256 MB of RAM on a modern system, and more if you'll be doing video work. Portable devices like digital cameras will benefit from an upgrade as well; when I recently swapped out the 32MB CompactFlash card in my 2.2 Megapixel camera for a 256 MB version, my potential picture taking capacity rose dramatically, from 44 pictures to almost 400 images. And upgradeable digital music players will see similar results, simply be increasing capacity. Most memory is cheap today, too, though you should shop around, especially online.

Upgrading to Digital Photography? Consider a Film Scanner
If you've decided to make the move to digital photography, but don't want to leave years of film-based photos behind, consider a film scanner, which can quickly convert film negatives or slides into digital photographs. Once the province of professional photo labs only, film scanners have come down in price dramatically, and will probably continue to do, though you can now find decent units in the $300-600 range. Film scanners don't require the constant adjustments that standard flatbed scanners do, can scan 3-4 photos at a time, and offer much better resolution than other scanners, because you're using the original source, rather than a fairly low quality print to acquire the original image. For anyone with an extensive library of photos, a film scanner is a must-have peripheral.

Get Rid of Red Eye in Digital Photos
These days, digital photos let you view and edit your pictures before you commit them to paper, and most of the leading photo processing software applications--including iPhoto on the Mac and even the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows XP--provide basic editing functionality, such as cropping, rotating, and resizing. However, you're also going to want another basic bit of functionality, red eye removal, which can overcome one of the most common and irritating problems in the snapshots we take every day. Apple's iPhoto includes this capability, but on Windows, you're going to need a third party application. I recommend Adobe PhotoShop Elements or Microsoft Picture It! Photo for this purpose, but just about any photo editing application should offer this feature, so if your needs are simple, look around for the best price. But definitely have a red eye reduction-capable application handy, so you're pictures can look their best before they're printed or sent off to a photo lab.

Make a Photo Montage
Windows XP users have everything they need to turn their digital photo collections into cool photo montages, complete with background music or voiceovers. Just launch Windows Movie Maker (WMM) and start a new Collection. Then, drag the digital photos you'd like to add into the Collection, and then down to the timeline, in the order you want. To add a smooth transition between each photo, drag them one at a time to the left, 2-3 seconds, as denoted by the marks on the timeline. Then, copy an MP3 or WMA file in for background music, or record a voiceover using WMM's built-in voiceover tool. Save the movie into a Web- or email-friendly format, and you can share it with your friends and family.

Photo Books Make Cool Gifts
The release of Apple iPhoto in January highlighted a cool, but previously underrated online photo service, in which users can design and order their own hard- or spiral-bound photo book, complete with captions. But you don't have to be an iPhoto user, or even a Macintosh user, to make your own customized photo book online. Instead, anyone with a digital camera and an Internet connection can upload their pictures, design a book, and then give it as a gift or just use it a treasured keepsake. Check out some of the following sites for more information.
     My Publisher
     Club Photo (spiral-bound only)
     Shutterfly (spiral-bound only)

Pick the Right Digital Camera Storage Format
I've been advocating the use of Compact Flash storage for digital cameras, because these wonderful little devices are cheap and reach much higher capacities than competing formats, such as Smart Media, Memory Stick, and Secure Digital (SD-RAM). But as I was fidgeting with my Kodak camera recently, a friend asked if it was Compact Flash-based because it was taking so long between shots. It turns out that Compact Flash is a relatively slow storage format, so cameras take longer to write each picture between shots. And with consumer-oriented cameras moving into the larger 4-5 mega-pixel (MPX) range, the speed of storage will become more and more important. I still recommend Compact Flash for various purposes--it's a great Pocket PC expansion choice, for example--but Smart Media or the newer SD format might be a better option for cameras.

Photo Books Make Great Gifts
Apple's recent release of iPhoto has popularized a unique online photo service that lets you upload photos and create a personalized hardcover photo book, which you can then have printed and mailed to you for about $30. But you don't have to be a Macintosh owner to make a photo book. If you do use a Mac and OS X, go the iPhoto route; it works great. If you don't use a Mac, head over to the My Publisher Web site and make your own personalized photo book. These books are perfect gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, or any other occasion.

Edit Those Photos, Then Print
It's not the 1970's anymore, so when you copy photos from your digital camera to your PC, be sure to edit them before printing them locally or sending them away to a printing service. That is, you don't have to accept the limitations of the photos you took; instead, you can crop them, remove red eye, and perform other clean-up duties before committing them to the printer. Then you'll always have perfectly framed photos, even if the original is a little less than perfect. I recommend products such as Adobe PhotoShop Elements (Mac and PC), Apple iPhoto (Mac) or Microsoft Picture It! 2002 (PC) for your basic photo editing needs.

Backup, Backup, Backup
Not that I needed the recent failure of my 30 GB data drive to remind me, but when you begin storing all of your digital photos, music, and videos on the PC, it's more important than ever to backup regularly. I recommend a strict schedule, and if you use some sort of calendaring program such as Outlook, MSN Calendar, or Act, then be sure to set reminders so that you are prompted to make backups every week or so. While it's possible to use the built-in backup in Windows, it might be better to back up to removable media such as CD or DVD. And make two copies, bringing one off-site if possible. Remember: You can never backup too much.

Repurpose That Old PC as a Media Server
In the old days, people would often toss out an old PC when the new one arrived, because PC technology moved along so fast that the old one was often useless. Today, that's often no longer the case, and any PC that's less than five years old can often be repurposed as a spare PC for the kids, a gift to a local school or charity, or you can use it as a dedicated media server to store your audio, movie, and photo files. If you do choose to go the media server route, be sure to purchase a new, high-capacity hard drive first, and back up often. Then, put it on your home network, and map drive letters to it from your other PCs. I use a home media server for this purpose, and it works fine on the wired Ethernet, home phone line, and wireless networks we employ.

Save Those Camera Batteries on the Road
When I go on vacation, I bring my digital camera, but I also bring along a laptop so that I can offload the images from the camera daily, saving space for the next day's photos. The only problem with this scenario, of course, is battery life: Nothing drains a digital camera's battery faster than copying and deleting photos. There are two good solutions to this. The first is to use AA-sized Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) batteries in place of plain AA batteries, because these types of batteries last longer and can be recharged; and bringing along a recharger doesn't take up too much space. Another option is to purchase a USB dongle that accepts the data cartridge format used by your camera (mine happens to be CompactFlash). Such dongles only cost $20-30 and they use the laptop's power supply, rather than that of your camera.
 

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Microsoft's XP Photography & Imaging articles
Getting Started with Photos
Courtesy of Microsoft: Microsoft Windows XP takes the "process" out of processing your digital photos. Just snap and go�it's that easy! You can decide which photos to keep, which ones to alter or enhance, and which ones to leave on the cutting-room floor.

Print Your Photos
Courtesy of Microsoft: For social gatherings, nothing beats handing around actual photographs. Print your photos for special occasions or to share with family and friends who don't have e-mail. Windows XP makes it easy by supplying a wizard to automate this task.

Order Prints Online
Courtesy of Microsoft: With Windows XP, if you don't have a printer, you can send your photos in e-mail to a Web-based photo-processing service. They'll print them for you on photo paper and then mail copies out to you or others you provide addresses for. This is also a great way of sharing photos with distant relatives and friends.

Publish Photos on the Web
Courtesy of Microsoft: With Windows XP, it won't be long before you're ready to post your photos to a Web site where family, friends, colleagues, and others can easily view them from any Internet-connected computer around the globe.

Brighten Up Your Desktop with Photos
Courtesy of Microsoft: Windows XP makes it easy to customize your desktop, using the photos and images of your choice to appear on your desktop or in your screen saver. You can even set the size of the image.

Organize Your Photos
Courtesy of Microsoft: Shoeboxes are great�for storing shoes. But cramming them with photo envelopes makes it tough to find what you�re looking for quickly. Windows XP takes the guesswork out of finding digital pictures by automatically naming photos according to the date you transfer them to your computer. This makes them easy to search for if you remember when you took them. To make it easier still, Windows XP enables you to rename individual photos or entire subfolders with memorable names, like "graduation" or "12th birthday party."

Store Your Photos on CD
Courtesy of Microsoft: Courtesy of Microsoft: Windows XP makes backing up your favorite photos as easy as viewing them in the first place. A wizard guides you through the process of storing pictures on a CD. Using a CD frees up space on your computer.

(c) 2001-2002 Paul Thurrott. All Rights Reserved.
This site created entirely with Windows XP and FrontPage 2002.