Digital photography

[Speicher]

I downloaded Picasa and it will indeed go and find all your photo's. I don't use it much but I think that every time you start it up it goes and looks for new photo's you may have taken. It's got some good editing features too but that's too much for me.
I use digital like film, take loads, some might be ok and occasionally get a belter.

That's the problem I have at the moment. I was inconsistent loading photos and where I put them. Some are not worth keeping, and some need slight altering. Some I absolutely definately do not want to risk losing. (Which is why I kept the memory card and the disk they are on). So I would like to sort out the muddle, and set up some sort of system. With photos, if I want to find Austria Winter 2003, that is easy peasy to do.

 

[Melvil]

Hey there, Speicher,

I know it costs £££ but I've found nothing really to touch Adobe Lightroom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightroom) as:

1) It stores all your pics in a catalogue that's available in a slideshow fashion along the bottom of the screen and you can sort by album (e.g. holiday) or date etc.

2) It edits in a non-destructive way - you can crop photos, change colour shade, blacks, fill-in light (very handy) and undo any of these changes at any time - extremely handy.

Anyway, I've found that lightroom, in combination with Photoshop (or the GIMP, which is nearly as good and far more importantly, free!) is pretty much the final word for editing and storing your pics. Just make sure you have a lot of room on your hard drive as Lightroom takes up lots of memory.

Hope this helps!

Mel

 

[Melvil]

P.S. Forgot to say - Adobe offers a 30 day trial of Lightroom so you can always see if you like it or not.

P.P.S - I don't work for Adobe - promise!

 

[Crackle]

Many thanks for your suggestions so far. Is Picasso and Picasa the same software with different spelling?

yup! (It's how I say it in my head )

 

[Speicher]

Picasso to me (as a railway enthusiast) is a very old type of railcar, sometimes found on obscure lines in France. If it was not so late at night I would find you a picture of one.

Joking aside, it seems a very easy mistake to make.

 

[PrettyboyTim]

Another vote here for Picasa...

As well as helping you find and organise your photos, Picasa like Lightroom lets you do some non-destructive editing with it. It's just things like colour balance, contrast, lightness etc but it stores the settings you've made on a photo rather than changing the photo itself.

If you want to do some slightly more complex operations (like removing things etc.) have a look at Paint.Net.

It's free, but pretty good and fast - not as fully featured as photoshop, but I find it very useful.

To be honest though, if you are going to spend some money on stuff for your digital photos YOUR FIRST PRIORITY SHOULD BE THAT YOU'VE GOT SOME WAY OF BACKING UP YOUR DATA!. Hard drives do fail, and you could suddenly find that you've lost every single photo you've ever taken in the last few years.

If you've got a DVD burner in your PC, burning a copy on DVD makes a good short-term backup, but be careful because some writeable CD and DVD media can lose its data within a few years. Therefore, if you back up to DVD, you just need to make sure that you make a new backup of anything that's on a DVD more than a few years old.

Another option is to buy a USB hard drive and periodically copy everything over to that. They're pretty cheap nowadays. SyncToy is really useful little program by microsoft that can help with that kind of thing.

The main thing with data backup is to check every so often that you are still able to recover your data. Often the first time people realise that their backups don't work is when their computer has just blown up...

 

[Speicher]

Aperitif, I have just been looking at your "Piccies", and am particularly impressed with the one of the schooner, taken from the top of the mast presumably.

(Found out later that it was Crackle's piccies). Much apologising.

 

[Aperitif]

yup! (It's how I say it in my head )

Oh no! It's Crackle's blue period...

 

[Aperitif]

Aperitif, I have just been looking at your "Piccies", and am particularly impressed with the one of the schooner, taken from the top of the mast presumably.

Not guilty
Schooner of sherry maybe ..or schnapps - but I cannot claim them to be mine..can I?

 

[Speicher]

Thank you Pretty Boy Tim. Yes I have got a USB Hard drive, but as you say, I have not actually checked that it works.

 

[Speicher]

Not guilty
Schooner of sherry maybe ..or schnapps - but I cannot claim them to be mine..can I?

OOOpss much apologies Aperitif. It is Crackle's sig line that has a reference to his "piccies". Very sorry to both of you.

 

[Aperitif]

OOOpss much apologies Aperitif. It is Crackle's sig line that has a reference to his "piccies". Very sorry to both of you.

No problem - I would be happy to be 'aligned' with Crackle's pics. Check out Rythmn Thief, Melvil, Ben Lovejoy - and there are many more on here who see things quite nicely...for me anyway.

 

[Speicher]

Much as I would like to continue this discussion late into the night, I think it is time I logged off for the night. "See" you all sometime tomorrow.

 

[Aperitif]

Much as I would like to continue this discussion late into the night, I think it is time I logged off for the night. "See" you all sometime tomorrow.

SNAP!

 

[Crackle]

Aperitif, I have just been looking at your "Piccies", and am particularly impressed with the one of the schooner, taken from the top of the mast presumably.

Hey, I've got one like that

'twas taken from the crows nest on the way out of Cherbourg a long time ago when I was on an STA schooner. Perfect blue skies day. Splice the mainbrace and all that.......