The first step to working with your photo images, is to know where your photos are!
Chances are, you may still be wondering how to get the images off the memory card. If that is still a problem, it may be solved pretty quickly by hooking up your camera to your computer using the USB cord it came with. Using an application like iphoto or picasa, the camera will be recognized and the program will prompt you to upload the images it sees coming from the camera.
Being a mac user, I really love iphoto. I download my pictures right into that program on my computer.
I just learned from a friend of mine that works on a PC, about a new google application that is really great!
It is called Picasa. www.picas.google.com. It is a program that helps you organize and edit your photo images. The photo editing capability is fantastic! You can do a lot in this program to fix minor problems you might see with your photos.
Using iphoto or picasa to organize and edit your images is a great first step to doing "SOMETHING ELSE" with the images. Know that these programs are still sitting on your computer, and eating up a lot of memory space.
If you are like me, you may have several hundred photos that are really slowing down the overall performance of your computer. This is not a safe place to keep all of your precious memories.
Once you edit the images to your satisfaction, it's time to BACK THEM UP. I back up several ways:
1. Using a share sites like Shutterfly or Kodak Gallery. Uploading your images to sites like these offers a way to store your photos, although, know they won't keep them forever unless you do occassionally order prints, but I like these two site as they offer so much more that just printing. (I'll save that for another day!)
I have been uploading to these two sites for 8 years, and all of my albums are still there. Kodak Gallery even offers you a chance to buy your photo history back on a set of discs if you want to ensure you keep them backed up yourself as well!
2. Store images on an external hard drive. I have a small portable hard drive that has 500GB of space. This will hold thousands of images files. It's also a great place to back up movie or music files. An image of this passport is shown at the top of this post.
3. Burn the images to a CD or DVD disc. This is just one other way to back up images, but I find that overtime, I have too many CDs to sort through to find the images I am looking for quickly. I have been moving over my backed up CD images to my portable hard drive (Pictured above).
I hope this helps you think about some new possibilities for how to save your images. You will find that having the digital images stored in a place that is safe, labeled and easy to find, will make the projects I hope to post, more fun to engage in!
