U3A Computing Beginners Class Digital Cameras Leader – Brian Moore 17/11/14 Week 8 of 10 weeks. Mondays 2:30 to 4:30 pm

Gmail Privacy a warning According to Microsoft. Google scans every Gmail that's sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads. And there's no way to opt out of this invasion of your privacy. See Of course Microsoft say they never would do such a thing with Hotmail/Outlook.com This emphasises the fact that is scanned. Unlike a letter.

Saving Digital Camera Photographs All digital cameras come with software to move photographs from the camera to your computer and then saving in an organised fashion. They also have options on viewing and editing. They all have a slide show facility. When Editing you can correct for Red Eyes, Sharpen, Crop, Change Colours. It’s good if they give an option on backing up to a CD/DVD or in an On Line repository such as Windows Live (Hotmail- Onedrive) as we saw in the last 2 weeks.

More on supplied software Problems – The supplied software is all different between camera suppliers. So yet more software to learn about. The nice layout of photos in groups or whatever may be lost if you change software/the camera/computer. Your photo collection is for a lifetime. Is the software fully yours? Or trial or shareware. I prefer to use the built in Windows tools and/or a separate Photo Editing program.

Saving using supplied software that came with camera Read the instructions that came with the camera. It will probably ask you to insert & run an install program from a CD before connecting the supplied USB lead or docking station that came with the camera and turning it on. When running the install program look for an advanced option so that you can untick features you don't want. Increasingly, unrelated software is being bundled with what you want.

Saving using Windows Switch on your computer and log in with a full account. Plug in the lead or docking station that came with the camera and turn it on. It will then attempt to install a driver program – that's a small program to look after the electrical connections of the Camera to the PC. Allow this. Give it plenty of time. You may need to put in the supplied CD, if so cancel the auto run because you don’t want their software.

Can the PC see the camera? If all seems well then run “My Computer “ and look for “Devices with Removable“ Storage. You will see the CD/DVD Drives. Are there now any others? Something like E: If so double LH click on them and check for any photos on the camera. Using the camera lead can often be slow to transfer photos. Your average (10 Mpixel) camera is producing a 2- 4Mb file with definition far in excess of what is needed to view on a computer. Good for printing on A3 but too much for everyday viewing.

Last and best way to transfer Photos All digital cameras now use a removable SD, HC or XC card to store the photos. Early Sony cameras used a proprietary long and narrow “Memory Stick” which is more expensive. Since 2010 Sony cameras use SD as well. Modern laptops already have a slot for these but if not buy a Genuine Integral Card Reader SDHC SDXC From for £2.59 Then just move the SD card to it for quick photo transfers. (Look for this in the Practical).

Moving the photos Once you can see the photos on the Camera or SD card its best to copy them to your computer hard drive \My Pictures and then delete only when you are sure they are safely on the computer and preferably on a CD as well. Don’t use Cut. Do not just rely on keeping your photos on the computer hard drive – they can fail anytime. Also they may get accidently deleted. You will soon have many more photos than can be stored on a CD or even DVD. So sorting by date allows you to keep track on which have been saved.

Organizing & Backup of Photos Keep in My Pictures. Create a new folder for each year with sub folders for each event. At the end of each year create (burn) a CD up to 175 photos or a DVD up to 1175 photos approx for more space. Save all your photos with Google+ Auto-backup. See hl=en-GBhttps://support.google.com/picasa/answer/ ? hl=en-GB Allowed to save 15Gb that's about 5,000 photos at 3Mb each. I have the program here. Windows Live, part of Hotmail can also store photos.

Editing to improve the photos Having got the photos on the computer all supplied camera software allows you to rotate for normal vertical viewing and most to “improve” the photos eg Crop, get rid of “Red Eye”, sharpen etc. If you have decided not to use the supplied software there are two ways to edit Photos. Download and install a free Editor program. I recommend. Picasa at Picasa has a feature whereby it can sort all your photos into ones of the same person using face recognition. Then you can name the group.

Editing programs in Windows I can show you Picasa and a even more powerful GIMP editor programs on my Laptop. Windows 7 & 8, Windows accessories has an improved “Paint” which can do the very basics – Rotate, Crop & Resize. But no brightness / contrast adjustments. If you have Office 2007 upwards installed you have “Microsoft Office Picture Manager” with a reasonable set of features including an Auto Correct.

Practical If anybody has brought their camera. They can put its SD card in my card reader and copy photos to your My Pictures. Also get the example photos from Course/Groups, CMP Computing, at Course Material, Computing Downloads, Week 8. They are Photos to play with including one with red eye. Select and save to your My Documents, My Pictures. Or if a problem with this they are on my memory stick.

Picasa to display & edit photos All should install Picasa. Don't download. I have it on a memory stick. In Tools, Folder Manager set the folders you require to be auto scanned. Best just My Pictures. It will now auto scan them all. When finished expand People on the left and you will see groups of peoples faces & Unknown for each. For each group RH click, select “Edit People Album” and Create a new Person, with the correct name.

Picasa continued On the left Folders shows the same folders in a list as exist in My Pictures. In folders select a photo to edit. Then RH click, View and Edit. Are tools= Crop, Straighten, Redeye, I'm Feeling Luck- which makes a best guess at improving. Try them on an unimportant photo and Red Eye correction on Red_eye_example.JPG. Try to split the two goats in Two_Goats.JPG into two separate photos, with names Bill & Ben! Or any other tricks you like.

Gmail account, if required I have made a general U3A account on Gmail for your use. = Password= B75dcaFG Birthday 1/1/1990 Male Name Brian Moore Username= U3A.CMP Account has to be enabled for Photos which is Google+ I have just noticed in albums-are-officially-dead-now-redirect-to-google- photos/ That Picasa web albums is moving to Google+. albums-are-officially-dead-now-redirect-to-google- photos/

Using Phixr an On Line photo Editor. Using an on line editor eg You upload a photo, work on it, then save back to your computer. Unfortunately it does have photo size limitations. To Use Click on “Get Started”, Tick – I have read...& Let me in. Then click “Select photos from your computer” and select one from your My Pictures. It will then upload for you to work on.

Using Phixr continued When uploading the chosen photo to Phixr It may say “This Photo is too large for processing”, so Shrink, Execute. You can then work on it. Phixr seems to be aimed at Mobile Phones. Where the photographs are smaller than Digital Camera photos.

Using Phixr Practical You can practice fixing the Red Eyes in file Red_Eye_Example.jpg and compare with the result from Picasa. When the photo is looking good at the bottom is Download/Save this photo. You will need to select a file format – JPEG and set the Quality. Note how you can go down to 9% before it looks too bad and note how the file size shrinks. Use this for making a quality photos. Save it to your own \My Documents\My Pictures with a new name.

GIMP. Advanced graphics editor I you like I can install on your computers a free much more powerful Graphics editing program called GIMP. It stand for GNU Image Manipulation Program. I have it on a memory stick. A Warning, its is complex to use! It can operate on layers. The foreground and Background colours can be set. A few clues= In tools select Toolbox