U3A Computing Beginners Class Digital Cameras Leader – Brian Moore Week 8 of 10 weeks. Mondays 4:15 to 5:45 pm

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- Skydrive) 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 Use the supplied lead or docking station that came with the camera. Read the instructions that came with the camera. It will probably ask you to insert & run an install program from a CD. Then plug the supplied USB lead into the PC and turn the camera on. This will load their proprietary software and possibly other junk shareware as well. Be prepared to untick features you don't 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 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.

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 3.5” Floppy (A:) and CD/DVD Drives. Are there now any others? If so double LH click on them and check for any photos. Using the camera lead can often be slow to transfer photos. Your average (10 Mpixel) camera is producing a 2- 3Gb 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” or “SDHC” card to store the photos. Sony cameras up to 2009 used a proprietary long and narrow “Memory Stick” which is more expensive. Since 2010 Sony cameras use SD as well. Go and buy a SD SDHC Memory Card Reader USB 2.0 for 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB Memory Cards! From for £1.01. 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. 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.

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 “Windows XP only has the near useless “Paint” program. Windows 7 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.

Practical If anybody has brought their camera. They can put its SD card in my card reader and copy photos to your My Pictures here. If not then look in S:\U3A\U3A – Monday Group\Wk 8 where are some photos. Copy some to your My Documents, My Pictures. Edit these photos using “Microsoft Office Picture Manager”. Do this by selecting the photo, RH click on it, Open With, “Microsoft Office Picture Manager”. Click “Edit Pictures”. Try auto correct & others. Red eye removal does not work well.

Using Phixr 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 in Choose a photo file from My Pictures copied earlier. Then Click on “Upload the photo to Phixr.”.

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. But also here at this point you may get a STM warning message – “The site or page that you are attempting to view is blocked.... Just click on the IE back arrow and it seems to overcome this! Phixr seems to be aimed at Mobile Phone quality photos which are smaller than Digital Camera photos.

Using Phixr Practical You can practice fixing the Red Eyes in file Red_Eye_Example. Try to split the two goats into two separate photos, with names Bill & Ben! Or any other tricks you like. 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.