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Computer and Technology |
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“ Digitizing and Enhancing Photos” Presentation by Phil Goff Phil said that he would focus on scanning and enhancing prints, film and slides including digital photos imported directly from your camera. The “enhancing” will cover simple editing techniques only. The goal is to get participants started using Photoshop Elements Editor. There is so much in the program that this can be a lifelong learning experience. In any of the above mentioned operations it’s all about pixels. You need sufficient pixels per square inch to make a good picture. Gold standard for color prints is 300 pixels per inch. 200(PPI) makes an excellent print. 150 (PPI) is OK, but no fewer. PPI and DPI (dots per inch) for all practical purposes are the same. Pixel math for example: 200PPI x 200PPI =40000 pixels per sq inch. An 8”x10” picture = 80 sq. inches 80 x 40000 = 3,200,000pixels OR 3.2 mp. One may recall a few years ago that 3.2 mega pixel cameras were all the rage. Scan multiple pictures to save time. With PSE 4.0 the program will reorient them if you have not placed them squarely on the scanner. Use version sets to save both your raw photo and the edited version so they are linked together. Phil crops all of his work to 4” x 6” first thing. Then enlarges it to full screen and adjusts resolution to be close to 200 PPI. In the next step you enhance the photo. PS Editor “Auto Levels” is its best attempt at improving color, lighting and contrast. Then try Smart Fix for more control of enhancement if desired. Phil recommended JPEG for the file saving format. (PSD files are very large) There are many ways to resize your photos for email and one of the easiest is to use Windows Explorer in Win XP. Phil concluded his presentation with the question “Where do we go from here?” There was good interest expressed in a session on “Advanced Editing Techniques”. The Photography Group, however, will have to come through with more suggestions for future programs and volunteers willing to make a presentation Q&A Session by Dick Curry At about 10:45am Dick Curry opened the Q & A session. He first said that he is working on having a Microsoft Media Center presentation for the August meeting. If unsuccessful, Dick will make a presentation on subject(s) that will be announced before our next meeting. An original question about Outlook Express being slow to load led to a broad discussion. Points made about the discussion were1) Don’t be afraid to call the cable provider for help if you suspect the problem may be with your ISP.2) it was learned that more than one anti-virus program was being run at the same time and Dick noted that one should only run ONE antivirus program on your machine at one time. Most anti-virus programs scan incoming and outgoing e-mail for viruses so running more than one program slows down transmission and may also lead to severe conflicts 3) Dick commented again that he is personally very pleased with ZoneAlarm Security Suite. A common problem was mentioned that mass mailings to a group are frequently blocked by your ISP anti-spam filters in the interest of security. It is difficult to work with. A question was raised relating to the loss of a program icon on the task bar. The issue was related to a Windows ME operating system and was specific to the scanner. Although Dick said he was unfamiliar with ME icon that appear in the System Tray refer to programs that are launched during start-up. He noted many/most scanner programs, when installed, will install a shortcut in your startup list that will open your scanner operating system on startup. If the icon was there and is no longer then it has probably been deleted from your startup list. Unless you do a lot of scanning Dick doesn’t think it should be permitted to run at startup. It just uses memory resources. To put it back in the System Tray check your “uninstalled startup list” or check your scanner user manual for instructions on having your scanner start during boot up. In Windows XP there is a feature called “hide inactive icons that will control the number of icons shown (even though the programs still run in the background). For a list of current and inactive icons in the System Tray see Customize Notifications in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window. Dick noted that Windows XP has a desktop cleanup wizard that allows you to remove “unused desktop icons”. To reinstall an icon that has been removed by the cleanup wizard look in the unused desktop shortcut folder on the desktop. Someone else questioned how to change an icon shown on the desktop. For this Dick said to right click on the icon shown on the desktop, click Properties, Shortcut Tab and click on Change Icons. Any file that has an extension “ico” is an icon. After the meeting Dick checked Google and sent the following links that might be of use regarding these questions: http://home.earthlink.net/~leetutor/DoWin/index.html (for Win 95, 98, and ME), and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_bar |