Pixels are the teensy, tiny, little, dots or squares or rectangles that make up a digital image. It’s hard to imagine but every image you see on your digital camera, television, or computer screen are all made up of tons (depending on the size of the image you’re looking at) of pixels. Neat, right? Well I thought it was neat, but then I’m kind of a dork who likes to know how things work. Of course once I had the concept down, it is still kind of hard to wrap my mind around all of those individual dots (or whatever) of color making up one big (relatively speaking) image.
Not only is the picture made up of all these dots, but each dot has varying amounts of color in it and that color varies in intensity. Wow. Maybe I’m not geek enough for this. All of this matters because those pixels determine just how clear your digital image is. The more pixels you have the crisper and more true to life your image appears. Of course, the more pixels you have the bigger the file will be in your computer or on your memory card.
What does this mean for you, me, and other pixel loving people? It means that if you are going for really crisp images your files will probably be quite large because of all of these little pixels…oh the irony. You can’t, or at least I can’t, store tons of these large files. So after I have downloaded, edited, and uploaded, I tend to erase them from my hard drive. This, unfortunately, leaves a bit of fragmentation which slows down the next batch. So after I’ve played with some of these larger files I usually defragment my hard drive to get everything all cleaned up and working quickly again.
How do you handle all of that pixilated fun?
Photo Credit Dumbledad
June 16th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Digital Cameras | Comments (0)
My digital camera has almost become a scrapbook for me. I have pictures of my baby that cover his first year. Pictures of vacations and of my best friend’s baby. Pictures of my dad holding my son after he (my father) completed chemotherapy and was pronounced in remission. Lots of great memories. All of this sounds great, right?
Well it is great. Except for one little itsy bitsy detail. All of these memories and images are all jumbled up in my digital camera. One big memory mess. The best way to handle this mess is to download the images to the computer and organize them. However, just like with any remodeling project you have to do some prep work. Well, at least I do. The first thing I do before any major image download is to defrag my hard drive. Why? Well images are typically very large files and more prone to fragmentation. This can make photo retrieval slower once the images are in the computer, and I am not what one would call a patient person. After defragging the hard drive the image organization can begin.
· Go through the images on your digital camera and delete any that are unflattering or blurry.
o There is no point wasting memory and then having to delete them off of your freshly defragged computer later.
· Create files for specific people and/or events.
o For example, I have files where I put all of the images of my son and then sub files within it of specific months. There are also files for family shots, specific vacations, holidays, and various family members.
· Once they are all on my computer in one file I like to go though and name them individually and put them in the appropriate file.
· Go through the images in the download file and put them into their respective file.
· Edit images as needed
o I do this last because otherwise I get so wrapped up in the fun of editing that I lose interest in organizing, and that’s no good at all.
· Print and enjoy the images of your labor.
What tips do you have for improving digital image organization?
Photo Credit Juan 23
May 29th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Digital Cameras | Comments (0)
The memory card on my digital camera was almost completely full. The sad thing is that it isn’t even a little card that only holds a few images. That bad boy had hundreds…well probably closer to thousands of pictures from the last year and a half. Wow can I take some pictures. Now I know I could have gone and bought another memory card, but I didn’t want to. Why didn’t I want to? Two reasons, really. First, I’m lazy and I hate having to go into a store and figure out what kind of card I need/want. All those people…eek. I like to take pictures of people, not interact with them 
Second, I’m cheap. I’m a bird…it’s what I do. Cheep. Cheep. Cheepcheepcheep (Get it?) Well, I think I’m funny. Seriously though, have you seen the prices of some of those memory cards? Yowza.
Anywho. What was my grand solution? Well, I started to download my millions of pictures to find that it was going way, way, way, to slowly. Not to mention it didn’t seem like I was going to have enough room on my hard drive. So I did what any good semi savvy computer chick (another bird reference, I’m hot tonight!) would do. I defragged my computer. Yup, came up with that all by myself. Nah, not really. My computer genius husband suggested it. He explained all about the size of images comparative to other files stored on the computer and how they fragment and take longer to retrieve etc., etc., boring etc. The interesting part is that after I defragged my computer it was a faster little bit of tech to which I could download the pictures from my digital camera more quickly. Woohoo! Score.
I downloaded and deleted all (well, almost all. I kept a few of my favorites on the camera too so I could look at my sweet boys and favorite vacation spot whenever I felt like it) of the images and I’m now ready to take another million or two pictures on my camera.
Photo Credit Audrey JM 529
May 29th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Digital Cameras | Comments (0)
Hello, my name is Birdie and I am an imageaholic. I have an obsession with taking pictures with my newish (birthday gift from last year) camera. I love it. I like taking pictures of my child sleeping, sitting, walking, crawling, and occasionally playing. I like to take pictures of ducks, storm clouds, flowers, trees, mailboxes on country roads, frogs on the pond, and grass growing (have you ever watched grass grow? Pretty exciting stuff) I tell you all of this to illustrate that I really do have a bit of an obsession. And by bit I mean I’m heartbroken when the batteries of my camera need to be charged and I can’t play with my toy for a few hours.
As you can imagine I can run through some camera, and computer memory with this little obsession. Of course I don’t keep every single picture I take (I’m not that good….yet) but I generally download quite a few each week. Then I edit and resave in a new folder and delete the originals. Once you’ve done this for a hundred or so images (every week) my hard drive starts to look like a fragmented nightmare. In order to combat the fragmentation I, of course, defrag my computer on a regular basis. This has been such a life saver. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened to my processing speed if I didn’t defrag regularly. I mean can you imagine how long downloading all of those pictures would take? Or the amount of time it would take to save newly edited images or pull them up later when I wanted to tweak them some more? Ick.
I like my obsession just the way it is, fun and fast. Are you addicted to digital images? Do you find that more things in your daily life are interesting when you have your camera with you? Does your digital camera help you see the world with new eyes?
Photo Credit: Flickrohit
May 29th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Digital Cameras | Comments (0)
Saving money is one of my favorite things to do. I clip coupons, scour the Internet for free shipping codes as well as printable coupons, and live for sales. My husband likes to say I could go broke saving money ( ha, ha…it is to laugh). Really though, I’ve become quite good at figuring out ways to save money since I became a stay at home mommy. Being removed from the daily grind of the workforce (because obviously as a stay at home mom I don’t do real work) I have become more enamored with saving money every way possible. Now if you add that to one of my other favorite things to do, which is take pictures, you have frugal photo tips.
· Visit the manufacturer’s website frequently for deals and coupons.
o Most of the larger brand names have semi regular savings.
· Email the manufacturer and request snail mail coupons.
o You’d be surprised how often this works.
· Watch for sales on memory cards and combine with coupons.
o Hitting a sale with a coupon is a little piece of frugal heaven.
· Defrag your computer
o I know, it sounds odd but just wait. If you defrag regularly it will be easier to download your pictures and you’ll have more room. This means you are more likely to download because it won’t take as long so you don’t need a great big expensive memory card. Therefore, you can buy the less expensive smaller cards. Score.
· Consider smaller brands.
o Just because the card isn’t from a major manufacturer doesn’t mean it won’t get the job done. If you see a card that is a great buy from a company you aren’t familiar with, give it a try!
As I mentioned earlier I’m always looking for ways to save money. How do you save money on your memory cards?
Photo Credit Time in Sydney
May 29th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Digital Cameras | Comments (0)
Removing digital images from your favorite digital camera can take forever. I mean really. Have you ever tried to download 200 images all at once (ok, it might have been more…but geesh I had been taking pictures of prom!) I swear it took an hour at least, well it felt like an hour. I mean first the computer had to recognize all of the images and then it had to download them all and the process just went on and on and on.
Then I realized that I hadn’t done something very, very important prior to initializing the download. I had forgotten to defrag my hard drive. That’s a little thing I always (well almost always, obviously, since like a twit I didn’t do it this time) do before starting on any kind of photography fun. I usually do it before removing my digital images from my camera into my computer and before I start any big photo editing. Not this time, and boy did I regret it. Like I said the download took forever. Almost as long as having to develop a roll of film from an old fashioned camera then label them all with a typewriter (you know those things people typed on before computers) and paste them individually into a scrapbook. Sure I am exaggerating, but not by much.
What is the lesson I learned from this little bout of forgetfulness. Well, not to forget to defrag before download. Yeah it is easy to say that now, but what about the next time I want to download an insane number of images. I have that covered. The cable that attaches from the computer to the digital camera now has a little post it note stuck to it that says ‘defrag before use’. Yes, I’m a nerd. But I’m going to be a happy nerd that doesn’t have to wait for forty forevers for her images to download.
Photo Credit Alex Herhead
May 29th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Digital Cameras | Comments (0)
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