This page contains a selection of technical tips and advice, contributed or forwarded by individual members. They are presented here in good faith but are not necessarily endorsed by SeniorNet Eastern Bays Inc. All new material, corrections and refinements are very welcome.
Buy yourself one or more Dry-Bags, aka Dri-Paks, aka desiccant bags from any good photography supplier. Also buy a sealed plastic box, big enough for your camera and any other small accessories. Take your camera out of its case - make it as naked as possible - and place it, the accessories and the Dry-Bag(s) in the plastic box. Make sure of the seal. The desiccant will need to be recharged every week or so. You can do this by either placing it in the hot water cupboard overnight or in the warming drawer of the oven (read the instructions with the Dry Bags).
That advice could apply equally to any optical or electronic device that's small enough: humidity, mould and mildew are the biggest enemies of intricate and electronic devices. The worst thing you can do with any of them is put them damp into their cases and then into a cupboard where no dry air can circulate. Obviously, if you have good air conditioning, you could just leave the (naked) camera on an open shelf (but keep the lens cap on). Yes, I guess that makes it easy for burglars but, since you always take your camera with you in case of that shot-of-a-lifetime (don't you?), that shouldn't matter!
Q: Can any digital camera be used as a webcam or does one have to buy a dedicated webcam from someone such as Dick Smith?
A: Many digital cameras can double as video cameras, at least for short clips, but most cannot double as web cams. Web cams are getting cheaper. Off hand, I'm not sure what is the best buy at the moment but I see that one of Dick Smith's own brands has a built-in microphone as well for $37.87, which should be adequate for video phone, chat and similar. The more fancy ones can perhaps double as low-end video cameras especially if they are used with a notebook/laptop. Others still are tailored for video surveillance and usually come bundled with corresponding software.
No doubt you have now amassed a vast collection of digital photos. Many of the scenic ones may be too wide angle and not level with the horizon, so the simplest enhancement you can do is to use the Photoshop Cropping and Straightening tool. With an aggressive crop, you may end up with a photo which is half as wide and half as high. That means you would be down to one quarter the number of pixels - your typical 4 Megapixel image would become a 1 Megapixel one. That's good enough for small prints in an album but not quite good enough you want to make a large print.
That's why I have an 8 Megapixel camera myself. Don't forget that the now "old" 35mm film or transparency has an equivalent resolution of 12 Megapixels. The old medium format films (60mm) would have about 35 Megapixels which is why prints from them can be still blown right up to adorn galleries to this day.
If your photo comes directly from the Internet, it will probably arrive with a built-in resolution of 72 pixels per inch. That's the standard for web pages and Explorer and Outlook Express will use this unless otherwise advised.
But, if the photo was taken by a digital camera with, say, a 300 pixels per inch setting, a simple program like Outlook Express will blow the image up by a factor of four (300/72) in both height and width.
Most programs actually designed to display images conveniently for you (such as Picassa) will automatically fit them neatly to your screen size (unless otherwise instructed). Likewise, most programs that print photos for you will give you the option of scaling them up or down to fit the paper you place in the printer (but you must make sure to "tell" the printer that actual paper size). The printer can typically show you a preview so you can check the effects of taking that and other options before the final printing.
But, if you specifically want to resize a given photograph to a definite number of inches/cm/mm of height and width, open it in Photoshop and then click on Image->Image Size ... the Image Size box will open. Now this is where you need to be careful. First, uncheck the "Resample Image" option (if it was ticked) but make sure the "Constrain Proportions" option IS checked/ticked. Now, in either the height or the width boxes (but not both), enter the height or width to which you want to resize your image. You may want to change the units on the drop-down menu to inches, cm or mm at the same time.
Note that, when you change the width, the height and the resolution automatically change in proportion. So if your picture was 12 inches wide by 8 inches high with a 150 pixels/inch resolution and you change the width to 6 inches, the height would automatically change to 4 inches and the resolution would automatically change to 300 pixels/inch. Both before and after, your image will have the SAME number of pixels. If those measurements are exactly what you want you can click OK at this point.
What if the resolution is not enough? Well, in principle, you can re-check the Resample Image box, enter the desired resolution and then click OK, BUT - beware that re sampling the image (especially upwards) is a calculation only - its the software's best guess at what the missing pixels should be. You may be better off accepting a lower resolution rather than risk having odd artifacts appearing in your picture. Although 300 pixels/inch is said to be the ideal resolution for high quality printing a (full sized) photo, 200 is adequate and 150 is still
Q: I am having problems with Adobe Photoshop. Every time I try to enlarge a picture in My Pictures it grabs it. How can I stop everything defaulting to Photoshop?
A: Find a typical picture (probably a JPEG). Right click it , choose "Open With" ... then select "Choose Program" (at the bottom). Then click the program other than Photoshop (e.g. Windows Picture and Fax viewer) you want to use. Before you click OK, tick the box which says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file".
Any file type can be associated with a particular program using this method
Included in XP, Movie Maker is supposed to be in the Accessories Folder, i.e.:
"Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Movie Maker"
Well, it wasn't there in my setup! I found it in the C:Program Files/Movie Maker folder. Its "moviemk.exe" to be exact and you may need to use the Start->Search facility to find it on your own setup. Having found it, you might then want to right click on it, take the "Create Shortcut" option and then click and drag that shortcut onto your desktop.
For those of you with the CS or CS2 version of Photoshop and who have an image with shadows that are too dark and/or highlights that are too bright, check out the Shadow Highlight option:
Go to the Image Menu->Adjustment->Shadow Highlight
Play with all the knobs for a few minutes and then read the help file(!)
If the program or package came with its own de-installation program on the original CD you should insert that CD and follow the instructions.
Otherwise, you should try the standard method for de-installing any program:
Close all programs.
Click Start - Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs.
Wait for the list of installed programs to populate and then scroll down and select the program.
Click on the Remove option.
Restart the computer
Verify that it has, in fact, gone, including any shortcuts.
Some de-installations still leave directories behind them - check that they do not contain important data and then remove them too.
