Ok. Now you have some great pics that you want to enjoy yourself and show others.Slide Shows - For viewing my own pictures I use a full screen slide show that lets me click through my pictures. The one I like best is MySlideShow by www.anixsoft.com. It costs a mere $20. With it you can create slide shows, screen saver shows, and even put your slide shows on a CD ROM as an auto start show. Of course you need a CD ROM burner to create the CD ROM.
Do It Yourself - Online Sharing - For sharing pictures online with others you can simply email the pictures or post them on a web site, if you have access to a web site.
- When sending pictures via email, keep the recipients bandwidth in mind. People with 56k dial up lines don't like to get an email with a picture that takes two minutes to download. To be email friendly, resize the pictures you plan to send to be no more than 400 x 300 pixels. Remember to sharpen after resizing. And only attach one or two pictures per email.
- If you have access to a web site you can put thumbnail sized pictures on the web with the option to click on the thumbnail for a larger image. I like to use thumbnails that are big enough to see what the picture is about. I currently use 125 x 93 pixels for thumbnails. The linked to picture, should be big enough to enjoy, but not punishing from a loading standpoint. Currently, my favorite size is 533 x 400 pixels. Over the years I have gone up on this number as more and more people have high speed lines. My favorite software for web pages is FrontPage 2003 by Microsoft.
Do It Yourself - Making Prints - I have very little experience in printing pictures on my Epson Stylus C80 inkjet printer.
In my few attempts I have not gotten good results. Instead, I get banding and streaking even when I clean the heads before each print. Perhaps I would get better results with mat finish photo paper instead of gloss. For all other uses I am delighted with the printer.
Online - Services - Sharing and Prints - Another option for sharing prints online and getting prints made is to upload your pictures to a photo processing site. The three that I have tried and like are
All three services allow you to make your prints available for others to see. But only Shutterfly and Yahoo offer the option of letting the public access your pictures. With Ofoto you are limited to sending the link to your gallery to specific email addresses.
All three services offer competitive print services i.e. $.49 each for 4" x 6" prints and $.99 each for 5" x 7" prints plus $1.50 for mailing. As a test I posted the same 9 files to both sites and ordered 5" x 7" prints from each service The quality of the prints was excellent.
The table below summarizes Ofoto's recommended minimum image sizes for various print sizes. Also shown are the aspect ratios (width / height) of the prints and images.
While the aspect ratios don't match in any of the sizes, the services offer the option of automatically resizing or cropping the image to fit the print. My recommendation is that, rather than over intellectualize the the mismatch, just check the automatic compensation button. The stakes are not high and I think you, like me, will be pleased with the results. If not, crop the pictures to the proper aspect ratio before submitting them for prints.
| Print Size |
Minimum Image Size |
| Inches |
Aspect Ratio |
Pixels |
Aspect Ratio |
| 6 x 4 |
1.50 |
640 x 480 |
1.33 |
| 7 x 5 |
1.40 |
1024 x 768 |
1.33 |
| 10 x 8 |
1.25 |
1536 x 1024 |
1.50 |
| 20 x 16 |
1.25 |
1600 x 1200 |
1.33 |
| 30 x 20 |
1.50 |
1600 x 1200 |
1.33 |
Tip: Genuine Fractals sells a $49.95 plug-in for Photoshop CS/Elements and Paint Shop Pro that "enables you to create resolution-independent images from any size file and lets you print superior quality enlargements without any degradation in image quality." I have this program and I've played with it when making major enlargements of cropped images. It seems to do what it says. But I have also seen some doubting comments on the web. So I leave it to you to decide --- a home run or snake oil?
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