You have been snapping digital pictures for years now. Your hard-drive is overflowing with gigabytes of images, pictures of pets, vacations, relatives, birthday parties, and embarrassing moments. Perhaps you should consider rummaging around all those pixels of color and preparing some unique and creative gifts for those around you.

You can always use the standard mug, tee shirt or mouse pad as a gift, but why not consider some of these more unusual digital photo gift ideas.

Cards and gift tags

Don’t send just the standard holiday greeting card. You can add a special photo and message. Christmas, Hanukkah and Valentine’s Day are not the only time to send greeting cards. How about Easter, Thanksgiving and Independence Day? Or, a Just-thinking-of you card. Personalized gift tags and bookmarks make a delightful gift. For a child, consider preparing a simple picture book that is personalized with the childs picture and contains pictures of his favorite things or people.

Household items

An apron for your favorite chef is a great gift; digital photos can be placed on dishes, glasses, coasters and trays. Prepare a private label for home-baked, canned or preserved foods in a decorative container. A 12 or 13-month photo calendar with favorite pictures will be appreciated for the entire year.

Games

Have you considered a private version of “Old Maid”? Picture cards can be prepared in many categories i.e. “My favorite people” “Where I spent my summer vacation?” etc. The nice thing about card games is being able to prepare up to four game sets at the same time since digital prints often are ordered online with four copies. Another card game tests memory. The object of the game is to recall placement of and match pairs of facedown shuffled cards.

Posters and magazine covers

Make stars of your recipients by putting their picture on a movie poster. Software lets you add screen credits, co-stars, and other text to create realism. Similarly, you can make a magazine cover featuring the recipient and appropriate “cover stories”. This could double as a book or magazine cover.

Photo Magnets

Photo magnets are great way for Grandma to display little Johnny’s picture on the refrigerator, and to post important information as well.

You can prepare a collage of favorite photos. Sometimes a grouping of these photos framed and displayed will have more impact than a single picture, and easier to hang one picture than a dozen. You can prepare a visual collage with a photo movie and even add music and sound effects.

Gag gifts

Ever considered giving a friend with political ambitions his very own campaign sign? Or how about helping a friend appears in a favorite product commercial?

Other gifts

Another gift related to digital photos might be to give a prepaid digital print plan. Perhaps a personalized photo album cover would be just the thing. A gift for that very special person is a simple digital camera of their very own, so you can receive photos from them as well. You could present another digital photography aficionado with software to edit, sort or display his online images.

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Likewise, the owners of traditional furniture photography studios won’t make it on photos alone anymore. So they are using digital photo technology to extend the utility of their work, the scope of their services and their reach in the worldwide read more

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Recently I was asked by a subscriber of mine in New York State as to how he could improve his daylight digital photos to create a more even light across his digital photos. I suggested that in digital photography there were many tools such as a polariser, a Neutral Density Filter and some other fancy tools.

He said ?I mean after the pictures has been taken. I really want my digital photography to turn out a lot better than what I am getting.?

What he was talking about was a digital photography method called post-editing. Post means ?after? and editing?well you know what that means. And in digital photography as opposed to photography you can edit your photos so much easily than traditional film photography.

What I advised Grant was that he had a few options. He could try editing his digital photography images by increasing or decreasing the light values via the Histogram. The Histogram is probably one of your best friends in digital photography that you could ask for as far as post editing goes. In a nutshell you simply open up your digital photos in Adobe Photoshop. Then once you have done that you click on ?image? up the top menu bar. Once the menu box has come up you then click on ?adjust? and then ?levels? and up comes the Histogram.

The Histogram will display the light values from the brightest part of your digital photo to the darkest parts. It displays this light & dark information in the form of a graph. It looks something you?d see on the stock market to measure the trends of stock over a certain period of time. You might see thin lines or a block of black shadow with peaks and troughs.

The right side of the reading of the Histogram represents the brighter colours. The left side represents the darker colours. You can pull the brightness down to create a more even light over the picture if you have several overexposed parts of your digital photo. Or alternatively if there are too many underexposed parts of your digital photo you can increase the brightness.

You can increase the brightness significantly by pulling the slider to the left. And you can do the opposite with the sliders to the right. By pulling the far left or far right slider, you?ll be increasing the contrast. By pulling the middle slider either side, you will have increased brightness or darkness but not so much contrast. You?ll see that this is an incredibly simple yet powerful post editing digital photography technique.

If you have a digital photo that is underexposed with the handy Histogram you can simply change the ?luminance output levels?. As a result you?ll create a more evenly lit digital photo.

Happy shooting!

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Yes, I’m obsessive-compulsive when it comes to finding and shooting framed compositions. I discovered this one last week while roaming around Plant Hall in infrared mode. I almost didn’t post anything here today, my hands are pretty cramped after creating seventy-five pages of new shopping cart code for the latest event photo gallery. I don’t think this brave new world of digital photography is necessarily easier than film, its more a matter of a different set of skills and challenges. Some days I feel like all I’ve done is traded chemistry for carpal tunnel.
Source: www.jrsphotos.com

04-28-06: The Shot, The Shooter
Taken with a 17mm full-frame fisheye stopped all the way down. What I didn’t realize at the time is that while I was composing this I became the subject of a shot myself…At home in my natural element. Kathy Porupski, one of my first students and possibly the busiest person I know, occasionally finds time to rip herself away from her hectic schedule and accompany me on a shoot. Children’s dance competitions are her bread-and-butter photography work but just like me she loves to escape to the wild places and shoot just for herself. This is an effective use of leading lines and of course I like her choice of subject matter. Kathy has a new website where she currently displays her dance photos for parents to buy and will soon be displaying some of her nature and fine art photos. Since I did the original design work for the site I’m more than happy to give it a blatant plug here.
Source: www.jrsphotos.com

If you haven’t taken your first digital photograph, or even heard of digital photography, then I really must congratulate you. You are truly a contradiction. Since your reading this article, you must be browsing the web, yet you still haven’t heard of digital cameras. Apart from the computer itself, and perhaps the cell phone, photography has been more revitalized than practically any other industry in the digital universe. During it’s early introduction, it was reviled by professional photographers, as being a sub par and mediocre technology. In other words, the picture quality was pathetic. However, Like any high tech toy these days, it has matured at an alarming rate, and the cries of mediocrity have been gagged and silenced. Everyone, even a multitude of pros engage in the sinful passion that is digital photography.

Digital Delights vs Digital Dystopia

Not to say that aren’t a cornucopia of complications to overcome in this new digital wonderland. And hardly the least of these is the managing of the overflow of new pictures you now own copyrights to. It seems that being cheap little buggers, is a genetic trait of most human beings. Way back in the old days, when taking pictures actually meant buying real film with real cash, we were very judicious in what pictures we took. Now that digital photography allows us to endlessly reuse those overworked little bits on our memory sticks, we click, snap and shoot every cute, furry, adorable thing that comes into range. Once are hard drives are crammed with a gazillion of these images ranging from dubious to heirloom quality we really start to worry. What happens if our hard drive makes that klunk-grind-klunk-kratch sound that next time we boot up our pc? Or . . . however will we find that one really priceless picture we’re looking for, in that wasteland of hopefully-forgotten digital visions? Gotta have backups folks. And really you must get more organized. It’s that simple. And hey, while your at it, dump that crappy and boring old screen saver of flying toasters, and crappy windows logos, for your own maniacal barge sized load of digital pictures on your hard drive. Why not at least view your images on your own pc periodically before your hard drive commits digital Hari-Kari.

Revenge is the Ultimate Panacea

Of course there are many more creatively satisfying tactics for dealing with all this digital photography abundance. All those free picture sharing sites that allow us to inflict our photographic genius on other unsuspecting travelers of the net. You upload your pictures in varying sizes, and mediums of presentation. Yes, the already tortured world really needs to see a slideshow of my 4 year olds magnificently produced, directed and choreographed version of the Teddy Bear Picnic. As harmless as this strategy may seem, it’s effectiveness is not ruthlessly devoid of passion. Of course why just settle for a inner feeling of joy, when you can turn all those pictures into hard cash. Start a picture blog, and surround your beautiful works of sublime art with greed driven capitalistic advertisements. Nothing like that oh so moving picture of junior playing with his very first barf, and a caption of “Ads by Gaaaaaaagle” eloquently underneath. I’m sure once you put a little thought into it, you can come up with your own wonderful form of digital dysentery. Best of luck, I’ll be watching for you.

About the Author

For more on digital photography visit photographyfunonline.com or read other digital photography articles. –

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The following are commonly used terms in digital photography:

Aperture: The aperture is an opening that allows light to travel into the digital camera?s interior where the sensor is situated.

Digital Zoom: Digital zoom is the blowing up of one aspect of the picture. Using digital zoom will reduce picture quality.

JPEG: JPEG describes the compression of a digital image. The Joint Photo Experts Group devised a compression ratio that reduces the picture size. This reduction will lead to a substantial loss of picture quality.

Megapixels:One megapixel equals one million pixels.

Memory: Memory is the storage space capability that the digital camera holds to store pictures.

1 MP Camera: A 1 MP Camera can shoot a picture that consists of one million pixels.

Optical Zoom: The optical zoom changes a lens? focal length and magnification.

Pixels: Pixels is an abbreviated term (Picture Element) that has a numerical value between 0-255. There are three color channels (red, green and blue) in each pixel.

Pixel Count: A pixel count is the number of pixels in each image.

PPI: PPI (pixels per inch) describes picture quality. The higher the PPI, the clearer and more resolved the photo.

RAW/NEF: These are two terms that both mean the uncompressed image as shot by the camera. The RAW format is used by Canon digital cameras and the NEF format is used by Nikon digital cameras.

Sensor: The sensor is the digital strip within the digital camera that receives the light. The sensor’s job is comparable to the negative in a non-digital camera.

Shutter Speed: Shutter Speed refers to the length of time the digital camera?s aperture is open and allowing light inside the camera.

TIFF: TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format, a format that uses a very large file size, but has the advantage of no loss of information.

White Balance: White balance adjusts the white color quality of your image. Digital cameras usually have adjustable settings for electronic flash, shade, sunlight, fluorescent lighting and tungsten lighting.

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Are you looking to get the best quality from your digital SLR? If the answer is yes you need to forget about the auto modes and set your digital camera to RAW.

Setting your digital camera to raw will open up a whole new world of photography. Correctly processed raw images are sharper and contain more accurate colours. The extra information stored when shooting raw will give your image more detail – leaving you more room to experiment in your digital darkroom.

Raw explained: Raw files are a doorway to top-class image quality, which will also allow you maximum control. A raw image contains all the unprocessed data that reads directly from the camera?s sensor. A raw image file does not contain the finished product and you will have more work to do with the digital file but your final image quality should be first class.

For great results you will need to invest in a RAW converter that will enable you to maximise quality and control. A RAW converter is a piece of software that allows you to make all the changes that your image needs. Once you have made all the changes you can save your image to JPEG or to whichever format you need.

Shooting RAW will open amazing new avenues for an amateur photographer or a professional starting to use digital technology for the first time. Pictures with poor colour can be transformed into reasonable images, but this should not be a licence to get sloppy.

The standards of photography are still the same. Your RAW image needs to be exposed correctly; the RAW converter is not capable of making a blurred image sharp; and it can?t change the depth-of-field.

The only frustration when shooting RAW is the extra time spent on the computer, but once you get used to all the new tools with your software, you will soon realise that the changes were worth it.

The true benefits of shooting RAW are quality, control, image flexibility and easy image correction. But be careful – you should always aim for the best results using your camera first.

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1. Lesser cost

One of the advantages that digital cameras provide is the fact that it is largely practical and convenient. There is lesser cost in the long run as one need not buy films anymore and will need not develop the pictures the old fashion way. They would only need to charge the batteries, get a reasonably large memory stick and they are good to go.

2. Better storage

Photographers can now store the pictures that they have taken in their computers and in their cds, allowing them to use the memory stick over and over again. There is no more need to store rolls of film and worry that they might disintegrate.

3. Printing convenience

Another convenience that digital cameras provide is the fact that it can be printed at home the same way one would print any kind of file.

4. Trial and Error

Another convenience that digital cameras provide is the fact that one can actually view the photos right after taking it and have the option of erasing it when it is not good. This, according to experts, spoils photographers. Because they can do a take over and over again, they don?t learn the discipline of planning for their shot before actually pressing the button.
Still, for the amateur photographer, this is like manna in heaven as this enables them to easily take good photographs and see their mistakes.

Disadvantages

1. Need for Computer literacy

Similar to film photography where you need to be also familiar with working in the dark room, one needs to have a modicum of computer skills. Not only will you be storing your photographs in the computer, operating the camera is like operating a small computer. You really have to be computer literate in order to maximize the functions of your camera.

2. Artistry is lost

There are some that argue that artistry and spontaneity is lost when using a digital camera because photographers do not shoot using various effects. For instance, some would not bother to blur the background anymore because they can fix the photo in Photoshop and other graphic programs. One can do a number of things with the computer, erase flaws, fix red eyes and sharpen some features.

About the Author:

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