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6. Slim Down Your Photos

Do your photos need to go on a diet? It depends on how you plan to use them. If all you ever plan to do is attach your pictures to e-mail messages or paste them into digital documents and online photo albums, you're wasting a lot of hard drive space by keeping images in their 3-megapixel glory. Reclaim gigabytes of storage space by resaving them as 640-by-480-pixel photos. You can do that by hand in an image editor like Jasc's Paint Shop Pro (choose Image, Resize, then enter the pixel size you want in the Resize dialog box), or automate the process with a program like Jasc's Image Robot, which can batch-convert hundreds of images into a different size and file format while you go watch TV.

Just remember: Don't throw away your high-resolution original images if you think you may need them for a different purpose some day. If you might want to print particular photos at 5 by 7 inches or bigger, for instance, keep the high-resolution versions around--you'll need them.

For additional tips on how to make your images e-mail-ready, see "Top Photo-Editing Tips."

7. Danger! Don't Hurt the Originals

The real joy of owning a large digital photo collection only becomes apparent when you can easily find photos anytime you need them. You can choose a photo of your sister's baby at holiday time and turn it into an edible gift--like cookies with photographic frosting at Club Photo, for instance, or print enlargements of photos you took at your parent's 50th wedding anniversary on your ink jet printer.

Compressing photos you're only going to use for e-mail or other online purposes is fine, but for all other images, remember not to delete, resize, color-adjust, or otherwise mess with the original images. You'll want them pristine for the next project, so only save changes to copies of your originals. (Use your image editor's Save copy as option--if it has one--from the File menu to make sure you don't overwrite your original.) Remember this step, and you won't be kicking yourself in decades to come.

8. Get a Fancy Photo Manager

When you need to find a certain picture in a hurry, rifling through folders and waiting for thumbnail images to gradually appear on screen can be the slowest way to track it down. Instead, consider using one of the many excellent programs that are available for managing your photos. Jasc's upcoming Paint Shop Photo Album (formerly known as After Shot) and Adobe's Photoshop Album ($50) are two excellent alternatives. (Note: You can download the beta version of Jasc's Paint Shop Photo Album now, and preorder the final version for $39 until March 2003, when the final product is supposed to be released.)

Paint Shop Photo Album lets you enter multiple keywords for your photos for easy text-based searches, so you can search for a photo even if you don't remember its exact title. Photoshop Album, on the other hand, uses visual "tags" that you associate with photos. You can link photos to tags based on places, people, and events, which helps you track down a photo in seconds just by clicking the right tags. Clicking the 'Thanksgiving' and 'Family' tags, for instance, would display just the photos with those criteria.

Want to get organized without spending any money? Try Preclick Photo Organizer, a free download. This basic program will help you locate and sort your photos.

9. Show Off Your Pictures

When it's time to share your pictures with friends and family, don't just copy a handful of them to a CD-R or floppy disk and send it off--make something with a bit of panache. Programs like PhotoParade Maker (starting at $20) and PhotonShow ($49) let you grab a bunch of photos and painlessly incorporate them into a fun slideshow that plays right on the desktop. You can add your favorite MP3 tunes as a soundtrack and specify titles, captions, closing credits, and other elements. Depending on which program you choose, these presentations can usually be sent to friends and family via the Internet or on a disc. Of course, the original images stay safely on your PC for use in other applications.

10. Save Your Hard Drive!

Who said you need to keep all of your digital images on your PC's hard drive? We certainly didn't. Archive your old photos on CD-Rs using your computer's CD-RW drive, especially if your PC's hard drive is on the small side. Don't use CD-RWs; they're more expensive, and you might accidentally erase important pictures, since those discs can be reused. Storing stuff on CD-R is about as close to permanent as you can get in the computer business, but even CD-Rs get damaged. Make yourself two copies if you want to play it extra safe.

Most CD writer software -- like Roxio's Easy CD Creator ($100) and Ahead Software's Nero ($69) make it easy to copy a huge number of images to CD-R for posterity. Label the disc and store it on a nearby shelf for easy reference, then delete the original images from your PC. CD copies of your images will also come in handy if you ever have a hard-drive failure--at least your precious images will survive.

For more tips on how to enhance your expertise with your digital camera, sign up for PC World's Digital Focus, Dave Johnson's weekly newsletter. For back issues, go to the Digital Focus archive. And check out our Top Image Editing Tools to download some shareware image-editing utilities.

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