I just got back from a whirlwind trip to China. I was the perfect geek--I took about 350 digital pictures and 3 hours of video. (It was a tour, folks, and I had lots of time to kill waiting for the hordes to get back on the bus.) Now that I'm home, I've been digging for articles, tips, and tricks to help me deal with all those images. This week I'll share what I've found so far.

Manipulating the Images

I was really excited bringing back those photos--right up until I had to start messing with them. Then I was overwhelmed. You know what I mean... sorting through 350 similarly named files, cropping some, rejecting others, and making them viewable for my friends. Here are a couple tips that made this part of the project a little easier.

Triage your photos. View each one and delete out-and-out rejects. To do this I used IrfanView, a slick little viewer that's not only quick, it's free.

Stick them into categories. While viewing your photos, categorize them by renaming the files and dumping them into folders. I kept in mind that I wanted to create two albums: one for my wife, Judy, and me, with practically every photo; the other for friends with short attention spans, folks who might be bored by dozens of shots of the Great Wall (no, not you, Bill). I renamed each file after viewing it, and then dumped it into one of two folders: "friends" and "us."

Take an Article Break

I'm not the only one at PCWorld.com talking about photos. In "How to Print Perfect Photographs," Dave Johnson, our imaging expert, gives 27 ways to make your photos look better. He's got some practical advice, folks, and I encourage you to read all of it. (I did and learned lots.)

Dig this: You haven't had your weekly time waster yet, right? A reader, Thom D., says his wife (who normally ignores these things) played with this rabbit for 10 minutes, laughing out loud. Put your cursor behind the wily rabbit and it tries to nab the cursor. The bunny's fast, but if it gets your cursor you can shake it loose.

Okay, Back to Work

Here are two other tricks to try once you've decided on the right categories.

Making the move. Moving your photo files around is challenging enough; using Windows Explorer to do it is terrifying. You've got a couple of alternatives: PowerDesk Pro 5.0 and 2XExplorer. Try both of these freebies and see which one you like best.

Ontrack's PowerDesk Pro 5.0 lets you view two directories (okay, folders) at once, making it easier to rename and move files.

Nipping at PowerDesk's heels is 2XExplorer, a souped-up version of the old Norton Commander for DOS.

Renaming files. While you're viewing and moving files you also need to rename them. (What, you don't find epson001.jpg, epson002.jpg, and epson350.jpg meaningful?) When I find a stack of photos with a similar scene--say, "food vendors"--I add something unique to the file name while leaving the extension alone. For instance, "food vendors_001.jpg," "food vendors_002.jpg," "food vendors_003.jpg," and so on.

For this part of the project I'm using the free RJH Extensions, a powerful utility that lets me globally rename files and add sequential numbering (or even words) to the file names. I can also change the extension and preview my changes before honking up a hundred files.

Dig this: You know how IT types are always worried about users using their equipment to do something unauthorized? (They even e-mail me rants about how I supply the ideas.) The best example of this yet can be found at a Danish site run by the Chaos Computer Club's Blinkenlights project, which is dedicated to using office-building lights to play Pong, among other things. Start by seeing the project's work in action, then view this video, and finally, head to the Blinkenlights home page to see what other shenanigans the group has dreamed up. (Warning: Denmark's far away, so the site may be slow.)

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