Have a question about digital photography? Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can--though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can't promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in Digital Focus. For more frequently asked questions, read my newsletters from June, July, and August.

Photographing Photographs

I am currently working on a family tree for our family. I have access to many old photos, but I won't have an opportunity to actually scan them with a scanner. I'm wondering how I might be able to use one of my cameras to quickly take photos of their photographs.
--Joanne Nelson, Florence, Colorado

Panoramas have been around for at least a century. In the old days, though, you had to combine a series of photos using scissors, tape, and elbow grease. These days, smart software seamlessly integrates your photos with little or no effort on your part. In the past, I've told you the best ways to shoot a panoramic series of photos. This time around, I've got some recommendations for a few programs that will take your photos and stitch them together for free.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is my all-around favorite stitching program because not only does it do a superb job of making panoramas, but it's also a pretty good photo organizer, as well. I use Photo Gallery to manage my personal photo collection, and when I take a series of photo for conversion to a panorama, making that panorama is as easy as selecting the photos and then choosing from the Make menu. You don't have to fiddle with any settings, and the program creates a high quality, full-resolution panorama that you can save or share.

No matter what the medium, artists love to tinker with the "long fade." Musicians sometimes fade songs to a whisper rather than resolve the song on a beat. In Westerns, the cowboy rides off into the sunset while the film fades to black and the credits start to roll. And in photography, you'll often find photos that fade to black as well. This variation of the traditional vignette effect is popular in portraits and wedding photos. This week, let's see how to add it to your own photos.

The Heart of the Fade: Masks

Since this effect is often used for wedding photos and other portraits, I'll show you how to do this with a photo of my sister from her wedding.

Once upon a time, being "into photography" pretty much just meant taking pictures with your camera, dropping off the film, and getting back finished prints. Few people had their own darkroom. These days--because your computer is the darkroom--you can process your photos yourself. And you don't necessarily need to pay for expensive image editing software: Recently I told you about Web-based photo editing programs; this week, I thought it would be fun to look at some Web sites and downloadable apps that take your photos to the next level, thanks to all manner of effects and editing goodies.

Make a Magazine Cover

FlauntR lets you open photos from your computer or from common photo sharing sites--like Picasa, Flickr, and elsewhere--and perform a slew of clever photo editing tricks.

When I took an art appreciation class in college, my professor explained the rise of abstract art movements in the 19th and 20th centuries by saying that since photography allowed artists to capture a perfect replica of reality, the only way for painters to remain relevant was to explore nonliteral interpretations of their subjects. Perhaps that also explains why digital photographers continue to create images that take license with reality. A while ago, for example, I talked about one way to make a photo look like it was a miniature. This week I'll tell you about a program I found that makes the process easier.

What Is Tilt-Shift?

This faux-miniature style of photography has become quite popular, and I continue to be fascinated by it. Among photography geeks, it's known as tilt-shift photography, because it relies on a special articulating kind of lens (called a tilt-shift lens, naturally) to create photos in which the depth of focus falls in an unexpected way.

Have a question about digital photography? Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can--though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can't promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in Digital Focus. For more frequently asked questions, read my newsletters from May, June, and July.

Palm Pre vs. Apple iPhone

So, which has the better camera?
--Gloria Askin, Denver

In the past, I've written about action photography in general and even how to capture water balloons as they're being popped. If freezing a moment in time is the ultimate goal of photography, then stopping a high-speed airplane as it zooms past at hundreds of miles an hour is surely one of the most exciting ways to use your digital camera. And this is the season for it: Summer is chock full of airshows at municipal airports and military bases across the country.

This week I've gathered up a summer's worth of photographs I've taken at airshows and put the best of them into a slide show. Head over to "What You Need to Know to Photograph an Airshow" to learn how to capture aerial acrobatics on your own.

Dewdrops are one of the magical signs of summer. I love going outdoors in the early morning and seeing drops of water clinging to the flora in my wife's garden. It's also a wonderful photographic subject--it's hard not to smile when you see a water drop clinging to a flower. In the past, we've talked about how to take close-ups; this week, let's focus specifically on capturing dew up close.

Fake It

Let me begin by saying that there's absolutely no reason why you need to get up with the roosters and try these photos only in the early morning. Dewdrops are just water--so all you need is a spray bottle and you can set the stage any time it's convenient for you.

We don't usually often think of it this way, but photography is really about drawing pictures with light--which means that you can literally draw your own pictures by adding light to a photo in a controlled way. Many years ago, before digital photography, I used to experiment with this sort of photo using long exposures and a flashlight. In the past, I've shown you how to mimic that effect digitally ("Add Sci-Fi Special Effects.") This week, I thought it would be fun to do it the old-fashioned way and actually "paint" with a flashlight.

Getting Set Up

Painting with light is more art than science: You can get great results with almost any kind of camera, and experimentation is key. Unlike the kind of experimentation I remember from my college physics class, though, this is actually fun.

Have a question about digital photography? Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can--though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can't promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in Digital Focus. For more frequently asked questions, read my newsletters from April, May, and June.

Rights to Reusing Photos From the Web

Your recent article on creating a time capsule with photos from the Web made me curious about copyright. The school district I work in has been trying to find ways to educate teachers and students about proper use of online photos. Do you have suggestions? Any ideas for copyright-free sources of photos that could be used in school projects?
--Paul Garrett, Richmond, Vermont

I'm something of a grumpy old man when it comes to camera phones--for years, I've resisted them, complaining that I just didn't see the point. "Using a camera phone dumbs down photography," I'd say, citing poor image quality and lack of control. When I wrote "Five Tips for Great Photos With Your Cell Phone," I did it reluctantly, mainly because my friends insisted that phones with cameras were incredibly popular.

Set Your Expectations Accordingly

Things are looking up, though. For the last few weeks, I've been playing with the cameras in the Palm Pre and the Apple iPhone 3GS, and I can finally see why someone would want to use these devices.

Ever wonder how photographers get the amazing results you see in professional portraits and glamour shots? Well, to be blunt, they cheat. No one ever said that photography had to accurately reflect reality; photographers commonly tweak lighting, color, saturation, and other factors to get the look they're after. Recently, we laid the groundwork for these sorts of effects by learning how to use layers in Adobe Photoshop Elements. This week, lets build on that technique with some "high key" effects.

What Is High Key?

You might not realize it, but high-key photos are everywhere. You can find a wide assortment of them on , for example, and you'll immediately recognize the effect: Overexposed, nearly bleached photos with a dramatic, if somewhat monochromatic, resonance. High-key photography has the added benefit of smoothing out skin tones and eliminating blemishes, so your portraits appear to have perfect skin.