Scrapbookers sometimes arrange overlapping photos into an artful design. This is easy to do with printed photos on paper, but not as simple when the images are digital. Of course, arranging photos into an ordinary grid is pretty easy--I showed you how to do that in "Make a Collage of Your Favorite Photos."

This week, I'll show you two ways to manipulate a group of images into some sort of graphic. First, we'll use Photoshop Elements (though you can apply the technique to almost any photo editing program), and then with a free program designed for exactly this kind of thing.

Your digital photo files hold all sorts of interesting information. You probably know that you can find the date and time taken, date modified, and exposure information in your photo's metadata. You might also know that your photo can tell you what make and model camera you used, and details about the lens and flash. But you might also be storing your name, your home address (see "Photos That Know Where they Were Taken"), and other private or potentially embarrassing information in those files as well, all of which can be seen if you post our photos online. This week, let's make sure you know how to protect that personal data.

Inside Your Photo's Metadata

There's a lot of information lurking around inside your photos--more than you might know. You can spy on all this information in Windows or using a photo organizer. If you have Windows Vista, for example, right-click a photo and choose Properties. Then click the Details tab, and you should see much of the metadata packed into your photo.

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 December, January, and February.

Photographing a TV Screen

Is there a way to take clear pictures of the television screen with a digital camera?
--Irene Kwik, Ottawa

There is little doubt that even run-of-the-mill digital cameras take better pictures than the best point-and-shoot film cameras did 30 years ago. Almost everything is better: The optics, the exposure controls, even the resolution. All the potential problems haven't been solved, though. Both digital and film photos can turn out grainy and unattractive. In digital photography, this is called noise; read "Eliminate Noise From Your Photos" for more details.

Back in the days of film, something called grain added a coarse texture to photos. These days, digital noise has pretty much the same effect. Your shooting conditions can contribute to digital noise (see "Use ISO to Take Low-Light Photos."). This week, let's explore what noise is all about and how to minimize it in your photos.

Since the time of the Greeks, artists have used frames to change the appearance of their pictures. If your photos live mainly on your computer, you might not traffic much in real frames anymore. A while back, I showed you how to "Add Frames and Borders to Photos." This week, I want to show you a more subtle approach: Adding a drop shadow effect to the edge of your picture.

I am not a fan of gaudy, colorful frames, but I love drop shadows. They elevate the photo off the page (or off the screen) and give the image a little extra life without distracting from the image itself. And in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, drop shadows are only a few clicks away.

Thanks to last month's Super Bowl commercials and a special episode of the geek-action show Chuck, everyone has been talking about 3D recently. I even got a set of awkward 3D glasses from the local supermarket to see what all the fuss was about.

Frankly, I found it all a little underwhelming. That inspired me to have some fun with the third dimension with my own photos. As you'll see this week, it's not too hard to make your own photos look 3D using some clever composition and a free animation program.

These days, everyone seems to snap candid photos with their mobile phone, and the pocket sized do-everything devices threaten to replace point-and-shoots entirely. I wrote some tips for using camera phones back when they were just starting to get popular, but the technology has improved a lot in the last four years.

This week, let's take a fresh look at how to get the best photos with your phone.

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 November, December, and January.

Demystifying Crop Sizes

I've used a film SLR in the past, and so I recall that when shooting a photo, you need to leave extra room around the subject if you want to print it as an 8 by 10 since the negative is a different shape. Now that I have a Nikon D90, I have heard that what you see on the screen is even more drastically different from what you can print out as an 8 by 10. So do I need to allow even more space when framing my subject?
--Pamela Deegan, Oshkosh, Wisconsin

I'm no lawyer, but as a working photographer, I try to understand the law as it applies to digital photography as best I can. That's no easy feat: Laws are often confusing, and a lot of people rely on "common sense" when it comes to guessing what's legal. But sometimes the law doesn't always make sense. A while back I wrote two articles on the subject: "Your Photos, Your Rights, and the Law," and "More on Your Photos and the Law." I recently heard about a few incidents that made me think it's time to take another look at the legal side of photography.

There's a lot of confusion about what's legal to photograph and where it's okay to use a camera. This has gotten even more challenging in our post-9/11 world, in which some people are suspicious of anyone with a long lens.

Here in the digital age, we are pretty spoiled. Unlike my parents and their shelf of photo albums filled with sticky pages and clear covers, I have virtually instant access to every photo I've taken in the past 15 years. That makes it all the more important for the photo metadata to be accurate, though. If a picture's date is incorrect, good luck finding it when you browse your digital collection. (See "Organize Your Photos" for some tips on how to do that.)

In the past, I've told you how to remove the date stamp from the corner of your photo ("Get Rid of That Ugly Date Stamp"). This week, let's see how to fix the date if your camera was not set properly when you shot a batch of photos.

My wife got a new digital camera under the tree this year, and she immediately turned to me and said, "What's next?" Since she wanted to know how to get the most out of her camera, I suggested that she brush up on her photo composition skills, which I wrote about in "Photo Composition Tips."

But she wanted more. So this week, I've rounded up the four most important things that every new digital photographer should consider.

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 October, November, and December.

Dealing With Red-Eyed Puppies

"Photographing Your Pets" was most informative for my future pet shots. But what do you do when you already have a photo with the dreaded "devil eye?"
--Richard "Doc" Wagner, Salisbury, North Carolina