Darice Michelle Photography

I get a lot of emails with questions from other photographers or photography hobbiests.  Since I receive similar questions I thought that posting some general questions here might be of use to others who want to pick my brain : )

From Sherry Caterson:

I was wondering if you might know the answer to a couple of questions I have…
1. Is it the computer or the photo editing program that is important when editing a photo? I have I-photo, which is limited, but also I am not sure that when I edit a photo I am getting a true image result on my computer screen. What do you suggest?

My Answer:

There are a multitude of different photo editing programs out there to retouch photos with.  For the professional photographer, most use Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop.

For the hobbiest, prancing around in Photoshop may be a bit intimidating and trippy; therefore you can opt out to use more simple programs like Lunapic or Gimp.
2. How do you back up your photos? I plan to be scanning alot of photos, plus ones from my camera… what is an easy way to back these up so I won’t lose pics when my computer crashes (which has happened in the past).  A lot of photos also seems to make my computer run sluggish (i have a mac laptop) I can burn disks..but then do I delete the pics from my computer?…what would you suggest as the best way to back up a lot of photos.

My Answer:

Sherry, I feel your pain.  I, along with many others, have lost photos from computer malfunctions and the like, so you are not alone.  To avoid any future heart attacks, I now have a complete back up system thanks to a fellow photographer friend, Brian Smith with S & R Photography, who hooked me up.  My backup operating systems consists of a Linksys Cisco Network Storage Unit with 2 One-TB Seagate Internal Hard Drives that mirror files so if one fails or shuts down, I can still access the second one…phew!  Manually, I drag my photos from the computer to the system.  Yet, since life still likes to surprise us with what could go wrong, I  still back up my files on disks because you never know what can go wrong.

I’m planning to make digital albums (which I still have to learn about- know anything?), after I scan all my loose photos (tons of them) onto computer and organize them by year, event & faces. I also want to edit them properly if they are faded, or red eye, and maybe do some artsy stuff with them and want to be able to print them out and look good if I wanted to have a print.

My Answer:

Depending upon how much time or money you want to invest your project into will guide you to which album software program or on-line album-making program would be best for you.  Try looking at these sites:

1. Picaboo

2. Mix Book

3. PXL Soft

4. Smug Mug

I’d be ever grateful if you could answer any of these questions, as I embark on this seemingly never-ending project.

Sherry

Good luck Sherry and I hope that helps!!  : )