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So I’ve got a thousand digital photos. What now?

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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Ideas for your photo collectionIt wouldn’t be too daring to say that everyone has a digital photo camera at home which, in turn, means that most of us have an impressive photo collection. We no longer need to care about film rolls being wasted or pictures not coming up well, so we simply keep on clicking and capturing anything we see through our lens.

So, after reading the good advice provided by our colleagues on insideTonic’s sister blog OnSoftware, we’ve gathered a few ideas about what to do with your photos, along with the necessary software tools to accomplish them. Hope you find them useful!

Copying to your PCIdeas for your photo collection

The first obvious step is transferring all those images from the camera to the PC. Many photo applications like XnView or Picasa include an importing tool to perform this task – even Windows its own importing wizard to help you with this process. But you can also use specific apps such as Cam2PC.

Viewing

Now that the photos have been saved on your PC, it’s time to see them! There are hundreds of photo viewers available, from the traditional ACDsee to the great Picasa, including also the versatile IrfanView and, more recently, Pictomio, a new and original concept of photo viewer. Which is the best one? Just take a look at our Viewers category and choose the one that fits your needs.

Ideas for your photo collectionOptimizing and improving

Despite having the best camera on the market and years of experience as a photographer, some of your images will still need a bit improving. We’re not talking about complicated editing tasks with tools like Photoshop or The GIMP. A little optimization with Digital Camera Enhancer to adjust color or brightness levels and some noise cleaning with Neat Image will probably be enough.

Adding effects

You can also make your photos more attractive before printing or publishing them online. The trick is adding special effects to change their color, tone, light and other elements with tools such as B/Works, PhotoChances or Mystical Tint Tone and Color. Sometimes the results are even better than the original pictures!Ideas for your photo collection

Retouching

Besides optimization tools and special effects, there are other software apps that enable you to erase certain unwanted elements on your pictures or correct common mistakes. Use Wire Pilot to remove wires, antennas and other linear objects from your photos, Red Eye Remover to erase that scary red-eye effect from close-ups and Perspective Pilot to correct both vertical and horizontal distortion.

Printing

In case you decide you print your photos, you should know there are plenty of tools to help you with this task. IDPhotoStudio, for example, lets you print ID-sized photos for any kind of document from the comfort of your home. Also, PrintStation is an eco-friendly app that prints several photos on one sheet of paper while Posteriza enables you to create large-sized posters out of your own pictures.

Ideas for your photo collectionPublishing online

Now that your photos look perfect, it’s time to share them online! As usual, there are several alternatives available. You can use Flickr Uploadr to publish them to your Flickr account (don’t have one yet? It’s great: sign up!), create a Picasa web album in a few easy steps or simply design your own personal online gallery with Web Photo Album. Don’t forget to send the album URL to all your friends once it’s online!

And even more…

As you can see, there are loads of different things you can do with your pictures. The complete list would be too long, so let us finish off this post with a few last recommended tools. Just don’t be shy to try new software apps and experiment for yourself!

[Via: OnSoftware Spain]

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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