Low-Cost Digital Photo Printing

Let's face it, scrapbooking can get expensive. I think most of us still enjoy doing some traditional scrapbooking which requires printing your digital pictures to use them on your layout. I've been printing lots of pictures recently, so I've researched some ways to print digital photos inexpensively.

SNAPFISH
Get 30 free 4" x 6" prints when you create a free Snapfish account! Plus, this month you can save up to $15 off your purchase of any photo gift, including books, cards, mugs, and more. Just use one of the coupon codes below at checkout:
To save $5 off purchases of $15 or more, use coupon MARCH1
To save $10 off purchases of $30 or more, use coupon MARCH2
To save $15 off purchases of $40 or more, use coupon MARCH3

Snapfish also gives you professional quality nine-cent prints everday and free online sharing and storage.

SHUTTERFLY
There are many benefits of a free Shutterfly membership. You can securely store your images at full resolution for a lifetime. They are never deleted. You can also turn your favorite memories into professionally bound photo books, create cards and stationary, and even create a free website to share your photos and memory books. You can get 25 free prints when you join.

WALMART
A definite benefit to using Walmart's photo processing is that you can order prints and pick them up in an hour. You can also order the prints and have them delivered to your house or shipped for free to your local Walmart store.

They offer traditional prints starting and nine cents. They also have many items you can add your favorite photos to such as posters, collages, calendars, playing cards, mugs, mousepads, clothing, and more.

These are just three of the many ideas and services available for online digital photo printing. Try them out and let me know if you have a different favorite you like to use so that I can share it on my blog.

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Sharing Photos

The real joy in taking photos is sharing them. Thanks to technology you now have a bigger audience to share them with. You can publish them on your website, use an online album, or simply email them.

WEBSITES AND ONLINE ALBUMS

Gone are the days of printing every single photo you take. Generally, you may print your favorites, but it's fun to have a place to post the rest of the pictures to share with your friends and family. If you have your own website you can create a page and post your pictures there. Another great option is to use one of the popular photo sharing websites. There are tons of them out there. Most are free, but some charge a nominal fee. Check out some of the most popular ones: Photobucket, Webshots, Shutterfly, and Flickr.

These sites make photo sharing easy. You can upload photos from your home computer, the web, and even from your cell phone. After uploading your photos to an album, you can send the link to friends and family members to view online with just a click of a button.

Most of the sites also offer photo printing service where you can order photos from your computer and have them mailed to your home. It's all easy and convenient.


EMAIL

Of course, an easy way to share pictures if you only want to share a few is through email. You may be able to view images in JPG, TIF, BMP and other formats, but when you are sending pictures through email, don't assume your recipients can. It's generally safe to use JPG format because most computers are capable of opening this type of file.

JPG files are saved in a compressed format, which means the same photo in JPG format is smaller than in BMP format. If you're really trying to limit file size, you can save a JPG with varying degrees of compression. You can also reduce the file size by reducing the dimensions of the image. For instance, if you're sending an image which measures 1024 by 768 pixels to someone who always uses 640 by 480 resolution, create a copy of the image in the smaller size and send that.

If you must send a photo in a format such as BMP or TIF, use a zipping program to compress the file first. It's also useful to zip files when you want to send multiple images in one e-mail. Just make sure your recipient knows how to handle zip files.

For detailed step-by-step instructions from Microsoft, click here.

I love the fact that digital photography allows me to experiment. Even novice photographers come up with some amazing photos and sharing them is half the fun. Check out some of the websites listed above. I think you'll like them.

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Digital by Design

I would venture a guess that most of you use a digital camera. I would also guess you probably have piles of pictures taken before the digital age. Earlier this week, I talked about physical storage systems for all of those pictures.

Physically storing your pictures in a safe way to preserve their archival qualities is important, but it is still sometimes difficult to search through pictures and find the exact one you need. I have recently been scanning all of my photographs and looking for a program to store and sort them.

I’ve been using photobucket, which is a good online storage system. But, I recently found something better, an exciting product that does much more than store and organize your pictures. Life Story Productions has an exciting software program called Heritage Collector. I recently interviewed Marlo Schuldt from Life Story Productions and he showed me tons of examples of the program’s capabilities and told me many amazing family history stories which I wish I had the room to tell, but suffice it to say, you won’t be disappointed.

Heritage Collector is an all-inclusive program that allows you to scan and store your photos in a unique collection file system. Now in seconds, you can find any picture you’re looking for. You can search by subject, theme, name, practically anything you can imagine. The exciting part is that you can store much more than photos. Heritage Collector will also help you store sound, video, and text files. The unique way your files are stored in collections makes it easy to organize all your family history materials in one place.

For example, let’s say you create a collection named Grandpa Smith. In the collection you can place photos of Grandpa you have scanned from original photographs or imported directly from your digital camera. You can also put in Microsoft Word documents you have created detailing stories about significant events in Grandpa’s life. But, it doesn’t end there. You can include sound files you’ve recorded of Grandpa telling stories in his own voice. You can use these to create talking photos, so that when you mouse over a photo you will hear the story about the photo in the subject’s own voice. You can also include video clips, scanned family group sheets, journal entries, maps—pretty much anything you can imagine. You can even add GPS coordinates to locate the places in your pictures.

The program also includes a unique hot spot feature. When you mouse over the people in a photo, a hot spot will pop up which tells you the name of the person, dates, or any other information you want to enter.
Having all of these items together and accessible in one place allows you to create a tangible family history to share with your loved ones by quickly and easily making mixed media slide shows, as well as self running CD’s and DVD’s.

Heritage Collector is the equivalent of at least ten programs. So, rather than using one program to import your pictures, another to edit them, another to save and organize them, another to save text files, and one for video and sound, another to create slide shows and still another to burn CD’s and DVD’s, Heritage Collector includes all this and allows you to do it all from one program, saving you a lot of time and money in the process.

So, what if you aren’t into family history? The program works for scrapbooking as well. Just the sorting and storage features alone are amazing, but the program also has a unique scrapbook module which allows you to just drag and drop your photos into scrapbook pages. You can also use it to create your own background paper.

What is the purpose of a scrapbook anyway? It is to preserve your memories and tell a story that will have an emotional impact. With Heritage Collector, this has never been easier. Check it out. I know you’ll love it!

To learn more about the product and read a fun newsletter visit http://www.heritagecollector.com/.

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