Turning On the Camera: Some cameras turn on when you slide open the lens cover on the front of the camera. Others have on/off buttons elsewhere, such as around the shutter release. Digital cameras normally turn themselves off to save battery power if you don’t use them for 3-5 minutes.

The LCD screen or through the lens view should show you how many pictures are left.

The number of pictures should count down as you take pictures, meaning that 39 means you have space for 39 more pictures on that memory card.

There is a battery life indicator in the LCD as well. All black is full. Half or below half may mean you will need two or four AA batteries soon. These can be put into the bottom of the camera at any time, and you won’t lose any pictures in the camera as you change the batteries.

Always shoot pictures in HQ mode or SHQ mode. You should see the HQ symbol in the LCD panel as you take pictures. If you don’t see the symbol, press the second button on top of the camera with the HQ symbol beneath it to turn on HQ mode. Using this mode allows the camera to take sharper pictures with more colors, and they are easier to work with on the computer. Pictures of this quality can be printed out or used on web pages.

Aim and squeeze the shutter release just as you would any camera.

Try to hold the camera as steady as you can, with both hands, or leaning against something solid. Squeeze the shutter release, don’t “poke” it down, because this can cause a “shake” of the camera at the worst possible moment. The more steady you can hold the camera, the better picture you will take.

Get as close as you can to your subject. For a person’s face, try to be 3-4 feet away, not 7-10 feet. We can crop the picture and enlarge it, but if the person’s face is only a tiny part of the original, then it has fewer pixels storing information about it. When we enlarge the small area, the image quality will become increasingly poor. Digital cameras do much better with close ups than landscape shots.

            Using the “zoom” feature can help you get closer, but remember that using the zoom can increase the chance of “camera shake” and blurry pictures. Also, digital cameras either have optical or digital zoom (some have both). Digital almost always decreases image quality, and optical zooms may lose focus if the lenses are of poor quality.

NEVER try to clean the lens, even if it looks very dirty. Touching the lens with anything can damage its optical coatings.

After you take the picture, you can look at it on the screen on the back of the camera. To do this, some cameras have you CLOSE THE FRONT LENS COVER FIRST, and then press the green button on the back of the camera. The image will appear. Other cameras have you push a “view” button. Press the minus button on the back of the camera to see a previous picture, plus to go forward, etc. Press the green button on the back of the camera again to turn off the screen. Don’t use this screen for too long, because it uses a lot of battery power.

While you are looking at the pictures on the screen on the back of the camera, you can erase the pictures you don’t want. To erase the picture you are looking at in the screen, most cameras have an “erase” button on the back or top of the camera. In the screen, it will show how you can cancel the request or select “yes” to really erase the picture.

To erase all the pictures in the camera, there is usually another button or menu option for “formatting” and erasing the entire memory card.

When done taking pictures, remove the memory card from the front left side of the camera and insert into the memory card reader. You can then copy all the pictures off of the card onto the shared folder to work on them later.

Be careful with the memory cards—they can’t be bent, put near magnets, made wet, etc. Also, don’t fingerprint the gold contact plate. Many cameras come with only an 8 megabyte memory card, which may only hold 5 SHQ quality pictures. 32 meg cards can be had for around $35, and 64 meg cards for $70-100. A 64 meg card will hold 40 SHQ shots or 120 HQ shots before being unloaded and used again.

Use rechargeable batteries—but make certain you get the right type for the camera. Some cameras have high battery demand, so not all rechargeable batteries will work in them. My Olympus takes Ni-MH rechargeable batteries that I had to buy from Olympus. I have two sets of four that I rotate from charger to camera, and sometimes I take both sets to events. I can also always use regular Alkaline batteries from the store if I need to.

Best Digital Camera Website: www.dpreview.com

This is by far my favorite site, because it has extensive reviews and critiques of digital cameras, as well as sample images from them. Research here before buying.

Overall Image Quality Rules

Making a low resolution (72 dpi --dots per inch) image larger than the original will make it "pixelate" and look bad. Making a larger low resolution image smaller than the original will increase it resolution (to 150 dpi or more) making it more suitable for printing.

            Web pages and PowerPoint only need 72 dpi images, but don't make them much larger than the originals because then their dpi may drop to 40 or less.

            Printing out images on a good printer requires images of 150 to 300 dpi. Good digital cameras can create these images, and even inexpensive scanners ($70) can create good, high resolution images of 300 dpi or more.

            DO NOT create larger or higher quality images than necessary for web images, PowerPoint, or emailed images. Image dpi higher than 72 dpi does not look any better on computer screens, but they do create much larger files that can wreck your PowerPoint presentation or crash our email server if the attached files are too larger. Also be warned that you can create a 72 dpi image that has a physical size of 11 by 14 inches or more, meaning that again you have too large of image/file size. Cut it down to 3 x 4 inches, or what you really need for your project.

Working on Image files with Microsoft Photo Editor

1) If you just double-click on the

image file, it will open up in Microsoft Photo Editor.

2) There are basic tools in Microsoft Photo Editor for Rotating the Image, Zooming In and Out, Smudging and Sharpening, etc. Overall, this program is fairly limited, but by practicing with the tools you can use it for basic work on an image before printing it or preparing it for a web page.

Note that some of the commands are buried in the pull down menus, and others are tricky to use. To crop a picture, for example, you need to use the selection rectangle. Select the area you want, use Edit and then Cut, and then start a new document and Paste the selection into the new document. Not very elegant. Which is why most people use Photoshop, Photoshop LE, Lview, PhotoDeluxe, and other image processing programs.

Process Image Files in Photoshop

1) The best way is to click on your image file and drag it on top of the Photoshop icon. This will both start Photoshop and open the file you want. You can even drag a dozen files at once on top of the icon.

2) The second way is to start Photoshop by clicking on its icon, and then going to File and then Open... on the Menu Strip at the top of your screen. Then use the dialog window to find your file.

To Process Images:

1) To Crop the Picture:

Press c on the keyboard, so that the button appears and the mouse cursor becomes this tool. Then click and hold down the mouse key and drag diagonally to create a box of flashing dotted lines. You can then resize the box by clicking and dragging on any of the square “handles” on the box. You should try to get one pica (on sixth of an inch) of space around your most important elements from the edge of the picture. When you have it cropped perfectly, double click with the mouse inside of the box to perform the crop.

3) Reset the Exposure and Color of the picture.

Go to Image, then Adjust, then Auto Levels. This will reset both the exposure and colors in the picture.

4) If necessary, reset the exposure further by going to Image, Adjust, and then Variations. Use the Lighter and Darker selections.

5) If necessary, sharpen the image by using Filter, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask.

Don’t over use this tool, or you will “pixelate” the image and make it jagged instead of sharp. Inside the preview window of Unsharp Mask, you can see the effect before applying it. Click with your mouse inside the preview window and hold down to see “before,” and release to see “after.

6) Save the image by using File and Save. If you are saving in JPEG format, which is recommended, Save at maximum quality (8) if you are planning to use the picture in something that will be printed on the color laser printer or ink jet. Use Medium quality (3) if you are saving the image file for use on a web page.

            If Photoshop doesn’t let you save in JPEG format, it might be because you added Layers while manipulating the image. Cancel the save, and then go back to Layer, then Flatten Image to make the separate layers into one. Then you can go back and save in JPEG format.

Integrating digital image in common programs (Word, Powerpoint, Outlook)

In Word and Powerpoint, the process is generally the same. Save your pictures into a folder you have access to, and then in Word or Powerpoint go to the Insert option in the top pull down menu. Then go to Picture, and then From File. You insert the picture.

Be warned, however, that usually the picture is inserted as a piece of text, making it hard to move around and place. Follow the following directions to make the picture “float”:

Creating floating images is a little difficult, but worth it for doing nice layouts. Go to Insert on the top pull down menu, and then click on the double arrows at the bottom of the menu to reveal more options. Then select Text Box.

Once you do this, your pointer will become a cross-hairs, and you can use it to draw the size and location of the text box (both can be changed later). After you do that, the box will appear with a thick striped border and a text cursor inside. Insert the picture inside of the box, as noted above, but with the cusor flashing inside of the text box. Choose “Format Text Box” from the menu that pops up. On the format Text Box window, change the color of the line to “no line.” And click okay--- this will make the box itself invisible, but your text will appear as normal.

To resize the box, click on any of the square “handles” on its perimeter and drag them to change its shape. To move the box, click on the text box to turn on the thick striped border, and click and drag on the striped area to move the box around. The image inside of the box can be resized as normal.

For Outlook, it is usually best to simply attach the image file as an attachment, but be certain that it is an appropriate size—72 dpi, 3x4 inches or so—because attaching very large files to email, and then doing a mass mailing, can bring down our mail server.