Tips on working with photos using Windows XP
from an article in the March 8, 2005 issue of PC Magazine

Photo Printing Made Easy
ARTICLE DATE:  02.16.05
By  M. David Stone

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,2533,a=145551,00.asp

The obvious place to put photos on your hard drive is in the My Pictures folder (though there's no reason why you have to put everything there). You should organize them into subfolders; for example, you might create a Birthdays folder, and separate folders under it for each birthday. To see thumbnails of the photos in any given folder in Windows Explorer, choose View | Thumbnails (or access Thumbnails from the Views button on the standard toolbar).

The Photo Printing Wizard. Once your photos are on your system, Windows XP gives you another easy way to print: The Photo Printing Wizard. To use the wizard, click on My Pictures in XP's Start menu, making sure that the Explorer Bar on the left side of the window is set so that the top section shows tasks appropriate to the current folder. If the Explorer Bar shows anything else, such as a list of folders, choose View | Explorer Bar and click on the currently checked item to remove the check.

Next, go to any folder with photos in it. If the folder contains only photos, the heading on the first section in the Explorer Bar will change to Picture Tasks. One of the tasks is Print Pictures, which opens the Photo Printing Wizard. Choose Next to see thumbnails of all the picture files in the folder, along with check boxes next to each photo. Make sure the photos you want to print are checked, choose Next, and work your way through the wizard to print.

If you go to a folder that includes both pictures and other files, the first section heading will read File And Folder Tasks. In those folders, you can open the wizard by first selecting a picture file and then choosing Print This File.

More picture tasks. You should take a look at the other available picture tasks. If Windows reads your camera as a camera, the Get Pictures From Camera or Scanner choice will open the Scanner and Cameras Wizard. This gives you another way to move photos from your camera to your hard drive.

View As A Slide Show lets you see your pictures one at a time at large size, without having to open a program. If you have one picture selected, you'll see the self- explanatory choice Set As Desktop Background.

If you're connected to the Internet, Order Prints Online opens a wizard that will guide you through ordering prints from any of several online services, including Shutterfly, PC Magazine's Editors' Choice. The Fujifilm selection lets you upload images to be printed at one-hour photo processors near you, a very convenient option.

Use paper that's appropriate to the task. Better-quality paper yields superior prints, but it costs more, too. If you're printing a photo to post on the office bulletin board or stick under a refrigerator magnet, consider using plain paper, ink jet paper, or a less expensive photo paper.

Output quality, especially colors, will vary with the paper you use. Before you invest in a lot of third-party photo paper to save money, experiment with a few sheets to compare the output with the same photos on the printer manufacturer's own paper.

Consider other choices besides glossy paper. Many photographers prefer the look of matte paper to that of glossy.

Beyond the basics. Here are some tips that are worth knowing about if you're willing to work a little to improve your photos.

Print from an editing program. For- the best-quality output, move your photos to your computer and print from a photo-editing program. (PC Magazine's current Editors' Choice for a basic photo editor is Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0; see http://go.pcmag.com/elements3. ) Most high-end photo printers don't offer direct printing, because you get much better control over features like cropping, resizing, and color adjustment in a photo-editing program. With some printers, a photo-editing program will also let you print photos at a higher resolution than you could by printing directly from a camera or memory card.

Avoid compression woes. Most cameras default to—or are even limited to—saving pictures in a compressed JPG format. When you want the best possible photo quality, you should turn off compression, if you can. Never edit a compressed photo on your computer and then save it back to a compressed format. JPG is a lossy compression scheme—it loses information every time you save the file. If you edit a compressed file, save it in the image editor's native format or in a format like TIFF. Select no compression or a lossless compression option to avoid degrading the image further with recompression.

Explore your printer driver. Nearly every printer's driver offers settings that affect picture quality. They may let you choose between quality levels, and adjust brightness; contrast; red, green, and blue levels; and more. For the best possible output, it's worth investing the time to explore your driver. Experiment with each quality setting to see its effect on your photo output.

A good start. Eventually most people will want to master a photo-editing program, but for starters, the techniques we have described can yield surprisingly good results.

M. David Stone is a contributing editor of PC Magazine.