Uploading Your Images to Print

An activity that I often get asked about is how to order hard copy prints of customer’s digital photos (taken via a digital camera, received via email, or scanned). This is particularly an activity/hobby that many Seniors involve themsleves with. It is an interesting generational observation regarding digital photos that younger people generally do not print their digital photos and then place them into photo albums. Rather they view and share them on their computers and online. In contrast older people generally prefer to have hard copies of the photos they take.

The procedures for doing so are fairly straightforward, which I outline further down this page.

I generally do not recommend printing your own photos at home. Although fun to do and immediate gratification from a cost viewpoint it still remains a more expensive option (including the hardware cost, time and cost of photographic papers) than using professional photo labs (offline or online).  Plus, if you are printing photos to keep for a long period of time home printing (depending on what sort of printer and print technology you are using) do not generally have the longevity of professionally printed photos. If you do decide to print photos at home it is better to use a dedicated photo printer rather than an inkjet printer.

Retailers such as Harvey Norman and Dick Smith offer in store photo kiosks. These days prints cost around the 15 – 19 cent mark. From time to time these stores offer special deals, typically with some minimum or maximum number of prints, for a lower price. On this basis it is worth saving up the photos you wish to print until one of these specials are promoted.

Personally, I prefer to arrange my photo prints from home via an online company such as GetDigital (http://www.getdigital.com.au) currently offerring prints for 10 cents each (with no minimum/maximum). There are many companies offerring such online facilities. All require some form of signup. Although it can be quite a laborious process, I prefer it to waiting in queues to first select the photos at one of the machines and then to wait until my order is then processed. Depending on how busy the store is at the time this can take some hours to complete! Whereas, at home I can do other things whilst, for example, my chosen photos are being uploaded.

They all generally work the same way. You upload the photos you wish to print from a location on your computer (typically the default is the My Pictures subfolder located in My Documents). It is easiest and quickest to batch upload the photos, rather than singularly adding them. Once all your photos are added you are then presented with choices such as matt or gloss, print size, the ability to do some basic (but often important fixes) editing to improve the look of individual photos. Once done you checkout at which point postage and handling are calculated on your order.

Step-by-Step:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
2. Select the attachments you wish to save (I would suggest at this stage choosing all). In Outlook Express right click over a photo, select Save All and Save.
3. Select the first image by single left click the image (this will highlight it in blue), then scroll to the last image and whilst holding the SHIFT key select the last image and now all images will be selected in blue.
4. Press CTRL C or right click over the selection and left click select copy.
5. Go to Start/My Documents/My Pictures and press CTRL V or right click in a blank area and select paste. All photos you selected from the email should now be copied into this My Pictures Folder. In this folder you can also Create a New Folder by selecting it from the left-hand side of the screen and give it a name e.g. GetDigital, and instead of saving it into My Pictures you will be saving the photos into My Pictures/Get Digital (a sub-folder of My Pictures – much like a filing cabinet).
6.Once you have copied and saved all photos from emails that are then stored in the folders go to the GetDigital Website at http://www.getdigital.com.au.
7. On the home page Click Top Banner Order Online 10c a Print. A New Page opens. Click Order online. A new page opens. If you already have a username and password enter those details, otherwise select BECOME MEMBER. Fill in form on the page that opens up.
8.When you have signed up and logged in, select third tab ADD PHOTOS. You may be prompted to add a third party software, which will be a yellow box at the top of your web browser beneath the Internet Explorer toolbars at the top. Click on it and it will ask permission to download the Active X Program. Say yes and allow. This should not take long and only has to be done once.
9.You now have a window which displays a listing of folders on your computer. Click on the left hand side until you find the folder you saved the photos to, e.g. My Pictures. Once it is selected all the photos present there should be displayed. You can select all, select individual ones. Drag and drop them into the box pane below by holding the single ones with the mouse holding down the left mouse button as you drag and let go.
10. Once you have selected all the photos you want click the button UPLOAD at the bottom of the screen. All the photos you have selected will now be uploaded to GetDigital. (N.B. The larger size the photo the longer this process will take). Once this is done a new page will open which will give you various options, such as number of copies, matt or gloss, size options etc. After you have reviewed your selection and made any changes follow the prompts which include providing credit card payments.

What do you do with your digital photos?

Full training about digital photography, editing digital photos, scanning old photos and all things photo related – available from GJ’s Computer Services on an hourly basis.

How to create an Email Distribution List

I was asked recently by a customer how to create an email distribution list using Microsoft Outlook.

Here are the steps:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook;

2. Select Address Book;

3. Select File New Entry;

4. Select New Distribution List and Click OK;

5. Choose a name for the new Distribution List;

6. Select Select Members and add from your address book;

7. Once members added select Save & Close;

8. Now you can send to this distribution list by selecting it as the addressee when composing a new email, rather than typing or adding a selection of individual names and/or email addresses;

9. To ensure the members of your distribution list are not known to other members send as a bcc message. The sent message will show you as both the sender and receiver of the email.

Neat Idea for your Email Signature

I recently received an email from a colleague that I thought had an interesting component in her signature, and which I had not seen before.

There was the usual Disclaimer Notice that email recipients so often receive with words such as “This email contains information that is confidential…”.

This colleague’s email had the following line in green:

[Please consider the environment before printing]

We all print out many of our emails or web pages to read later without much thought. Maybe a one line sentence like this attached to incoming emails might give us pause before hitting the Print button so readily.

Food for thought…

Two Email Addresses are Better Than one – Beat SPAM

Having an email address these days is as important, if not more important, than other contact details, such as a home address for others to contact you.

Just like your home address, where you most likely receive ‘junk mail’, so too via your email address you most definitely will be receiving junk email or SPAM. For the moment, let’s forget about anything malicious that may arrive in your inbox, SPAM is simply annoying, unwanted and a significant waste of time to clear.

There are many ways to reduce the amount of SPAM received (although unlikely to eliminate it completely), which should be done – whether at the mail server side (if such facility is provided by your ISP) or on your local machine using a spam filter program internal to your email program or an external third party software application.

One of the most effective ways to reduce spam is to only provide your primary email address to friends and family. Never use it to subscribe to a newsletter, enter a competition, provide it to a company, register for software, online forums, place it on your website or blogs etc. Once it is out there in cyberspace you have lost control over it.

Instead obtain a second email address, which is not crucial to your everyday communications, but one whose sole purpose is to subscribe to a newsletter  or something similar, and which after a period of time is receiving masses of junk, you can simply delete it or stop using it, whilst retaining your primary email address, and sign up for another secondary email address if need be.

Many ISPs charge for a second email address, such as Telstra Bigpond. ISPs, such as Exetel, provide 20 free email addresses with every ADSL account.

Because Gmail is free and web-based and has really accurate spam filters I primarily use it as a secondary email address.

Another tip in providing your email address via an outbound email is to send it as follows:

yourname (at) isp.com.au

instead of

yourname@isp.com.au

Subscribe to Getwinesdirect for your chance to win 1 of 6 Bottles of Penfolds Grange 2001

I came across this full-page advertisement in todays Weekend Australian.

Register your email address for your chance to win at http://www.getwinesdirect.com.

As always when subscribing to newsletters my recommendation is to subscribe with a secondary email address, not your prime email address.

If you do not already have one sign up for a free web-based email address from Yahoo (https://edit.yahoo.com/registration?.intl=au&new=1&.partner=&.src=ym&.done=http://au.yahoo.com/), Gmail (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html) or Windows Live Hotmail (http://get.live.com/mail/options) and use this address to subscribe. I particularly like and use Gmail, as it has a superb spam filter, not to mention loads of space (you may never have to delete an email again).

An added benefit of having a web-based email account from any mentioned above is if you use such as your primary email address, if you change your ISP you will not have to advise friends and family of a new email address.