One of the many requests / suggestions for our Monday evening meeting topics was Digital Photography and Digital Cameras. Everyone has seen articles on the latest and greatest Digital Camera; it seems that every week there is a new camera product announced with better resolution and the ability to store more images. If you bought a digital camera yesterday, the new one announced today is either less expensive (for the same features and functions) or has more capability (for about the same price).

So, do you spend hundreds of dollars on a digital camera to find that you really don’t like to modify the images? This article presents one option to gain experience with digital photography before you purchase a digital camera. I characterize it as Digital Photography on the Cheap!

Most processors of 35-mm photographic film offer a development option to have your photos placed on a CD that can be read in your computer. The capabilities of the CD products are not the same. Some differences are in the quality of the image(s) stored and the software product provided.

I have experience with Wal-Mart’s "Pictures on CD" and Publix’s "Kodak Picture CD". I understand that Eckert, Walgreen, Clark Photography and others also offer CD products but I have no experience with them.

I do NOT have the price of developing a roll of film with ‘Pictures on CD"; I believe it was about a $6 increase in price; I was charged $11.85 plus tax for a roll of film with 26 images.

You have to mark on the envelope whether you want the CD to use in a PC or in a Mac!

The film pictures are stored on the CD in two resolutions as JPEG images. The folder "Pictures" holds JPEG images of about 300K bytes in size. The folder "Previews" holds JPEG images of about 50K bytes in size.

The Preview images are ideal for use as attachments to E-Mail. The Picture images are reasonable for printing.

"Pictures on CD" software lets you move between images, rotate images, zoom in or out, copy or save images.

"Pictures on CD" does NOT offer any capability to edit the images. You do NOT have the original digital images on the CD; there are only the two sets of JPEG images.

1. "Kodak Picture Disk" providing 2 sets of JPEG images (similar to Wal-Mart) on a floppy disc. The price is $4.95
2. "Pictures Online" via the Internet. I do not have any experience.
3. "Kodak Picture CD" providing high resolution digital images on a CD with interactive software. The price is $8.95. The CD arrives with software for both the PC and the Mac.

System requirements are: Power Macintosh or better, OS 8.0 or higher, 20 MB of RAM, CD ROM Drive, 256-color display at 640 x 480 screen area.

When you open the Kodak CD {Figure (Kodak CD)} double click on the "Start Mac" icon to begin. The software then loads your images from the CD (and previously stored, modified images from your hard drive) and displays the first photo {Figures (Cheech Large) or (Cheech Small)} in a workspace that shows several of the total set of photos. The workspace lets you select different images for display by clicking on the "rocker switch" to move along the set of photos and then clicking on your preferred image. The left side of the workspace offers several options to work with your photos.

Modify {Figure (Modify 4x6)} offers many tools to edit and correct the selected image. Instead of the default 4x6 crop ratio, other crop ratios can be used {Figure (Modify Freeform)}, the image can be enhanced, red-eye removed, etc. After Applying Crop, etc {Figure (New Cheech Added)} click on the Save button to start saving the modified image to your hard drive. (Modified images are stored in a folder titled "Kodak Picture CD".) Notice that the modified image is now included in the set of images.

The saved, modified image has the same pixel resolution as the original image. If the image was cropped, then the pixels might have changed from 1536x1024 to 1302x876 because the image is smaller.

The next time you Start Mac from this CD, the software will go to your hard drive and include the modified images in the workspace.

The Send option lets you send E-Mail messages with image attachments directly from the Kodak Picture CD application. I found that AOL destinations could NOT process the received images and I recommend against using this option if you intend to send E-Mail photos to AOL associates. It worked perfectly for my Non-AOL associates.

Upon clicking the Send option, you are able to select individual images (original and modified) or Remove pictures after Selecting All images. When you click on Send, you are provided a window to enter in the E-Mail address(es) of your destinations, your E-Mail address and a message field. When that is completed, the Kodak application automatically connects to your Internet service and sends the photos.

In addition to the problems with AOL, I found this clumsy because the Kodak application did NOT have access to my E-Mail personal address book. I had to know the complete addresses of the people I wanted to send images to.

Overall, I would not recommend that you use the Send Image process ( even though it works!) except for very simple cases.

Save As {Figure (Save As 1)} permits you to save selected images ( original and modified) to your hard drive. As shown in the figure, you can Select All and then Remove specific pictures or just select one image to save. (As described above, you will probably want to use this option to save images for E-Mail purposes.) After selecting your images, click on the Save As button.

The next two steps in the save process are to choose among:
i) five JPEG Compression {Figure (Save Compression) choices; and
ii) six Image Size {Figure (Save Image Size) choices.
These image sizes extend from 94x64 pixels, 288x192 pixels for E-Mail to 1536x1024 pixels for "Professional" use.

Finally, you define the name and storage location of the Save As file. Figure (CheechEMail AW) shows the cropped / modified image from above saved as a JPEG document for E-Mail attachment.

Kodak Picture CD is a great way to use your regular Cannon, Konica, Kodak, or One-Shot ThrowAway camera(s) and get a foothold into Digital Photography. For $9 per roll of 35-mm film you get digital images and have the opportunity to develop editing skills on images. If you save the images to your hard drive, you will be able to use other image modification software to create your unique images.

Experiment with a roll or two. If you enjoy the process you may feel it worthwhile to purchase a digital camera as the image capture device. If you don’t enjoy the process, you have saved hundreds of dollars.