Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Chapter 17. Creative Photo Projects

No doubt about it: digital photography’s great. You get to view your gorgeous, full-color pictures on a nice big screen, electronically shoot them across the globe in seconds, and retouch them to your heart’s content—all on your computer. But therein lies the rub. Far too many people buy a digital camera, gleefully rush home to transfer the snapshots to their trusty PC…and leave them there. Except for the occasional email or online photo album, all those poor pictures never make it back out of that drab beige box.

That’s a shame, because digital photography actually lets you display, reproduce, and repurpose your captured images in more ways than ever. Printing is one way to free photographs from their digital prison, as the previous chapter explains. This chapter gives you a sampling of the scores of other possibilities that await. Best of all, all you need are the skills you’ve already learned in this book. If you know how to organize photo files, upload pictures to an online album, place a Web order, and send email attachments, then you can do every project in this chapter.

For example, with just a few clicks, you can transform your photographs into a dramatic onscreen slideshow, complete with music and transition effects, using the free PhotoShow program. Using the same Web sites covered in this book—Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, and Snapfish—you can use your favorite photographs in custom photo books, calendars, greeting cards, and clever ...