Seriously Beginner-Level Question

Jun '05

I am using ones printed off my computer from my digital camera, for my older pics I tend to scan them and save them to a disc and use the original print, but thats just me...Welcome!!!

Jun '05

I burn all my digital pix to a cd and then take the cd to Walmart and have the pictures printed. That way if I ever need a copy of that picture it is still on cd. I do not like the way that my printer prints pictures so this is what works for me.

Jun '05

I print my digital pics from online photo developing places (winkflash, appleprints, dotphoto, snapfish, shutterfly, etc.). When I used 35mm I'd ALWAYS print doubles and save one and play with one.

I am very new and I am wondering what most of you use in regards to the photos in your books...

Do you use your original prints - processed by a lab, printed on photo paper on your printer, or xerox copies? I am always seeing color copies used by the now infamous Sandi Genovese on DIY, by Lisa Bearnson on QVC, etc..

Are they just using these copies to save money on wasted LO's made sloppily and quickly for the sole use of the TV program? OR, is this a common practice?

It just seems that I have so much invested in supplies, paper, tools, adhesive, and embellishments, that I always feel guilty just considering a cheap copy..

HELP - PLEASE!!! Your input is greatly appreciated!

Beverly

I use real copies that I get printed and some I print out on my own computer. I love digital camera's.

There's a couple of ways to do it. If you have great quality prints, use them, but I think we all agree that it's good to scan them into your computer so you have a copy. (unless you are VERY good about keeping track of you negatives). If you have a digital camera, you will upload them anyway right? We do this, and print them on our inkjet printer.

If your photos are old and need a little work, scan them and work on them in a program like Adobe Photoshop to clean up dust, brighten color, sharpen or whatever. Many of my heritage photos were a mess, and my DH made them look much better by doing this. Therefore, the copies were used in my album.

Hope this helps, and welcome. I'm sure you'll get plenty of replies.
Jill

People have differing opinions about this. Some people say you should *always* scrap from a double, or have negatives available so you can reprint. Some people say if you are scrapping completely archivally (which pretty much means only acid/lignin-free cardstock, patterned paper, and stickers, as far as I can tell), then you can use originals and not worry about it. Some people don't worry about it at all.

I would say this-- use common sense. If it's a really old old old precious one-of-a-kind picture, you don't want to put it on a page with metal embellishments and stuff like that. Better to use a copy. On the other hand, if it's a picture of your kids playing, and you have 600 pictures of your kids playing, then it's really not so precious.

Since we switched to digital I keep backups on cd so if I ever do need another copy of a picture then I can always print another one.

One thing I would recommend: Don't cut up pictures you only have one copy of, unless you're just cropping it to a square or rectangle. I cropped a ton of pictures of my first son when he was a newborn into ovals and circles and stuff and it's pretty much impossible to make copies of them now. Unfortunately we don't have the negatives and we didn't get doubles (I wasn't a scrapper yet then LOL).

HTH!

I have been afraid to scrap some of my daughters pic because my inlaws have the negatives and when you don't get along it would be difficult to get. I always scan mine even if I have the negative because it's expensive to get reprints off negatives!

I like to use photos printed from my computer...I can alter and select just the ones I want. If you use this method, be sure to copy the photos on to a disc, just incase you have a computer crash...I lost all my photos of building my dream home because I didn't do it right away and my puter took a dump!

I do digital and mostly print my own because I love the options of sizes and I have atleast 2,000 if not more pics of my 18month old so I don't really worry too much about it. They are all saved on the computer and backed up on an external harddrive.

Now I am working on a 5generation page and I will definetely make copies of the old photos b/c they belong to my grandmother and plus I need to resize them all anyway.

For my old pics, I scan and resize them to what I want. Everything else is done with the digital camera, scanner and adobe photoshop.

I use mostly the originals on my LO's. I almost always get double prints when I get my film developed anyway. I am working on putting together 4 identical heritage albums for my sister and two brother and myself so some of the old family pictures that I have, I am taking in and having copies made. The originals are going in my album.
I have tried printing out photos on my printer but I don't like how they come out. I'm sure it's just the equipment I have to work with. I hope to invest in a good digital camera soon but there again, I am lost as to what kind to get.

I've tried lots of different methods - if you're using 35mm film cameras it's easy to get doubles so you have one set for a photo album and one set you don't feel guilty about 'playing' with. Keep your negatives labelled and sorted, though, just in case.
With digitals, I find I like the prints from the shop better than our printer's - even though we have a pretty spiffy set up as far as camera/printer goes. And it's easy to use those Kodak machines to do lots of interesting things to your photos if you're not into Photoshop (or its price tag). Someone else mentioned being SURE to back up your photos though - I second that. We use an external hard drive, but you can put a ton of high-res pics on a CD, too.
I've tried color copies of photos, but would only use them on something about 3" square or smaller in size. They look wonky to me once you get close to the page.

Hi and thanks for all of the input... I am not too happy with the prints from my printer at home and all I see are photo printers promoted for sb use; I think I need to invest in a much better photo printer to use it for this.....

I cannot tell you how great it is to get your feedback on this.... DH thinks I am crazy obsessing over this stuff!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a digital camera, but I don't have a photo printer, so I usually either have my photos printed from online or take my memory card to walmart and have them printed. If I am using 'old' 35mm photos I scan them before I use them so I can save a copy.

I tend to scrap with the original pictures unless they are from when I was a baby. I keep the negatives from the pictures I take now. At the time my mom had only one set of pictures from when I was little and so we are scanning them in to the computer so we can make copies of them.

I usually always use my digital camera so I always have a backup cd of all my pics and use my photo printer to make all my pics. If hubby uses his big camera he always gets the cd when he gets them processed! I also upload pics to places like Winkflash or Snapfish and have my prints made there if I have tons I need...it is cheaper!

Quote:

HeatherA9 said:
if you're using 35mm film cameras it's easy to get doubles so you have one set for a photo album and one set you don't feel guilty about 'playing' with. Keep your negatives labelled and sorted, though, just in case.

this is my perferred method. i keep the negatives labeled and the second set of print that I don't use i give away to a family member as part of a "just a note" or a gift of some sort. this way IF something should happen to my albums (God forbid fire, flood etc.) someone else within the family will have pictures.