Susan Slobac asked:


In order to display your photos effectively and attractively while preserving the artifact, it is necessary to select the proper photo frames. Of all your framing and matting supplies, good photo frames are the most important – because it can make or break your display. The right photo framing supplies can do wonders for even a less-than-stellar photographic piece; a poorly made, inferior photo frames can make  Ansel Adams prints look like cheap snapshots.

What holds true about photo frames incidentally is equally true about all types of picture framing supplies.  Factors such as oil, acids, dust and ultra-violet rays can all have detrimental effects on your paintings and posters as well as your photographs. The purpose of framing and matting supplies is to create a protective environment in which to display the artifact. Good picture framing kits include everything needed for such a product, including matboard, mount board, hanging devices, and more.

Photo frames are among the most important picture framing supplies mainly because they are what is most visible. When it comes to photographs – especially those of spectacular panoramas or other interesting subjects – plain, black metal frames may be the best choice. The reasons are that such frames will fit into virtually any décor, and are unobtrusive enough to allow the viewer to concentrate on the photo without being distracted by an elaborate frame.

If you prefer, you might choose photo framing supplies that include wooden frames, and to be sure, natural wood offers a certain warmth that metal may be lacking. Again however, you’ll want to be selective; avoid frames with elaborate inlay work or decoration that may distract the viewer from the photograph itself.

Other than the frame, it’s important that the reset of your art framing supplies be of the highest quality you can afford and be acid-free. If you have ever seen photos with unsightly discolorations, you know what acid can do.  Acid-free photo framing supplies serve as a barrier between the surface of the photo and any acidic surfaces.

Picture framing supplies that you will need in order to protect your photo and display it properly include mount board, backing material and hinge tissue or photo corners in order to hold the photo in place,  and glazing to protect the surface from environmental substances such as dust and UV rays.

Photo frames are just one element in the framing project, the whole of which represents an investment in time and money; however, those things are well spent when it comes to preserving your valuable photographs. After the time and trouble it takes to take and develop good photos, it pays to use the proper photo frames.

laracrika asked:


I remember in my grandparents house when I was little there were these little keychains they had that when you looked into the hole on one end and held it up to the light you would see a photo from the wedding party or other event…It has been driving me crazy trying to find out what these are called.
Also does anyone know if these are still made I would love to get some made for my wedding this summer.
Thanks

Shane M asked:


Im looking for a program like Piclens for firefox that will work on my photos. Any help or suggestions for a cool photo viewer? Thanks! Shane

swyscheese asked:

I just got this little gadget that is both a photo viewer and clock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product

If you take a look at one of the pictures you’ll notice a software cd called, Photo Viewer Driver Disc …Mine didn’t come with this, is there another way i can get the software?
Do you mean like samsung, lg, and things like that? It doesn’t have a name on it, it says made in china and thats about it, and maybe the product number…

Andrew Goodall asked:


hers shopping for a new digital camera are bombarded with information about the power of modern zoom lenses. “This camera has eight-times optical zoom and up to twelve times digital zoom but this camera has twelve times optical and…” You know the drill.

A powerful telephoto lens is terrific, and essential if you are shooting lots of sports photography, wildlife photography, or any photography that requires you to capture your subject from a distance. But with all the marketing that goes on around telephoto power, you could be forgiven for believing there is little value in a good wide-angle lens.

This is simply not the case. In fact, if you take a lot of travel photos, you may find that your powerful telephoto rarely gets a workout. As a landscape photographer, I use my wide-angle lens a lot more. I can tell you right now that even though the wide-angle lens makes everything smaller, it can create images with massive impact if you use it well.

So here are my five tips for creative photography with a wide-angle lens.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #1. It Really Is A Wide Angle. When using a larger lens, you narrow your field of view considerably, so if you focus on a subject in the foreground you really don’t capture much of the background. On the other hand, with a wide-angle lens you capture a much wider field of view. Your foreground subject may still be the focus of the image, but you can make use of the background to add interest to the picture as well.

As a result, your picture can tell more of a story. Instead of a photo that says “Here is a shot of my kids” your photo can say “Here is a shot of my kids at the beach, you can see what a beautiful day it was and I managed to capture a sailboat going by as well.”

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #2. Depth Of Field. The wide-angle lens has a much stronger depth of field than a larger lens. Not only can you make a feature of both foreground and background, you can keep everything in focus while you are at it. To achieve the same result with a larger lens, you may have to close the aperture, which means slowing the shutter speed, which means using a tripod…a lot of exta effort. After all that, the depth of field may still not be as strong as if you had used your wide-angle lens.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #3. Perspective. Perspective is exaggerated by a wide-angle lens, so it makes long objects seem even longer. If you are shooting a fence-line, a jetty, railroad tracks, a road…anything that stretches away into the distance, the wide angle lens can really give your photo a boost. The result will be a truly three-dimensional sense of depth. The strong lines of the composition will lead the viewer into the picture, so they feel they are not just looking at the photo, but right into it.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #4. Powerful foregrounds. The exaggerated perspective of the wide-angle lens makes objects at different distances seem much further apart than they really are. Foreground objects may seem a bit smaller, but objects in the background can seem many miles more distant. As a result, the wide-angle lens is excellent for adding impact to a foreground subject. You can stand very close to a person (or a tree, whatever) and they will appear to tower over the scene in the distance. This is the opposite of a telephoto lens, which tends to bring the background into prominence.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #5. Putting It All Together. All the above tips are helpful by themselves, but by putting them all together you have the power to create photos that really grab the eye of the viewer. There is not enough space in a short article to outline all the ways you can use these tips, so I will give you one example that puts all the strengths of a wide-angle lens to good use.

Imagine an old rustic farmhouse, with a striking cloud formation behind it. Your telephoto lens might fit in just the farmhouse, and a standard lens might fit in the house and the sky.

With a wide angle lens, you could walk down the driveway and look for some special detail (maybe a rusty old mailbox) to create a more interesting composition. If you stand near the mailbox, it will have prominence in the composition, but you will still have a clear shot of the farmhouse and the sky in the background. Even better, the strong depth of field makes it easy to keep everything in focus. The exaggerated perspective will make the driveway seem longer, adding a three-dimensional impact to the picture. If you do it well, the first thing that catches the eye will be the mailbox, but the driveway will lead the viewer into the distance, to appreciate all the detail of the background as well.

So there you have a quick introduction to the creative use of a wide-angle lens. I hope this little article does more than just just spark your imagination. Reading about it is not nearly as exciting as doing it…so grab your camera and start snapping!

anonymous asked:


Still photography freezes a scene. A photo is still in nature but sometimes you would like to convey a feeling of motion to the viewer. For example when taking a photo of a moving car or a runner. There are techniques that can help you achieve that - here is how.

You have probably experienced shooting blurry photos usually as a result of wrong camera settings or the object moving while you were taking the photo. Such blurriness is not something you would like to see in a photo but if controlled some blurriness can actually be used to capture and convey the feeling of motion in a still photo.

Shutter speed is what determines if a photo is frozen or blurry. The faster the shutter the more frozen the photo is. The slower the shutter the more motion is captured in the photo in the form of blurriness. Open the shutter for too long and the photo will be completely blurred.

There are two ways to capture motion: to blur the moving object while keeping the background in focus or to blur the background while keeping the object in focus:

Blurring the object: Blurring a moving object captures its motion. For example consider a car driving down the road. If you freeze such a scene with high shutter speed the viewer can not tell if the car is moving or if it is parked. However if you use a slower shutter speed the moving car is blurred and the feeling of motion conveyed.

Blurring the background (panning): Consider the same car from the above example. Another way to convey its motion is by blurring the background while keeping the car in focus. This is much harder to accomplish. The concept is simple: set the camera to a slower shutter speed. Pan the camera in a way that it follows the car. The car stays still at the same spot in the photo. Then shoot the photo as you continue panning the camera to keep it aligned with the moving car. The result is a car that is in focus while the background is blurred.

What is the right shutter speed needed to capture motion? Unfortunately there is no magic number. The shutter speed depends on many factors such as the speed of the object, its distance and the amount of motion (or blurriness) that you would like to capture. As a rule of thumb shutter speeds faster than 1/250 of a second tend to freeze the scene while shutter speeds slower than 1/50 of a second tend to result in some blurriness. If the object is very slow you might need to keep the shutter open for even a second or more. If the object is very fast 1/50 of a second can be all that you need.

It is very important to keep the camera steady when taking photos using slower shutter speeds. Usually when capturing motion in such a way you would need to stabilize the camera using a tripod or by putting the camera on a steady surface. The exception is when trying to blur the background of a moving object - since you need to pan the camera to keep it aligned with the object the camera inherently needs to move. The movement needs to be in the same speed and direction as the object and only in that direction. Sometimes such panning can be done using a tripod that allows control movement of the camera.

Photos that capture motion are impressive. The only way to learn how to shoot such photos is by experimenting. Start with experimenting blurring the moving object. This technique is relatively easy and within a short time you will master it. Once you do try to experiment with blurring the background. This is much harder to achieve and can be frustrating at the beginning.

redrocket37 asked:


My computer opens photo images with Microsoft Photo Editor by default. How do I switch it so another program (such as IrfanView) opens my pictures by default?

Chris Marshall asked:


Digital photos are stored as files on memory cards and computer hard disks. They can be stored in different file formats (each format has a unique file extension). Most of the formats are compressed to save space and each has its own pros and cons.

The need for standard file formats

Digital photos are saved as digital files on electronic media. These digital photo files are a collection of bytes. If each manufacturer and camera would have used a proprietary file format then you would have needed proprietary software that could read, print and display those formats. Using a standard format allows any camera to save photos while any other software can read, display and print them.

What is compression and why it is needed

A digital photo is a collection of pixels each pixel is stored as a value that represents its color and intensity. Usually each pixel is represented by an RGB value (three numbers one byte each with values 0 to 255 representing the intensity of Red, Green and Blue that combined together create the pixel’s color). An RGB value occupies 3 bytes. So how big is a digital photo file? It depends on the number of pixels in the photo. For example if you shoot a photo using an 8 mega pixels digital camera the photo will have 8000000 pixels each one occupying 3 bytes. The total file size would be 8000000*3=24000000 or 24Mbytes. This is a very big file. Big files are harder to manipulate they take a long time to send by email, they occupy large storage space and they take longer to load.

In any digital photo there is data that is either redundant or that if removed the viewer would not be able to notice the difference. In addition representing pixels as RGB values is not efficient in terms of storage space. The process of compression takes advantage of these facts. When you compress a digital photo the compression software represents pixels in a more efficient way, removes redundant data and removes data that is “not important”. The result is a significantly smaller file. For example the above 24Mbytes file could easily be compressed to about 3Mbytes with hardly any noticeable quality degradation.

Before compressed digital photo files can be viewed or printed they need to be decompressed. Decompression is the reverse process of compression - a compressed file is converted to its original format usually a simple RGB pixel file. Using standard compression file formats allows one software to compress a digital photo file and another software to decompress it and process it.

Lossy or Lossless compression?

There are two main types of compression software: lossy and lossless. Here are the differences:

Lossless compression: Lossless compression means that if you take a file compress it and then decompress it the decompressed file would be the exact copy of the original file. With lossless compression no data is lost in the compression process the compression software uses better representation of the data in the file but it does not remove any data from it.

Lossy compression: Lossy compression means that if you take a file, compress it and then decompress it the decompressed file would be slightly different than the original one. The compression software not only represents the file’s data more efficiently but it also removes data that it considers minor or not important. Such data can be removed without hardly any noticeable degradation in the file quality. The differences between the original file and the decompressed file are minor and should be negligible to the user.

Lossless compression is usually applied to text and other data where all data is equally important. For example when compressing the text in this article and later on decompressing it you would want to get the exact original article without any words or sentences dropped by the compression software that decided they were not important.

Lossy compression is usually applied to digital photos and graphic files. Such files include data that the viewer would not be able to notice if removed. For example small changes to color in a photo might not be noticeable. The decompressed file is not exactly the same as the original one but when viewing both the original and decompressed photos side by side the viewer can not tell the difference. Lossy compression software can be set to different compression levels based on how much data is allowed to be lost. At some point losing too much data is noticeable and degrades the digital photo quality. Many digital cameras allow you to set the level of compression from low to high where high compression means smaller files but less quality and low compression means bigger files but no noticeable quality degradation.

Common digital photo file formats

You can know what a digital photo file format is by checking its extension. Usually the extension is three letters representing a specific format. Here is a list of the common extensions and formats:

BMP Windows Bitmap: this is a basic raw format. The photo is stored as a pixel raster and is not compressed. While this format is very easy to use and is supported by practically all software it is not efficient as there is no compression applied.

GIF Graphics Interchange Format: An old file format initiated by CompuServe. It uses a lossless LZW compression and is thus more efficient than BMP files. GIF files are very efficient for storing basic graphics (that include lines, circles and other graphical shapes) and also efficient for storing small digital photos but are rarely used to store large digital photos as there are more efficient formats for that purpose. GIF files can also include multiple “frames” and support basic animation.

PNG Portable Network Graphics: This relatively new format was designed to be used in online applications such as web pages. It uses a lossless compression. The original goal of the PNG format was to replace GIF (due to some licensing complications associated with the GIF format). PNG is commonly used now by online web sites to represent small digital photos or graphics replacing the GIF format.

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group: Also known as JPG this file format was designed by a special industry group and became an ISO standard. The design goal of the format was the efficient storage of digital photographic files. Although JPG files can support lossless compression they are almost always used in lossy compression mode. JPG files are very efficient in compressing digital photos. The JPG compression software can be set to different compression levels with higher compression levels the photo files can get very small but they can also get distorted. JPG files are the most common ones used by digital cameras to store compressed digital photos on memory cards and computer hard disks as they result in small file sizes and hardly any noticeable photo quality degradation.

yelnats69 asked:


My PC photo viewer has a USB port, can I send a normal PC monitor signal via the USB so that the photo viewer can be used as a small PC monitor?

Jody R asked:


I need a good photo viewer and editor that is free to download. I need something easy to use. I enjoy different effects and need to crop and adjust colors. Thanks for any suggestions.