Hello,

I need help. (My wife certainly agree's, but thats another story) I need somebody to show/direct/tell me how to get a picture into my computer. And then get the picture on to the internet. And then get the picture with an appropriate link to this ng.

Let it be known that I have these gadget's. I have a Microtek flatbed scanner. (Also some type of slide scanner adapter) I have a computer with a bajillion gig's of memory, rom, ram, and all kinds of other gizmo's. I have not one, but two CD's. (My kids burn the latest crap from one CD to another) And I have a color inkjet printer.

I also have a bunch of programs like Ulead photoimpact, photoalbum etc.

So how do I do it. I think I can scan my pictures and get them into my computer. But what's next?

Is there a relatively simple straightforward way to do this our do you need a PH.D from MIT in computer science to figure this out?

Any links or instructions will be much appreciated.

-- David S Smith (dssmith3@rmci.net), June 24, 2001

Answers

I can give general instructions:

• Scan a finished print with whatever scanning program that works with your scanner. At this stage, you can either scan directly to the .JPG file format (which will ultimately be the format that is used to display on the web), or, better if you plan on doing some tweaking, to the image, the .TIF format.
• The scanned immage is saved somewhere to your hard drive. I have a specific directory, but you might typically have a directory (folder) like C:\IMAGES, or perhaps a folder underneath whatever scanning software you have, e.g. C:\MICROTEK\IMAGES. The location is nearly arbitrary, but you need to know where your saved images are. Remember than when working with images, it's often the case that you need to put an image file someplace after one operation, and then come back to that place to get it again for another.
• Optional. If you saved the image as a .TIF file, you can now improve upon it greatly by using some cool photo editing software like Photoshop. Typically, one works with equalizing the levels of certain colors (RGB) or shades of gray or whatever. Contrast, cropping, borders, sharpening, de-sharpening, un-sharp masking...(blah blah blah a bunch of more advanced editing stuff, depending on how far you want to go...) until a final image is produced. Then the file is saved from .TIF to .JPG so it can be displayed here.
• Upload the finished .JPG file to the internet someplace. Best if you have your own web site through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). But if you don't, you can go to http://www.photo.net and use the free image uploading feature they offer.
• To upload to your own ISP? You probably have to use a built-in program on your computer called "File Transfer Protocol" or FTP. You run the program, authenticate with a username and password, and issue commands to PUT your local .JPG file to the ISP's web server so that you can include links in places like this forum for other people to click on and see your image.
• Including a link to your image, or calling forth the image itself in a forum such as this, there are a couple of LESSON posts in the Admin category here.

Those are the general steps. Each step could contain a few more steps, depending on exactly what you're trying to accomplish. I hope this has helped.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), June 24, 2001.