Photography

How to scan and archive your old printed photos

Chances are you have a stack of photo albums collecting dust in a closet somewhere. Maybe they make for a fun coffee table chat, but if you want to share your memories with friends and family online, or simply create a backup of your photos, where do you start?

There are several ways to go about digitizing your printed photo collection. Depending on how many photos you have and how DIY-eager you are, your choice will vary.

1. For the highest quality, use a scanner To ensure minimal loss in original photo quality, use a flatbed scanner. This might be … Read more

How to get started with Color Splash Studio for iPhone

Bored with Instagram? Tired of Hipstamatic? Then perhaps your iPhone photography hobby should enter its color-splash period. Color splash photography creates arresting images, adding a dash of color to black-and-white photos. There are a number of color-splash apps (such as ColorSplash) for iOS, and MacPhun earlier this month brought its Color Splash Studio app from the Mac to the iPhone. Here's how it works:… Read more

Snap better-looking iPhone photos with TrueHDR

HDR, or high dynamic range, can add clarity and depth to your iPhone photos. The iPhone's native camera app has an HDR option (see Sharon's post about it and HDR photography), and it does an admirable job of filling in the highs and lows of a photo. I found that I was able to achieve even better results with TrueHDR, a $1.99 app.

When you launch TrueHDR, you're given four options for creating an HDR image: Auto Capture, Semi-Auto Capture, Manual Capture, and Choose Pictures.

With Auto Capture, you simply tap the camera button and hold … Read more

Lightroom 4.1 arrives; Aperture users, be patient

Adobe Systems released Lightroom 4.1 last night, supporting new cameras and lenses, squashing some bugs, adding a couple of notable features -- and in at least one high-profile case, contributing to the angst of a customer of Apple's rival Aperture software.

Aperture beat Lightroom to market and leapfrogged it with lower pricing in this category for higher-end photo editing and cataloging software. But this market is Adobe's bread and butter, and the company is working hard to turn the crank for improvements as fast as it can. More on that competition and customer angst later, but first, … Read more

How to take your own passport photos

Drugstores will charge you as much as $10-15 for a measly photo, adding insult to injury when you're tied up in a long and expensive passport application process.

If you're willing to pay the price for convenience, so be it, but if you like to "DIY," you'll be happy to hear that taking your own passport photos is actually pretty simple.

You'll need:

A digital camera (or smartphone) Computer A photo printer (or local photo printing center)

Easy enough, right? Now follow the steps to take your passport photos, DIY-style.

Step 1: Set up … Read more

When and how to photograph the annular solar eclipse

On Sunday, May 20, at 5:30 p.m. PT, millions of Americans will witness an annular solar eclipse. In this unique event, the moon will cover only 94 percent of the sun, creating a spectacle worth capturing.

Unlike the common solar eclipse, the annular solar eclipse results in a ring of fire you may only catch twice or thrice in your lifetime. The last annular eclipse appeared in 1994, and NASA projects the next to occur in 2023.

Weather permitting, the full extent of the eclipse (including the ring of fire) will be visible in Asia, the Pacific region, … Read more

Get pictures off your iPad

Now that the Apple iPad finally includes a great camera, I suspect that many of you have taken beautiful photographs that you'd like to transfer back to your computer.

In this CNET How To, I'll walk you through Apple's prescribed methods for moving iPad photos over to your computer, including Photo Stream syncing via iCloud and syncing over USB.

If you're looking for other, more-advanced methods for transferring your iPad's photos, check out CNET's How To guides on apps such as Photo Transfer, Scotty, and Bump.

Otherwise, enjoy the above video and take a … Read more

Build a ring light for less than $20

A resourceful videographer, Parker Maimbourg, has managed to build a continuous ring light for just $20.

The setup consists of a cheap, circular LED lamp ($10), an AA battery holder ($1.99), and an unused hotshoe salvaged from an old flash unit. A continuous ring light is typically used to provide even illumination for portraits and closeups and usually costs at least a few hundred dollars.

Basically, Maimbourg rewired all the LEDs on the lamp to a separate battery holder, which will be mounted on the camera's hotshoe. Next, he cut a hole through the center of the circular lamp enclosure to fit his lens, spray-painted the whole setup black for that professional feel, and voila! … Read more

How to transition your Kodak Gallery account to Shutterfly

On July 2, the Kodak Gallery will be shuttered. The good news is that if you do nothing, your photos will be moved to Shutterfly. Still, there are a few housekeeping items to keep in mind.

For starters, Kodak states the process will involve 5 billion photos and could take several months to complete. Thus, be sure to download any photos (or order a DVD) from your Kodak Gallery prior to July 2 that you might need access to in July, August, and perhaps September and October. And while you can download full-resolution photos from the Kodak Gallery, you can't at Shutterfly, giving you another reason to peruse your Kodak Gallery for potential downloads.… Read more