Windows XP Setup And Usage Tips

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Right out of the box, Windows XP is primed to handle digital camera files, and lots of them. Armed with a few setup and usage tips, however, you can make your digital photography journey with Windows XP more pleasant, and avoid a few potential pitfalls along the way.

Calibrate your monitor To make sure that your photos display accurately in Photoshop, you’ll first want to calibrate your monitor, then confirm that the monitor profile has been set as the default in Windows XP. Most display calibration software will update Windows XP’s default display profile automatically, but it’s wise to check once calibration is complete.

To confirm that the correct display profile is loaded:

1. Right-click on the desktop and choose Properties. The Display Properties window will open.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Click the Color Management tab.
5. Confirm that the default display profile is correct. If it isn’t, you’ll need to add it and set it as the default.

Note:  The default location for display profiles in Windows XP is:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\DRIVERS\COLOR

Later versions of Photoshop will automatically reference the default monitor profile when displaying images, ensuring a more accurate on-screen view of your photographs.

Configure My Pictures The logged-in user’s My Pictures folder, inside My Documents, is the default location where Windows XP stores photographs. If you’d prefer that My Pictures reside elsewhere on your hard disk, go ahead and move it. The simplest way to move this special folder is to right-click and drag it to its new location, then choose Move Here. References to the location of My Pictures are automatically updated system-wide.

If you’d like to rename My Pictures, simply do so as you would any other folder: Right-click on My Pictures, choose Rename, then enter a moniker of your choosing (Molly’s Pictures, for instance). References to the folder’s new name will be updated automatically.

Once you’ve put My Pictures where you want it, try perusing a folder of photos in either Thumbnail or Filmstrip view (click View on the menubar, and then click Thumbnail or Filmstrip). In either view, you can visually sort your photos within the folder, for example to position keepers at the top. As long as you don’t change views in that folder, the pictures will remain sorted as you last left them.

You can then select just your group of favorites and, if the photos you’ve selected are associated by default with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, you can right-click and choose Preview to view them full-screen in the order in which they’re arranged. This is a handy way to sort and view pictures, and is a good way for clients viewing your work to do the same.

Note:  If you want to switch on the My Pictures image-browsing functionality in any folder, simply right-click on or in it, click the Customize tab, and then choose either Pictures (best for many files) or Photo Album (best for fewer files).

Quickly resize pictures for e-mailing If you have a handful of high-resolution photos that you need to e-mail to a client as low-resolution ones, let the Send Pictures via E-Mail wizard in Windows XP do the heavy lifting. It will automatically resize a copy of the selected photos and attach them to an outgoing message. Learn more about e-mailing photos with Windows XP.

Prepare a Web gallery of your work With the addition of Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP, you can output a Web gallery of photographs that can be uploaded to any Web server. While there are plenty of software packages that can do the same thing, the HTML Slide Show Wizard has several advantages that make it worth checking out—it offers a nifty wipe transition between photos, several layout options, and it’s a no-charge download for Windows XP users. This is just one of several digital imaging PowerToys for Windows XP; you’ll find a full list here.

Rotate in an image editor The Filmstrip view in My Pictures, and Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, feature the ability to rotate photos left or right. This is a handy way to turn upright a flopped vertical. But, in many cases, it’s better to perform this rotation at another point in the digital workflow, especially if you’re trying to preserve every ounce of image quality in the original photo. This isn’t true for all formats, but it is for JPEG and many RAW formats. Here’s why:

• If a JPEG is rotated in My Pictures or the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, it’s resaved. Every time a JPEG is resaved, the image is degraded slightly. The best time to rotate the picture is when it’s being adjusted in an image editor, since it has to be resaved anyway (and it can be resaved in a format like TIFF, where no additional quality loss is incurred).
• If a RAW file is rotated in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (in most cases, the rotation buttons in My Pictures are disabled when a RAW file is selected), chances are the high-resolution RAW picture data will be lost in the process. In general, this will happen with RAW files that use the TIFF file structure. This includes RAW files from the Canon EOS-1D, Nikon D-series, and Kodak DCS series cameras.

Format as FAT16 Most digital cameras expect the storage media inserted to be formatted to the FAT16 specification (or FAT12 for low capacity cards). With all but the lowest capacity CompactFlash and other card types, the Format function in Windows XP defaults to the newer FAT32. While newer is often better, a FAT32-formatted card will actually be incompatible with most digital cameras.

To avoid FAT32-formatting your cards accidentally, or to fix a card that has already been incorrectly formatted, choose FAT from the File system popup menu in the Format dialog before running the format function. Windows XP will automatically select FAT12 or FAT16 formatting, depending on the capacity of the card.

There are exceptions to this rule. Specifically, if your card has a capacity greater than 2GB, and your camera is one of the rare models that supports FAT32 (newer Kodak DCS models are compatible), then FAT32 format the card to realize its full capacity.