Transfer, Edit, Archive, and Share Your Photos Using Media Center
Published: April 11, 2005
Most people I know take digital photos, transfer them to their home computer, and then enjoy them onscreen with family and friends. I've been doing this myself as digital cameras progressed from bulky models with 320×240 pixel capability to today's cutting edge 5+ megapixel models that fit in the palm of your hand. Just as digital cameras have developed over time, so has what I want to do with my digital photos. With Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, I've found ways to take my digital photography experience to the next level. Read on to find out how you too can become an expert in no time!
Snap Away Like a Professional Photographer
Amateur photographers new to the world of digital photography are often slow to catch on to the notion that digital photos are free. Specifically, that you are no longer hampered by the expense of purchasing rolls of film and subsequent photo processing to paper prints.
For example, whenever my family has a less formal event such as a birthday party or vacation, I'll casually snap hundreds of photos with less regard to lining up that perfect shot. I'll often take 100+ photos of my son's and daughter's parties in the hopes of getting 12-15 great shots that will be keepers.
I'll take shot after shot and always set the camera for highest resolution (megapixels) and best quality (least image compression). You may want to be a little more serious for a special event such as a wedding, a once-in-a-lifetime Himalayan sunset, or baby's first steps but for casual events I've found it best to shoot away a mix of wide shots, close-ups, groups, and individuals.
To be able to take lots of pictures at one event, you may find it handy to have a couple of empty digital memory cards on hand for your camera. I suggest 256-MB cards or larger to save time and not have to swap frequently. Use a personal scheme that works for you such as blank cards in your left pocket and full cards in the right.
Note: If you do use multiple memory cards for one event, be sure to set your camera for incremental photo numbering and not the mode that resets the counter to zero each time a memory card is inserted. This is a safeguard to avoid overwriting files when you download them to your PC!
Easily Transfer Photos to Your PC
After the event my first action is to transfer all the pictures from the memory cards to my home PC into a folder that is named for the event. You may have noticed that inserting a memory card into your Media Center PC will display a prompt to view the pictures immediately. You might not know that the left menu also displays an Import button to automatically copy these files to the PC.
1. | Insert the memory card from the digital camera into the PC or connect the camera directly to the PC by using your model's instructions and cable. You'll be presented with a preview gallery of the photos you've taken. |
2. | In Media Center, select Import from the menu on the left as seen in Figure 1.  Figure 1: Select Import from the menu on the left of the Import Pictures screen. |
3. | When prompted, enter a folder name in which to save your files. For example, a location might be "Halloween." |
In just seconds you'll have a copy of those new photos on your PC without the overhead of going to the keyboard and mouse, creating folders, or performing a drag-and-drop operation.
Organize Photos So You Can Find Them
Many articles have been written on the pros and cons of various organizational methods or file-naming conventions for digital photos, but I've settled on a scheme that works best for me. Everything goes into a master folder called "originals" that is classified by year and then by each individual event within that year. For example, as seen in Figure 2, the originals folder has a year-folder named "2004" with subfolders for each event such as "Gina Birthday" or "Easter."
Figure 2: How I organize digitals photos.
Within each event folder will be the picture files for that event. I've chosen to forego detailed naming of each photo for the subject (that is, Gina opens a gift, Gina blows out candles, Gina hits the piņata). Instead, I open the folder, do a quick select all, and rename so that all files for an event have consistent file names. Many companies offer a wide variety of more extensive digital photography organization tools. Consider looking at the Microsoft Digital Image Suite as a great tool for organizing and editing your work.
Archive Pictures So You Always Have Them
At the end of the year, I'll burn a peace-of-mind archive DVD (or multiple CDs) with the entire year of pictures, all neatly organized into folders as described earlier. If your Media Center PC is outfitted with a CD or DVD writeable drive (burner) then you can take advantage of the Create CD/DVD feature in Media Center for easy archives and backups from the comfort of your remote control.
To archive my entire 2004 originals folder
1. | In Media Center, go to My Pictures. |
2. | Navigate to the folder you want to write to DVD. In my case I navigated to \originals\ 2004\. |
3. | Select Create CD/DVD button on the left menu. |
After a quick wizard screen asks what type of disc I want to create (data) and what I want to call the disc, the list of files is automatically filled with the entire folder tree from 2004. I could manually browse to grab other folders/files (including videos, music, or recorded TV shows) and then start the disc creation. This feature can also be used to create DVDs that can be played on consumer electronics DVD players as mentioned later in this article.
Make Your Photos Picture Perfect
I don't perform any sort of organizing or image editing in the previous process and there are a few reasons for this. It's always a smart idea to keep your originals separate. This keeps them safe from accidental deletions, errant image-editing mistakes, and digging for hidden treasures with the crop feature. Here are the steps I follow to clean up photos that I want to share with friends and family:
Step 1: Copy the best candidates into another folder.
This is best (most quickly) accomplished from the Windows desktop with keyboard and mouse. Just as I have a folder \originals\2004\ where I place every photo taken for archive purposes, I likewise have a folder \family\2004\ where I then create a subfolder \easter\ and drop copies of the best-looking event photos, including those that might look great with a little touch up or crop work.
Step 2: Use Media Center for rotation repairs and red-eye/contrast touch up.
The My Pictures gallery in Media Center is a great way to browse your photos and perform quick touch ups to make them look even better. Just select the photo you want to repair, press MORE INFO on the remote (Ctrl+D for keyboard users) and choose Picture Details. From here you can easily select Rotate to adjust orientation or select Touch Up for other items like red-eye and contrast auto-adjustment features. On the Touch Up page, you can always select Cancel if the adjustments don't seem to help the photo.
Step 3: Experiment with Media Center crop for greater affect
Professional photographers often say that you can get more impact from a photo if there's less content. For example, a wide shot of a child on a carnival ride can look nice, but a zoomed shot of their laughing face and swirling hair can be priceless (or a little boy with his brand new bicycle as shown in Figures 3a and 3b).
Figure 3a: In this wide shot the track demands as much attention in the photo as the boy with his new bicycle.
Figure 3b: In this cropped version you focus on the boy with his new bicycle more and see the priceless proud smile on his face.
Try cropping some of your good photos using Media Center to see what great results you can achieve. For example, zoom in on faces to capture emotion or crop away cars and telephone poles to clean up scenic vistas. You'll have greater success with this type of experimentation if you start with the highest possible resolution photos and on the highest quality setting that your camera offers.
Enjoy and Share with Others
Home slide shows are likely the most popular way to enjoy digital photos, whether privately with the family or in a group setting such as a party or holiday gathering. Following are some tips for making your slide shows more enjoyable and for sharing your memories more broadly.
Create Title Slides for Photo Slide Shows
Creating title slides for your folders is a great way to spice up a slide show. Instead of just looking at a sequence of photos you can place blank or photo placeholders with title text that announces the upcoming sequence. This works especially well when you are not present to add narration to the audience.
Figure 4: Use Microsoft Paint to create a simple title slide for your photo slide show.
To create a title slide, start Microsoft Paint from Start/Programs/Accessories. With a blank page, a solid colored page, or whatever you choose (even one of the photos from your folder gallery), overtype some large text to serve as the title slide for the folder (see Figure 4). An example might be "Christmas 2003" then save this file to that same folder with a name such as "{underscore}{underscore}Christmas 2003.jpg."
Of course this title page titling technique works best when you set your slide show for sequential presentation of photos through subfolders. If you set the slide show for random sequence through your library, the proper title pages will not precede the matching photos because they are in random order.
When you start your slide show, be sure to first begin playing some music through My Music to really set the mood!
Create a DVD Slide Show to Send to Friends and Family
Another great way to share your photos is by creating a DVD slide show to distribute to family and friends or for participants at an event such as all the children that attend a birthday party. To create a DVD slide show, your Media Center PC must have a DVD-writeable drive.
1. | Select the best shots and place them in one folder, perform any rotation or touch-up work, and create a title page that announces the event. |
2. | Navigate to the folder of photos in the My Pictures gallery of Media Center, select Create CD/DVD, and then select DVD Slide Show. |
3. | As shown in Figure 5, the photos will be added to the list (up to 99 files). You can even get fancy and select a music track to serve as a background song that will play during the slide show.  Figure 5: The photos you select for your slide show are listed on the View DVD screen. |
Once created, the disc can be distributed and the recipient can play the disc in any home/consumer DVD player.
Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows is a fantastic application that can kick your photo slide show up a notch. With Photo Story, you can go even further by adding special effects and custom transitions to your photo sequences. Additionally, you can add voice-over narration, custom music, and lots more. You can save your final story in a custom file format for the PC, Pocket PC, and Smartphone. For more information about using Photo Story 3, see Create a Story from a Single Still Photo with Photo Story 3 and Share Your Photos on a Portable Device Using Photo Story 3.
Share Photos on the Internet, in Other Rooms, and on the Go
A suggestion for sharing your photos more broadly is to make them available to others on the Internet, whether you have a personal family site or you use a sharing service such as Kodak Share. To use Kodak Share:
| • | Press START on the remote, select Online Spotlight, and then navigate to Kodak Share. |
This is a great way to post dozens of shots from your recent event and then broadcast a message to family and friends near and far to visit your site and enjoy. It's much easier than burning copies of discs for everyone, and often, e-mail accounts are unable to handle the large file sizes of several attached digital photos.
Media Center Extender devices are another great way to enjoy your photos (and all your Media Center content including recorded TV and music) in any room of the house. Just put an Extender on a spare TV in a bedroom, family room, kitchen, wherever … and you'll be enjoying the full rich content that's stored on your Media Center PC. Expert Zone columnist Barb Bowman provides some basic rules for using Media Center Extenders in Optimizing Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and Media Center Extender Networks.
Finally, to be able to take your digital memories wherever you go, you might look into the Portable Media Center devices that are now available. These are about the size of a paperback book and when synchronized to your main Media Center PC they let you transfer your pictures, music, and other media to a portable device for travel, commuting, or just hanging around. For more information, see Barb Bowman's Using the New Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Centers with Windows XP.
Do Even More with Your Photos
Many tips and tricks exist to make the transition from traditional film photography to the world of digital photography smooth and easy. I've shared a few to get you thinking about how best to capture your memories, transfer them to the PC, and then organize, edit, and present them to family and friends. Check out the Microsoft Digital Imaging information center for more articles with tips and tricks on working with your digital photographs. You and your family will love to watch snapshots of events over and over, and with a little planning and time investment, the chore of making it all happen will get easier and easier. Good luck and keep shooting!
 | Bob Thrasher is a ten year veteran of Microsoft and currently a Software Test Engineer in the eHome Division working on the next generation of Windows XP Media Center Edition.
|
