Katie's Column Part 3

Okay, youre all set up; batteries are charged, youve packed a picnic and the weather is glorious. Now is the perfect time of year to get practising with your digital camera, and catch a few rays at the same time. But what about when you have taken the pictures? Heres what you do next.

Were visited on a regular basis by a beautiful mallard, affectionately known as Boris. He is remarkably tame and I think quite enjoys being fed with no hunting or gathering palaver. While Boris is tame, it still helps to have the zoom capability on the camera, allowing even greater detail.

After taking several photos, I previewed through and deleted the ones I wasnt happy with. One word of warning on the deleting facility, DO READ THE SCREEN. You may accidentally delete the whole set rather than just one image, so be careful.

With the remaining images on the camera I was ready to go to the next stage and view them on my computer at full size to see whether they were winners or not.

In the box of goodies with the camera is a USB lead and a CD with the appropriate software downloads. My camera is a Fuji FinePix 2600Zoom, but I have been assured by a reliable source (Pete) that most manufactures do supply their own CD software.

If you havent already installed the software do that now by inserting the CD into the computers CD tray and following the on-screen instructions.

Once thats done your ready to insert the USB lead into the computer and the camera.

One side of the lead is a universal connection, which fits in the computer, the other smaller side connects into the camera socket, usually hidden behind a flap. Once youve connected both ends you are ready to open the software icon. The software installation created a FinePix icon on my desktop. If there isnt one on yours go to the Start menu and look for it in the Programs list. This then opens up all the images on your card at a small sizes called thumbnails.

From here you can create a folder for your images and name it.

Click on the thumbnails to enlarge your images and decide if you want to keep them or dump them.

To dump, right click on the image and scroll down to delete.

You can also rename the image, rather than keep the reference number created by the camera.

To email an image, click on image then go to File>Mail Sending and it will automatically add it as an attachment for your email, ready to send.

To Print click on an image, go to File and scroll down to Print, with the window that opens check in the preview button that the image will fit the paper, then youre ready to print.

Theres a myriad of advice on which paper to use and which printer is best for you. For more advice on this go to our printing section.