Making and Taking Photos

CADL has added new equipment and software that can be used for digitizing and editing photos. We now have scanners that can be checked out to patrons that can be used to scan in old home photos. We also sell CDs and Flash drives that can store a whole albums worth of photos.

We have also added Photoshop Elements 6 to the computers and offer classes in their use. Patrons might want to get a photo program for use on their home computer. Photoshop can be expensive though, often costing hundreds of dollars. I’ve come up with a list of three free programs that can be downloaded and used on your home computer.

GIMP for Windows.
GIMP is a very popular program originally developed for Unix/Linux. It’s open source which means there is a whole community of programmers who provide updates to it regularly. GIMP is capable of doing practically anything that Photoshop can do and more, but it can be difficult to learn for new users.

Photoscape.
Photoscape is more user friendly than GIMP and provides plenty of content for both photo editing and photo organizing.

Picnik.
Picnik is a web based photo editing program which means you don’t have to download it. You can access it from any computer and upload your pictures to the website. It can also be used on most social networking sites like myspace and Facebook

Scanners have entered the building

Great news in the Computer Center. The scanners and memory card readers are ready for use.  People kept asking for these devices and now you can check them out for in-house use. The memory card readers will read the following cards: miniSD, microSD, SD/MMC, MMCmicro, CF/MD, M2 and MS/DUO.

Plus… check the January-March 2009 schedule in November for the Photoshop Basics class! Learn to use basic manipulating tools such as cropping and resizing.