Sharing photos with others

In addition to enjoying your photos at home and at work, there are ways to share them easily with family, friends, or the world at large. Here are just a few options:

• Photo slideshows on DVD. Many computers today come with basic image management software that lets you create and save a slideshow of your favorite photos. Windows Movie Maker is often included on recent PCs, for example, whereas Macs come with iMovie. A slideshow is a great way to share images with family members, especially those who aren't particularly computer-savvy, but who do have a DVD player. Simply burn a DVD of a favorite slideshow and send it off. (Just be prepared for the fact that relatives tend to then ask for prints of the photos they love best.)
• Uploading images to photo sites. Sites like flickr, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and many others will let you upload photos and invite others to view your albums — for free. You can also pay for any number of additional features and services, such as photo mugs, photo calendars, T-shirts, photo books, or greeting cards that you can design with your own favorite pictures.
• Starting a photo blog. Blog websites, like Blogger and Typepad, usually offer free or inexpensive blogging services and let you upload photos to each entry. You can usually access your blog from anywhere you have Internet access (although use in some countries may be restricted or monitored). Many people are finding that blogs are a great, low-effort way to showcase favorite photos of their pets, family, hobbies, or trips.
• Scrapbooking. Scrapbooking has grown increasingly popular, and the advent of good digital photo printers had a lot to do with it. Now, digital scrapbooking is making it easy for folks who don't consider themselves "creative" to make complete and well-designed scrapbook pages and put them together into a beautiful book. For scrapbooking material, software, and more, you can check into sites such as Scrap Girls and Digital Scrapbook Place, although many more such sites exist.

Storing your photos

When people are asked what items they would rescue from their house if it were on fire, one of the most common answers is "my photos." And yet many people are not doing what they need to do to protect their digital images for the future.

Taking some simple steps can save your digital photos for posterity.

Here's the bottom line. Memory cards can break, get lost, or become corrupted, and hard drives fail eventually — and if they have photos on them, those photos may not be recoverable. Our staff has heard sad stories of lost photos from our customers, and we don't want that to happen to anyone else. So we've put together these recommendations for safe storage of your photos:

• Use a hard drive to store photos from day to day. We suggest using a backup hard drive, since your main computer's hard drive probably gets a lot more of a workout and is more likely to fail eventually.

Sony's VRD-MC5 is a computer-free way to make DVD copies of your digital photo files.

• Burn copies of your digital images onto CDs or DVDs. In addition to short-term storage on a hard drive, we recommend burning copies of your photos onto CD or DVD (a DVD will hold more photos than a CD) on a regular basis, and storing those discs somewhere safe, cool and dark. If you're not particularly comfortable with computers, or your computer doesn't have CD/DVD recording capability, there are computer-free options for burning files to DVD, such as the Sony VRD-MC5 multifunction DVD recorder. Even if it means driving down to the local photo lab to have them dump files onto a CD periodically, we strongly urge making the effort. Your images are important.
• Copy your photos to an online storage site. Internet photo storage websites provide a great secondary backup in case of a house fire, theft, or other disaster that may cause damage to your tapes, discs, or PC. They let you store your files on a secure, remote server via an Internet connection, usually for a small monthly maintenance fee. When looking for a site, be sure to find a reputable name since they tend to have the best-quality facilities for their servers. Be aware of any storage limitations the company has, and of what security measures they take to keep your data safe. It's also a good idea to read some customer reviews, if you can. Some sites, like Backup.com, automatically back up your data for you.
• Check for intact files before deleting the originals. Remember to check that files moved to a hard drive, CD, or DVD were stored successfully before you delete the original from a card or your computer's hard drive. Sometimes, accidents happen in transfer that result in corrupted, unreadable files.
• Consider a safe deposit box. It's not ridiculous to consider storing backup hard drives, CDs, or DVDs in a safe deposit box, if you have one. After all, if you've switched entirely to digital photography, those files may be the only record of a wedding or a child's birth.

Of course, even recordable CDs and DVDs aren't permanent — though they haven't been around long enough for us to know for certain, chances are they will become hard to read in a decade or two, assuming there are still devices that use CDs and DVDs when that day comes. So we suggest re-copying your images every five years or so, just to be on the safe side.

Even if you don't carry out every recommendation listed above, following most of these tips should help you keep your photos safe and usable for years to come. And that's exactly what we want for our customers and their pictures.