Outdoor Adventures

[ksquared]

Morning Justin...

Slowly waking up here. I was up WAY past my normal bedtime last night. What the heck... Friday and I have three days ahead of me. Yay! Needed a day off. Sick of driving.

Pictures. I am not the expert on this but I will do my best to share my limited knowledge with you. Our resident expert is ONEBGG. As as example, check out the website he created for his wife's art work. He posted this site here before and I PMed him telling him I was going to post it again as well as recommend him to you.

http://www.angelfire.com/art2/carolsartondisplay/

This took a lot of work as you will be able to tell. He has also posted pictures for me to look at so I feel comfortable deferring to his expertise. He is self-taught. Impresses the hell out of me.

I assume you're saying that photo developers offer floppy files as well as CDs .... as opposed to my saving their CD file on my own floppy?

Yes they do. On the grocery store Kodak processing envelope they offer the two options. (I consider color throw away shots. I miss my b&w studio in Manhattan.) The floppy images are saved as jpgs. Much smaller than the CD images. I think those may be saved as bitmaps. I am not the expert here. I am strictly mainframe as far as making a living goes. PCs are annoying necessities to me. <ggg>

Does the file (floppy or CD) from the photo developer provide a full frame of the original negative? Is it possible to crop the file image and save the cropped image as the permanent file image?

The developer scans the full negative on to the floppy or CD the way the film comes out of the camera. Depending on which camera I've used, the floppy images come out upside down. Bet they do this on the CDs too. It is all done with machines as opposed to craftsmen.

The floppy has two versions of each picture. One is indecipherable, the other is clear. If you get upside down images, you can flip them. Via Windows98:

Start button
Programs
Accessories
Paint

Open the picture you want in Paint from your A drive. Look at the tool bar. Find the Image button. First option is Flip/Rotate. You can do it in 90° increments. Play with it. You'll figure it out. Saved the righted image to your hard drive as a jpg. This is the easiest to use on the net as far as I'm concerned.

I have not played that much with Paint except to use it to do the above. I don't know if it has cropping capability. I have FrontPage loaded on this machine (for creating websites). I've used that to size CD images (pain in the neck). I believe it has cropping capabilities but it's been awhile since I've looked at it.

Any changes you make, you can save. You may have to rename the image or save it to a different folder.

Here's where I confess to a little snobbery. I was trained by pros who were all about 8-9 years older than I. They did their own processing... mostly b&w... with a thin black border around the print... the negative's edge... to prove that they framed it the way they wanted it without cropping. I have followed suit.

I know there are scanners that will copy negatives. I haven't looked into them... I am very cheap with myself as far as spending my money. If I get one, I want to be able to copy the edge of the negative as well.

A project for the distant future. May my eyes hold out long enough to realize my dream. <g>

Hope this gets you started. I will answer questions as best I can.

Just had another thought... IHub has a very good computer learning board.

http://investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=470

These folks know far more than I and seem happy to walk people through any questions.

* * *

Cripe! thirty years in one place... you are far more mature than I will ever be. I'd say you more than earned your "early" escape. Congratulations! Nosy me... are you saying you were with Enron or just using that as an example of your good fortune? I don't know how old that company was when it crashed and burned. None of my dang business, so please ignore the question if I am out of line and accept my apologies.

Guess I should start my morning routine... I am stalling per usual. Gray day greeting me in the hills of nj... good day to stay in and clean with the a/c blasting. Want to put my best foot forward tomorrow and show my guest a good time. I am psyched. I love doing this!

Have a good one, Justin. I'll check in later.
eyes.open.ksquared