85 Restricted viewing only

Share your photos on the Internet with friends while keeping strangers out.

Use Picasa, a Google freeware. It organises the photos in your PC and uploads them to the Net.

Once installed, Picasa scans your PC and displays all the photos stored inside. Look in the folder which has the photos you want to share.

Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the photos to select them.

Next, click the Upload button at the bottom of the Picasa window. Under "Visibility for this album", choose the button for "Sign-in required to view".

Hit the Upload button. An Upload Manager window will show the upload progress.

Once the photos are uploaded, click the View Online button.

The Web album will be launched. Click the Share icon. In the To box, type in the e-mail addresses - separated by commas - of the people you want to share the photos with.

Click the Send E-Mail button.

Your friends will receive an e-mail with a link - View Album. It will take them to your album if they are already logged on to Gmail.

Only the people you invite will be able to view the album.

Friends that you invite without a Google account will receive a link in their e-mail to create an account for themselves.

86 Take it outside

For the best portrait results of your sweetheart, follow these tips especially if yours is a point-and-shoot camera.

Shoot outdoors - there is more light which small cameras need.

Dress plain - tell your subject to wear something in a solid colour, light or dark does not matter. Avoid busy patterns like polka dots as they are distracting.

Pick the right time - the best is when the sun sends out its most gentle rays, say, between 7 and 9am or 4 and 6pm.

Use the portrait or aperture modes - these settings tell the camera to blur everything else but your subject.

Zoom to the max - do this for a 3x optical zoom snapper. For a 5x zoom camera, use at least the middle of the range. Use the full zoom if you can stand far enough from your subject.

The proportion of the face looks more natural when the lens is zoomed. Professionals will usually shoot with a 100mm lens or longer.

Also, people will be more relaxed when the camera is farther away.

Force the flash on - the burst of light will add more sparkle to the subject's eyes and let her stand out from the scenery.

87 Power squeezing

You are down to the last bar of battery life but, oops, you have left the spare battery at home.

Eke out the last bits of life from the dying camera.

First, change the settings.

Crank the LCD down to its dimmest if your camera does not allow the display to be shut off.

Stop the review function, which gets the camera to display the shot after you have snapped it.

Under Settings, look for Auto Review or Image Display. Cut the duration to zero or the shortest available time.

Finally, turn off the flash.

Now, the energy-saving shooting tips.

Power up the camera only when your subjects are seated and ready to smile. Also, zoom sparingly - walk closer to your subject instead.

Do not use the autofocus willy nilly. Press the shutter button halfway down to focus only when you are satisfied with the composition.

Resist showing off your photos and deleting botched shots. Finally, that spare battery - do not leave home without it.

88 Use camera as copier

It is easy peasy.

Place the magazine as flat as you can on the table. To take in the whole page of a newspaper, place it on the floor.

Set the lens at the middle of the zoom range. This will move the lens away from the wide angle which carries some distortion.

Hold the camera above the centre of the page and as flat as possible.

Turn on the macro mode (the flower symbol).

Kill the flash. It will over expose the page, making some parts so bright that the text will be impossible to read.

The fussy will point out that a flatbed scanner will give more detailed results with less distortion. True, but by the time the PC boots up and the scanner is ready, you would have long finished the job with your compact.

Also, most home scanners can only take a maximum size of an A4 page.

But even an old 6-megapixel compact can take in an entire broadsheet double spread - bump the zoom up of your viewer to 100 per cent to read the page.

89 Create a card

Make a family greeting card using PowerPoint.

Open a new presentation. In Page Setup, choose Custom for the size and choose 48cm (width) and 32cm (height). Insert a family photo with an uncluttered background.

Do not panic if the photo is so large that it fills the screen. Right-click on the photo, choose Format Picture, Size and change the height and width to 30 per cent. Click OK.

Click and drag the photo to move it. Now, fine-tune its size by clicking and dragging any corner so that the image fills the slide.

For the greetings, create a text box and type in a message. Change the font and size to your liking.

Click the Slide Show mode to see how your card will look and save it.

Here is an important step: convert your card to a JPEG file to preserve the quality. Under File, choose Save As and choose JPEG.

Load the file into a USB flash drive and take it to the nearest photo lab for printing.

Ask for 4R matte prints which will not smudge as easily as glossies when you write your salutations and personal notes on them.

90 Stop, don't delete

Some pictures may look terrible on that tiny LCD screen, but resist deleting them from your camera, not until you have viewed them on a desktop or laptop and can easily fish them out of the Recycle bin.

Oops. Too late?

Not if you immediately switch off the camera and extract the memory card. If you are quick enough, you can stop the camera from overwriting the space which was occupied by the accidentally deleted image and save the image.

If not, there is still a chance you can get it back. Apart from commercial data recovery services, there are free programs to help you.

Among the most popular freebies are Recuva (www.piriform.com/recuva) and PC Inspector Smart Recovery (www.pcinspector.de).

91 Make the colours pop

To make the colours in a photo more vivid and vibrant, duplicate the image layer first in Photoshop.

If you already have a few image layers from either lightening or darkening the photo, just press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E to produce a new image layer that is a combination of all the layers.

This keyboard shortcut is one of the useful shortcuts I use.

Set the blending mode of the topmost layer to "Soft Light". This will enhance the contrast and make the colours richer and more vibrant.

Reduce the opacity percentage of the layer to obtain an effect to your liking. If you prefer a harsher effect, set the blending mode of the layer to "Overlay".

92 Expose yourself

The camera's LCD screen is not the best guide to exposure. Enter the histogram, a graph to help you gauge light conditions more accurately.

The left side represents shadows; the right side, highlights. So the graph resembles a series of peaks and valleys and differs with varying scenes.

If the graph appears chopped on the left side, it means that parts of the scene are too dark. Chopped off on the right? Parts of the picture are too bright.

The LCD screen has under- or overexposed your shots. For an accurate reading of the brightness values in a scene, the histogram is invaluable.

93 Flash dance

Sunny days do not necessarily deliver good photos. You need to use your flash outdoors when what you are trying to shoot is backlit - that is, your subjects are silhouettes against the sun or artificial lighting.

Switch your camera to fill flash mode. This will add just enough light to illuminate your subjects but maintain a natural-looking balance between the bright background and flash-lit foreground.

When the sun overhead creates harsh shadows under your subjects' eyes, fill flash softens those shadows and adds sparkle to their eyes.

94 Shoot in the raw

Most cameras shoot in the default JPEG format, and for that, the camera has already tinkered automatically with the input and adjusted such things as white balance, contrast, colour saturation and sharpening.

But shooting in the RAW format gives you more room to adjust your images in the digital darkroom. Look for the format in the camera menu.

Such files hold the original "uncooked" pixel information straight from the camera's sensors.

This lets you tweak the settings endlessly to create the exact look you are after. Even if you are not a perfectionist, you can benefit by being able to correct exposure and white balance easily.

95 Darkening and...

To darken an overexposed photo, first duplicate the image layer in Photoshop. But instead of setting the blending mode of the duplicated upper image layer to "Screen", set it to "Multiply". Too dark? Moderate the opacity level of the upper layer to lighten the photo.

If the result is still too bright, duplicate the upper layer again and repeat the steps.

96 ... Lightening photos

Open the photo in Photoshop. In the Layers palette, there is only one image layer named "Background" containing the photo. Duplicate this layer by pressing Ctrl+J on the keyboard.

You will now see two image layers in the palette. Set the blending mode of the upper layer to "Screen" by clicking the list box at the top left and selecting "Screen" from the dropdown list.

This should immediately brighten the image. If it is brighter than you want, type in a number lower than 100 per cent in the opacity box at the top right corner of the palette.

If the result is still not bright enough even with opacity set at 100 per cent, you can repeat the above steps, that is, duplicate the upper layer again and vary the opacity.

97 Picture this

You are watching HD video clips on Windows Media Player and decide you want a screenshot. You pause the video, press Print Screen and paste the image using Microsoft Paint. All you get is a black screen.

Here is a solution:

Go to Tools/Options and click on the Performance tab.

Click Advanced on the menu that appears.

A new menu appears, with the heading Video Acceleration Settings.

Uncheck the Use overlays box.

You should now be able to get that screenshot.

98 Beam me up, Scotty

Now you can create a clip of your subject (or an object) disappearing without breaking a sweat.

At least in a home movie.

To begin, lock your video camera in place with a tripod before you shoot the two clips needed.

For the first, do a five-second shot of the person (or object) to be "beamed up". Stop, get him out of the scene and resume shooting. Do not move the camera or change the scene in any way. Record at least five seconds of the empty scene.

Next, launch your video editing software and drag both clips, in order, into the timeline.

The trick is to use a standard Fade transition in Windows Movie Maker between both clips. With other software, you may have to set the transition timing to three seconds.

99 Repeat after me

There is something about repetition that can turn something mundane into monstrous fun - unless you are the target. That is why Taiwanese variety shows love to repeat the same clips, such as those of celebrities falling.

When you are shooting, be sure to record such actions as someone sneezing violently or swinging his arms wildly.

Drag this clip (in Windows Movie Maker) to the storyboard. Play it until the beginning of the desired action. Pause. In the menu, go to Clip/Split Clip to slice the video in two: Clip 1 with everything before that action and Clip 2 of the action.

Play the new clip until the action ends, then slice it up so you have an action-only Clip 3 and an "after" Clip4.

Highlight the shortened "action-only" clip, press Ctrl+C to copy it, then press Ctrl+P to paste another copy on the timeline, so that it is sandwiched between the first part of the original and the continuing footage. Repeat as many times as desired.

100 Stop-motion movie

Stop-motion animation a la Wallace and Gromit using toys or action figures is perfect for control freaks and easier than ever now.

Pose and shoot the toys or action figures, moving them a bit for each shot, then stitch the pictures together using Windows Movie Maker. It takes about 80 photos to make a 10-second video clip or about eight frames a second.

After you have saved the photos to a folder on your computer, go to Tools/Options and change the Picture Duration to the lowest setting (0.125 seconds), import the photos, then drag and drop them to the storyboard.

This is your movie assembly line. When you are done, drag and drop a music file for the soundtrack. Finally, go to File>Save As Movie and choose a desired video file format.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

For more The Straits Times stories, click here.