Now that you have your photos saved on CD or DVD and a copy on your computer, you can start playing with the pictures. You can “Right Click” on your Start button then “Left Click” on explore. This will bring up windows explorer which is used to view, copy, paste, move, delete and do about everything you want with the photo files. I use windows explorer to keep my photos organized. You will find yourself taking more and more photos, so mark your CDs and DVDs with a permanent marker by the event and the date, including the year.

Put all of your photos in your “My Documents/My Pictures” folder. You can also make sub-folders and name them accordingly so when you look for a particular photo you can find it easier. You will see that your camera saves photos with almost the same name for every photo so it is hard to tell which one is which. If you “Right Click” on a picture name inside windows explorer, then “Left Click” on “Preview,” you will see a nice preview of each photo. You can use your right and left arrow keys on the keyboard to view all of your photos in that particular folder.

You can also click on “Views” from windows explorer, then clink on “Thumbnails” and you will be able to see small thumbnails of all of your photos.

After you have removed and backed up your photos, remember to format your chips inside your camera after it has been connected to your computer. This will help prevent format errors. Also, always format new chips before using them.

You can learn how to do these things and more at my Digital Photo classes at CSN starting this month!

If you have any topics that you would like to find out more about, or a topic for my article, just e-mail me: brad@applebyarts.com, or call me at (702) 294-1392. Visit my web site at www.applebyarts.com.