Scanning copies of digital photos into PC to email.

John:

When you mention a copy of the original digital image; since I don't own a digital camera myself yet; are you referring to the memory card in my neighbor's camera?

Her camera which she used to take the photographs of my yard was a Fujifilm FinePix digital camera A210 with 3.2 megapixels. She says it was her first digital camera which she paid around $300.00 for several years ago but she also owns several newer digital cameras but she used this one to take the photos of my yard.


Big Steve
Biloxi, Mississippi
08/06/06

When you take a picture using a digital camera the image is stored as a file either in the camera's internal memory or on the memory card, with the file format frequently being a standard JPEG. She can connect the digital camera to her computer or take the memory card out and pop it into a memory card reader in her computer, if she has one. (It's standard hardware with all recent models.)

Now, since it's just a standard image file she can copy it to her computer, print it, e-mail it, or whatever she wants to do with it. That includes making a copy of it, just like you would any other file on your computer. If she makes a copy she can e-mail it to you, place it on a floppy, transfer it to your computer using a flash drive, etc.

Although you can still scan the original to create your own digital copy there will be some loss of quality to it. If you copy the original digital file, though, there is no quality loss.

John

John:

Another question for you related to my original post. I submitted another post in the desktop forum related to this subject which I guess I should have also submitted to this forum since no one has replied to that post.

How can I move that post which is in the desktop forum to this forum to get an answer since it's a lengthy post? Will I have to retype that post in the desktop forum in this forum?


Big Steve
Biloxi, Mississippi
08/06/06

You should be able to copy and paste your other forum e-mail into a different forum.

You only need the pix from your neighbor to scan and load them into your pictures file, unless I'm missing something here. Maybe your copier won't do that.(?)

Once you have them in your file, they are yours to do with as you please--unless, of course, if they are copyrighted!

L'il Abner:

I have an HP Photosmart 2575 All In One printer which according to the owner's manual will print; will make copies and will scan documents and photos. My HP printer also has digital camera media slots which are located up front as well as a pull-up LCD screen on top of the printer.

I have had this printer for almost 3 months; have used it only to print word documents; copies of emails and some web pages off the internet. To this day I have never tried to use the scanner part of this printer although I have read parts of the 138 page owner's manual earlier today to try to find out how.

I had my neighbor come over with her digital camera to take some pictures of my yard yesterday with the intention of eventually being able to email them to my brother in Texas. I do not own a digital camera right now because I can't make up my mind on exactly which camera to buy; too many choices; too many options to consider.

After my neighbor took the pictures with her camera; according to what she told me she went straight to Wal-Mart with her camera in hand; I assume she took the photo card out of her camera since she told me she used a self-service machine in the store to make my copies.

She was able to print 4x6 color copies of the pictures on a glossy type photo paper; on the back the paper type says Kodak XtraLife paper which must be good photo quality paper. Wal-Mart doesn't do glossy paper processing in the store; they send their's off to Georgia.

The store uses only matte finish photo paper in the store. My neighbor was charged $0.28 for each of those copies she made using that self-service photo processing machine.

What I want to know is basically this; what would be the best way I can load these images into my desktop PC; a Dell Dimension 3100 and once loaded into my PC; can I then email those images to my brother who lives in Texas or not?

Since I started my posts on this subject earlier today I have received a few comments from others that have told me that yes I can take these photos and scan them into my computer but if I do I can expect to lose some quality in the photographs I either would email or print from my computer once I loaded them into my computer; the old you lose quality when you make a copy of a copy of a copy theme.

If that's not right; then please set me straight. I wish my old Minolta Freedom Zoom 90 35mm point and shoot camera still worked because if it did I'd have gone out in the yard myself; fired off about 24 shots; taken that roll of film to Wal-Mart's 1 hour photo processing; requested double prints; gotten them; kept half of them; sent my brother the other half.

My old camera which had served me well for more than 15 years no longer works and hasn't worked since soon after Hurricane Katrina when I managed to take 100 good color photos of storm debris after returning home from Texas in early October 2005 where I spent 29 days after Katrina. Those hurricane photos were the last good photos I took with that old Minolta camera.

My father died in February 2006; I took 96 photos of flowers at his funeral and unfortunately for me not one photograph turned out. At a time when I certainly wanted my photos to turn out; well they didn't but there were others there attending my father's funeral who had digital cameras who were able to take some nice images of those flowers at my father's funeral. One guy was nice enough to put his photos on a CD and mailed the CD back to me a few weeks later.


Big Steve
Biloxi, Mississippi
08/06/06

Yes, you will lose quality by scanning from the photo rather than from the camera storage file but the loss is
so slight that I don't think it's an issue. Can you get the camera card from your neighbor or has she erased it?
If they are just for e-mail, I don't think degrading of the image is going to be a problem. I have been able to scan some ancient photos into my computer and actually improve the image quality by playing with the contrast &
brightness. I wouldn't let a theoretical image quality loss stop me from using the copier & e-mailing the images.

The current rendition of the forums doesn't support the moving of posts by members or moderators...only the admins can do it from the back end. Right now the common solution is to repost (copy-and-paste) in the correct forum and then submit a mod alert for your original post asking for it to be removed. However, a massive forum update is in the works so that may change in the coming months.

Instead of going through that I'll just respond there.

Regards,
John