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In response to the Comments last time:
I reiterate that it is not good to keep your photos *inside* any software so I will explain a good system for storage in a moment.
If your camera will no longer read a memory card, it is probably the card itself that is corrupted, not that the camera is broken. Just buy a new card (they are very inexpensive now) and try it. Your camera is probably fine.
No one waits until their card is full to transfer photos to the computer or to empty the card. That should be done after every shoot.
Attaching a camera to a computer by the USB port does not damage the camera – it just runs down the battery.
Now – about storing those photos:
Most folks keep important files inside folders (directories) in their Document Folder or My Documents on PC. So, that is the logical way to store and organize your photos.
Make a Main Folder and name it something that makes sense, like Photo Collection or Photographs (I call mine Photo Depot).
Inside of that folder, create a folder every time you download a shoot. Name that folder with the date and a name if appropriate. If all photos are from your cousin’s wedding, you could name it that – along with the date.
But most times, there are photos from a few places in that one download, and so just the date is good. If you work with several cameras as I do, you may want to add the camera name.
WITHIN that dated folder, create new folders for each place or occasion where the photos were taken. These titles are important because that is how your computer will search when you want to find your cousin’s wedding pictures again.
So for example, within my Photo Depot folder may be a folder labeled iPhone 10-09-09. If I open that folder, there may be a Garden folder, a Dogs folder, etc.
Think of your main Photo Depot folder as the bank where the originals are kept and back it up often to an external drive. You can copy folders or individual photo files into iPhoto or Elements Organizer, etc. to do what you do there. But those will be copies and your originals will not be changed, lost, or misplaced.
From the File menu in PhotoShop or Elements, you can navigate through your Photo Depot folder to find any folder or file you want to open and work on. If you do edits you want to save, save them back to the same folder of originals – but with a different name. I usually save these edited files as a TIFF file right back in the same file it came from. Then I have the original and an edited version to choose from in the future.
“Nested” folders – which is what this type of system is called seem confusing at first. But if you think of them exactly as you would real world file folders in your file cabinet, they are not confusing at all – they are just folders within folders.
number of view: 335
 This post is prompted by the plight of Cecilia in her comment last time about automatic back-ups and missing photo files.
Tizzie is a Mac and, honestly, when PC c-drive problems etc. are involved in a question, she is *really* glad she is a Mac. Solving PC operating issues from a distance, has the same chance of success as climbing a rope that isn’t tied to anything.
So, we are going to talk about this subject in a more generic way that will be helpful to everyone. It’s a big subject, even though the procedures are actually easy. We will cover it in a couple of posts.
As more and more people get on the high-tech train, manufacturers keep dumbing down operations – trying to get to an “everybody can do it” place. This works out sometimes, but often, it utterly destroys the original concept (like in the confusing mess of photo resolution these days – but that is another big subject – for a different post).
Whenever you can opt out of a situation where the computer is doing something for you, and you don’t *completely* understand what it is doing, opt out. Do the thing by hand instead.
Especially in the case of your precious photo files. You should *always* be in control. So, here is Part 1 of Tizzie’s “White Paper” on downloading your photo files:
The Photo Files
A photo file functions exactly the same way as any other file on your computer – like a word document, a database file etc. They are all different types of files, and it takes different software programs to create and edit them, but as far as file management – like uploading, downloading, copying, storing, transferring and so on, they are the same.
Many cameras (like Olympus for example) treat the files this way – as they should. When you plug an Olympus camera into your USB port, the memory card on the camera shows up as if it were any external drive. Your photo files are in a folder and you can drag them to your computer and put them wherever you want them (more on deciding where you want them in a bit).
When you are sure a copy of all of them is on your computer, you can safely go back and drag the files on the memory card to the Trash, Empty the Trash, and your card will be empty and ready for the next session of picture taking. Eject the card like you would any external drive, unplug the camera from the USB, and you’re all set.
That’s the way it should be done.
Unfortunately, some manufacturers, like Canon, have it set up so when you plug the camera into the USB, you can’t access or download anything without launching their software, or some software.
For example, my iPhone can only be downloaded through iPhoto – which proceeds with its own idea of how to organize and store my photos – and it might not be my way.
The problem with this procedure is that the software program now “contains” your files, and all sorts of confusion can result from that. Not the least of which is that you often can’t find the photos when you want to open them in Photoshop, for example. Often, the program creates “aliases” which are just empty labels for the files that get stored somewhere else. I have at least one friend who somehow ended up with only those aliases and her real photo files have gone missing.
The long and the short of this is that you *DO NOT* want your real photo files organized and stored by any software program. If you like working with iPhoto or your camera’s program for editing or making albums and such, you can put copies in there to play with, but your real files need to be stored in their own folders (directories) independent of any software.
Getting Around the Software Trap.
If your camera forces you to use software to download to your computer:
Every camera has a memory card which is the little hard drive that stores the photo files in your camera. Memory cards come out of the camera.
Many computers and printers these days are equipped with card readers. For example, my MacBook Pro has a slot which takes SD memory cards. My printer has card reading slots for all the popular cards. So, I take the card out of the camera and use the slots. This also saves camera battery life because the camera is not involved in the download.
Example: My little Kodak pocket camera forces me to use iPhoto to download via its USB cord. But it uses an SD memory card. So, I take the memory card out of the camera and stick it in the reader slot on my laptop – and there it is – just like any external drive – and I can copy my photo files to my computer.
If your computer or printer does not have a card reader, buy one. They are very inexpensive (under $20) and widely available at places like Best Buy and office supply stores. Most read several kinds of cards, and all you need to do is check that it reads the type in your camera.
To Be Continued . . . meanwhile, any questions so far?
number of view: 475
 Here are two questions that have been asked that are very similar. Both deal with working on files stored on an external hard drive.
Holly says: OK- I have 10 year’s worth of digital pictures in my computer. and lots of photoshop stuff. (the photos are backed up and on an external hard drive) My question is- can another external hard drive be used to put the photos and PS-work on so as to free up all that space on the hard drive? Is it safe and easy to work from an external? I have only transferred info TO an external and not worked FROM an external. Do you just ‘open’ from and ’save’ to the external?
Yes, Holly. In this instance the external hard drive works exactly the same way your internal hard drive works. You can keep all your photo files on the external drive and Open them, work on them, and Save them back to the external drive. This does save a lot of space on your internal hard drive for your software programs to have some elbow room, but make sure that you still have a second copy of those files backed up somewhere else. Hard drives, external and internal, can fail. So you never want just one copy in one place of any important file.
Jane Kimball says: Thank you for the external hard drive information. Now I have a question. Can you store programs in them too. If so, how do I do this? I want to make sure one of my huge databased programs is backed up (I have over 2,000 books in it now and will constantly be adding more). I have the file in the external drive now, but want to put the program in it too so I can work from the external whenever I want (plug it into my laptop, etc.).
In most cases you cannot install a software program on an external hard drive. The reason is that the external drive has no Operating System. Most software programs install their “helper” files into different parts of the system, and they need those files to run, so they cannot run from an external drive.
You can keep your documents on an external drive – like I believe you said you are doing already, but to open and work on them, the drive must be connected to a CPU (computer with an operating system).
Most software programs do allow you to install your program on two computers, so if you install it on your laptop as well, you will be able to travel back and forth between computers – keeping your database file on the external drive. In fact that’s a good idea because then you will always know where the most recently updated file is.
Please keep submitting your questions. Tizzie will get to them all.
number of view: 519
 Tizzie has gotten a few questions about external hard drives, so she has some simple answers for you . . . and because she knows you might ask, she will tell you about her favorite.
Patricia G asked: Mac user with prob.a dumbish question stemming from insecurity even though I’m pretty facile and confident with Macbook (how could you not be?). I want to get an external hard drive. I do artwork w/PSE6 so have loads of large MB pics. How much storage should I get. What is a TB? in reference to GB and MB? Also, when said hard drive is obtained and usb plugged in – what then. Do I just drag everything (each file) onto the hard drive icon one at a time. Is there and “everything” way to do it?
First of all, think in thousands. A Gigabyte (GB) is a thousand Megabytes. A Megabyte (MB) is a thousand Kilobytes-KB). Going larger, a Terabyte (TB) is a thousand Gigabytes.
Every computer has an internal hard drive of a certain size. All recent models have very large internal hard drives – 100 to 500 Gigabytes.
But still, when working with large files like photo files, we run out of room. And even if we didn’t run out of room, we need to back up those precious files so there is more than one copy of them in more than one place.
That’s where the external hard drive comes in. Gives you more room and provides a place to back up your files.
To transfer files from one drive (internal) to another (external) or the other way round, you just drag the files to the other drive’s icon or window. You can drag a single file or a whole folder of files at once.
This is where speed becomes a factor and it matters what kind of connection you have between your computer and the external drive.
The most common connector is the USB2.0 which all computers have and which is a little less expensive than the much faster Firewire connection.
When copying large files or large numbers of files, the USB2 can take 10 times as long as the Firewire. So, if your computer has a Firewire port, that is the type of external drive you want.
Firewire is a fast enough connection to allow you to keep video files on an external drive and edit them “live” with no delay.
My favorite external drive (pictured above and below) is made by a company that has been making reliable drives for more than 25 years, Lacie, and this one is small and tough. That’s why they call it “Rugged”.
 The Rugged Portable Hard Drive from Lacie is lightweight, about the size of a paperback book, and has the USB2.0 connection plus Firewire 400 and the *very* fast Firewire 800 connection (that’s the one for the MacBook Pro). It comes with all three cables and holds 500 Gigabytes. It has no power cord because it is powered by the computer port – which makes it the *perfect* portable. The orange you see is a thick rubber coat that protects the drive in case you drop it, and if you don’t like orange, there is a little wardrobe of coats available in blue, black, and gray.
This is so much my favorite that I have two of them.
It is Plug and Play for both Macs and PCs.
The best price I found ($144.95 with free shipping) is at Amazon here:
Lacie Rugged All-Terrain 500 Firewire
Tizzie will answer more hard drive questions next time. If you have questions, please ask.
number of view: 356
The first part is like buying any book on Amazon.com. Just search for your title in the Kindle Books category instead of just Books. This happens to be a great book on Social Technology, written by Cassie’s neighbor, as it turns out. I thought it sounded good and wanted it right away.
Once you have registered your iPhone Kindle App, you will see this box on a Kindle book page:
 If your credit card and iPhone number are on file with Amazon, all you need is one click to either buy the book or get a Sample first. Either way, the book or sample is sent instantly to your iPhone. It will be on your list of books the next time you launch your Kindle App on your phone.
If you have gotten the free Sample, you can purchase the whole book right from your iPhone if you like it – or you can go back to Amazon and buy the book this time.
I tell you. This stuff just amazes me. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be in line at the Post Office, have someone suggest a good book, and I could be reading it there in line before they got through recommending it – I just would never have believed it. We live in a magic time.
number of view: 319
 Well, it is certainly no secret that I love my iPhone more than most things.
A person as busy as I am loves streamlined operations and things that make daily To-Do lists easier or at least, more pleasant.
With my iPhone in my purse or pocket, I have my phone (obviously), my address book, my notebook, my camera, my GPS, weather report, calculator, entire music collection, stereo player, email, and internet connection right there at hand. And that’s not to mention the painting, drawing, and photo-editing programs (more about that later).
But when I heard my iPhone could be the book I’m currently reading, my heart did a pitter-patter, a hop, skip, and a jump, and by then, I had my Kindle App downloaded and was buying my first hardcover best seller for $9.99! Delivered in seconds to my iPhone, so I was reading it 2 minutes after I thought of it!
I admit, just like many folks, when I first heard about the Kindle from Amazon, I wasn’t too excited. I like the feel of a good book. It didn’t seem to me that holding a flat plastic screen that was as big as a book anyway would be all that exciting.
But on the iPhone!? That’s something else again. I have it with me anyway – standing in line at the Post Office or when I stop off for coffee and lunch somewhere. Always having a book to read was just too tempting an idea to resist.
Besides the Kindle App is free. And the books are less expensive than in bookstores. and I will buy books anyway, but this App lets me download a Sample chapter, so even if I plan to buy a real life physical book, I can read the first chapter on my iPhone first and see if it catches me before spending the money.
The first thing to do is to download the free Kindle App from the App Store at Apple.
Then go to Amazon and download some sample books. The books will be listed when you select the Kindle App on your iPhone.
Click a title and you get the first page. If you have already been reading this book, it opens to where you left off.
 This is shown pretty close to life size, and the page is full screen, but what we have here are the controls that pop up so you can change the type size, type color, or bookmark a passage.
The type size shown here is only the second from smallest so you can make the type as big as you need it.
Not only is the iPhone easy to hold in one hand while reading, if you have a rubberized protective “skin” for your phone, it sits on your knee without falling off, or props against a coffee mug or anything on the table at a restaurant.
Because the screen is backlit, you can read in bed without a light, and not disturb whoever else might be in the bed – which might be the part I like best of all because I love to read myself to sleep.
More tomorrow about how easy it is to buy a book or obtain a free sample for instant delivery.
number of view: 464
Nancy D asked:
Okay, this has bugged me forever and no-one has the answer but I have a feeling Tizzie will…
When I drag a photo into my photoshop7 there are two gray boxes in the top left corner that I cannot for the life of me figure out how to remove – it has an “01, and then “a box with an x in it” -what the heck???
Tizzie does have that answer, in fact.
Web designers can use Photoshop to actually create web page designs, then slice them up and load them into web software in pieces like a puzzle. Why do this? For things like image maps where you want to have several places in the image where viewers can Click to go to different links.
Anyway, those boxes are the Slice Count. Somehow it got checked to display, and you can turn it off here:
Uncheck the Slices Option and no more boxes.
Hope this helps,
Tizzie
number of view: 279
 Several of you asked this question, so we grabbed it to be next.
You are correct that when you trash something or delete it, it is not really gone. Only its address is gone. So, you can’t find it, but a hacker could.
Even smashing your hard drive to bits would not be secure if there were still a bit big enough to contain information – and that would not have to be very big – like a pinhead, maybe.
So, if you have personal info on an old computer, it is smart to do a true erase.
All ATA drives (hard drives) made since 2001 have actually contained self erasing commands called Secure Erase, but they have been disabled so people won’t erase accidentally. Learn how you can use them here.
As Jim added in a Comment, on the PC side of this, there is a free program called Eraser which will overwrite your data many times, effectively erasing it.
Tizzie did not find the instructions very easy to understand, but then, Tizzie is a Mac and we do things much more easily.
Every Mac ships with a program called Disk Utility. You can find it in the Utilities Folder within the Applications Folder. You can repair your disk with it, but you can also erase. The window looks like this:
Those 4 step instructions allow you to securely erase everything or just the files you have actually trashed or deleted – leaving everything else alone. So, if you had reason to want to really erase some files, but not your whole disk, you can do that.
AND, please do recycle those old computers so they don’t end up in a landfill.
Hope this helps,
Tizzie
number of view: 229
Penny S – please send your snail mail address to:
jessica@wisdomwoman.com
and we’ll get your drive right out to you.
And now to answer your question while we are at it.
Question/Comment #15:
On the USB flash drive, are you able to put games on it instead of your computer and play off the USB drive? Thanks.
The problem with keeping games or video you are editing on an external drive is the access speed – the rate at which your computer processor can get the necessary info off the drive. It has to be very fast.
There are Firewire Drives which have fast enough access to allow editing video which is stored on the drive, and because I am not a gamer I don’t know if that is true for games as well.
But I do know the USB2 connection is not fast enough. So the answer is that you could not keep your game on the external drive and be able to play it.
Your new drive is great for back-up of files, though, and for transporting files back and forth from the work computer to the home computer or from the laptop to the desktop etc. And it’s cute.
Thank you to everyone for your questions. You have given Tizzie plenty to write about and she appreciates it!
Congratulations, Penny!
Tizzie
number of view: 155
Even though our Giveaway does not end until tomorrow morning, I am going to start answering some of these interesting questions from our Giveaway post.
If you missed our last post, you can still qualify to win an 8 Gig USB Drive by asking Tizzie a question about computer life in the Comments to that post.
Debbie L asked this one:
This sounds stupid… but I have used a PC forever up until a couple of months ago and now have a MAC which I love. However, I still haven’t figured out a few things (even after looking it up) like how to spell check by keystroke (so easy on a PC).
Not a stupid question at all – a new operating system does take a bit of learning.
The Keystroke Spell Check on a Mac is
Command+Shift-; (Hold down the Command and Shift Keys and type a SemiColon)
I don’t know how you check by keystroke on a PC. Perhaps Debbie will tell us.
The Mac also has system wide spell checking that happens automatically in most applications. A misspelled word will show a red dotted line beneath it.
You Right Click on the word to see the suggestions for the correct spelling. You can also add a word to the System dictionary by choosing Learn Spelling
If you choose to look up the word in the Mac Dictionary, you get this window:
 Double Clicking the word brings up the definition(s) for the word.
You can also choose to include grammar in your Spell Checking, by choosing it in that same drop-down window:
If you do not have a 2 button mouse, Control-Click is a Right Click on a Mac.
Not too shabby, right, Debbie? Welcome to the world of Mac.
Tizzie
number of view: 278
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